Bill Gates and Streve Jobs want the computer to be the gateway for all these signals to the home. Other devices, such as the traditional TV reduced to LCD monitor or the computer screen, will be responsible for delivering the message.
Outside the home, users, connected with PDAs, cell phones, screens on the backs of a minivan or a Boeing 777, will receive programs, chat, check pages, watch the news.
Smart hard drive VCR, whether called Tivo or PVRs, serve as a video-on-demand server in the viewer's home. Viewers now watch the shows they want, in the order they want and without the awkward commercial interruptions. The change in the habits of the viewer puts in check the commercial support on which open television was developed. The one we knew.
While in Europe mobile digital television tests are carried out with the DVB-T and DVB-H standards, in Singapore they find that the maximum time that a program broadcast on city buses should last is 10 minutes, average time of the duration of a trip. (In Singapore!)
None of the devices listed so far belong to science fiction. They are real products some still in the process of maturation that before we know it will flood our markets.
And who is going to provide content to all of them? Or perhaps the right question is how are we going to provide them with content?
The revolution of ubiquitous video or television devices for the consumer would not be possible if an equivalent technological revolution did not occur on the production side. We are looking at a new form of television production in which any dramatized program, or football match or news preview, can be seen on dozens of different devices, at the time the consumer wants and wherever he wants.
The challenge for content creators is to provide programs with enough flexibility to adapt to all these mediums, in a cost-effective manner.
