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Gates Proclaims Internet to Revolutionize TV in 5 Years
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:07 PM
from the for-some-of-us-it-already-has dept.
from the for-some-of-us-it-already-has dept.
adamlazz writes "With an explosion of online video content on sites like YouTube and Google Video, Bill Gates believes that the Internet will revoloutionize the television within the next 5 years.
'I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had,' Gates told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum. "
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Gates Proclaims Internet to Revolutionize TV in 5 Years
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Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.fiveeightforums.com/)
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.slashdot.org/)
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://moranar.com.ar/ | Last Journal: Sunday June 08 2003, @04:58PM)
Y'know, I still don't see flying cars anywhere near. On the other hand, it will be a cold day in Hell before I start paying attention to what Gates has to say about the Internet. His company almost missed it. MSN, hah.
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.egyptiankarim.com/)
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (OT) (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of something William Gibson said about the opening line to Neuromancer:
I don't have an exact quote, but his comment was that a change in the way TV manufacturers dealt with dead channels completely changed the meaning of that sentence.
I digress; back to your regularly-scheduled comments.
TV? Pffft. (Score:5, Funny)
(http://evil.google.com/)
We need an obvious tag (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We need an obvious tag (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.lazylightning.org/)
I don't know if you can access CurrentTV, but if you can make sure you sit down and watch a couple of pods. This is what he's talking about when he mentions that it's going to revolutionize TV. Viewer submitted content (that they're paying for) that appears on TV is amazing to watch.
You get a first hand account of newly reported news items but without the lame over-processed and practiced "Live Eyewitness News Reporter" feel. Some of the shit on CurrentTV blows my mind and some of it is viewer submitted advertising for products that you would have probably never heard about on the mainstream media.
Now, with archived content available online, we will finally get to see the Tubes be used for part of their potential.
The Museum of Bill Gates Proclamations (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.backupcritic.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 15 2004, @01:02PM)
My prediction is: Bill will tell us that the next version of Windows after Vista is going to be really secure this time.
Re:The Museum of Bill Gates Proclamations (Score:4, Informative)
(http://pietersz.co.uk/ | Last Journal: Wednesday May 04 2005, @05:22AM)
Other than that, the only Bill G prediction I can remember that the internet was a fad or words to that effect. I can not find a reference for it. What I did find while looking was this http://www.danielsen.com/jokes/BillGatesquotes.txt [danielsen.com]
An analysis of The Road Ahead, 10 years later (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~Infonaut/journal | Last Journal: Tuesday July 31, @02:22PM)
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2006/02/08/road_ahead _billgates/ [bit-tech.net].
I found this using Google, of course. ;)
Re:The Museum of Bill Gates Proclamations (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't telling us what he thinks will happen so much as he is telling us what he wants to happen so that he makes a lot of money. By forming it as a prediction he gets the masses to start looking in that direction and expecting what it is he is intending to sell them, thus making it easier to sell it to them, because now they think that's what they "want."
It's similar to telling someone that their neighbor has already bought the widget you're selling; with the implication that if you don't buy one too you've missed the boat. The psychology of the herd. What are "they" going to be wearing next year? Ok, give me some of that.
Thus you cannot embarass Bill by pointing out his failures at prognostication, because he views them as failures to manipulate.
But here's the Gatesian twist: He blames you for it.
KFG
Re:The Museum of Bill Gates Proclamations (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 12, @12:30PM)
My TV is fine, Gates. Get back to work fixing my inbox--it's overflowing because of all those shitty Windows computers you put out that are now spam zombies.
Re:Spam (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
As a Comcast customer outta Redmond... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody." (Score:5, Informative)
this from the guy who doesn't own one? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.halley.cc/ed/)
Okay, so Gates hired dozens if not hundreds of developers in the 80s and early 90s who were very familiar with the value of the Internet, yet they missed the bandwagon in incorporating TCP/IP features and protocols until it was already commonplace in the market? And all the while, Gates was smugly declaring that he didn't own a television set and had completely disconnected from the Joe Sixpack culture of sponging in front of a boob tube like the rest of America. Yet, somehow he feels he's adequately informed to see the way that the television culture will shift to an Internet culture in a given timeframe? The only reason that this sounds at all plausible is because Apple and Sony and TiVo and Google and other companies already have been working in that direction. Welcome to the 2000s, Bill.
Re:No chance (Score:4, Interesting)
At the same time, my ISP is rolling out an IP television system. That makes me take any bandwidth whining with a large grain of salt.
Re:No chance (Score:5, Insightful)
In processing power terms, that's like saying 'Nobody will be able to play these 'nextgen' video games because the processing power isn't there.' (Yes, people said that. We have gone FAR beyond that point now.)
In data storage terms, that's like saying games will never look real because you'd have to distribute too much information. (Yes, people said that. CDs came in and kicked this idiocy to the curb. Then DVDs. Then HD-DVD/BluRays.)
The market will be there to provide what we want as soon as we have a use for it. You can count on it.
Star Trek: an accurate prediction? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://ettlz.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday February 12 2006, @06:53PM)
He's right (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.spacehaven.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 14 2002, @03:08PM)
TV will prevail (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://coulturetv.blogspot.com/)
Why Listen to a Has-Been? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then he tucked together pieces he plucked to form Office, where creative MS programmers put it all together.
But then listen to all the BS that came out of BG since and between Cairo, ME & CE, etc & the constant use of similar adjectives used to describe the next MS product or version, and what floats high on the surface of the water?
"S--t", thats what.
Why does ANYONE take this guy seriously? At this point all he is, is a rich philanthropist!
Sheesh.
Re:Why Listen to a Has-Been? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bill Gates does NOT have a track record of coming up with innovative, cutting edge, next gen products. In fact, he doesn't have a good track record coming up with better products others already have done, & shall we go through them?
1. Zune...rhymes with doom, and it is not a game
2. IE...still going downhill after giving us malware-virus heaven
3. CE...mobile world does not know it exists
4. Cairo-Longhorn...time moves on, with less features
5. Media Center PCs...oohh a geek's delight
6. MS's Search...Uhhh Bill is too busy to use Google, and his secretary finds what he needs on his hard drive
Bill Gates and "The Chair" Ballmer are strictly into techniques designed to lock their OS & Office monopoly down tighter.
I seriously doubt Bill gates is even interested in TV personally...and that is probably an indication of how little Microsoft will do in that arena.
The only thing that will stand a chance of allowing shareholder value growth is breaking Microsoft up into pieces and letting all the brainpower in each division go wild in search of new products, because Bill & Steve are not going to do it.
I'm Ready for IPTV (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.movetoiceland.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 02 2004, @11:02AM)
I already do the 'IPTV' thing with a couple BBC programs. And the only reason I'm not paying for them is because they're not available on iTunes in the US, and my wife is completely addicted to Torchwood and Dr. Who. My Powerbook and iPod dock both support S-Video out, so hooking them up to my TV is trivial. An AppleTV (and a faster Mac for converting from DiVX to MPEG) would make it even easier.
The only problem I've run into, and this is recently, is that BitTorrent consumes a lot of upstream bandwidth so people I call with Vonage sometimes get choppy audio on their end. I worked around this by doing some QoS filtering in my router and writing a couple shell scripts to turn Torrents on and off on my Mac Mini home server. A better broadband connection, with >1Mbps upstream, would allow me to use BitTorrent all the time.
Really, the only reason I even have cable is because it costs just as much to get cable broadband with cable TV as it does without. If I could get fiber or DSL at similar speeds with no server restrictions (as in, port 22, 5600 and an http port open) I would probably drop cable altogether and get all my media and phone service over the internet.
I think monthly fees are ludicrous, and refuse to pay them if there's an alternative. I'd rather use the iTunes model: Pay $2 for an episode or get a season pass for a discount of, say, $30 for a 26 episode season. That way I can check out new shows for cheap and get the shows I like for less. And, even better, without commercials. And my money could go directly to the group producing the show, not through a network of middlemen all taking their cut. If a show's cheap enough to produce, as few as 10,000 people, scattered across the globe, could keep episodes being aired.
What would you want to watch today? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Internet is going to revolutionize everything in five years. Again. Every five years. And again.
What's the story here? That Gates has little more to do than repeat the obvious?
Will digital delivery change film/TV? (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO online delivery will obviously have a huge effect on video watching habits: 5 years? 10? It'll vary depending on how much of an early adopter you are (or your country is), but it'll come for sure.
BT Vision, recently launched in the UK, has a quite interesting hybrid model, where one interface gives you access to digital broadcasting-through-the-air (for watching news, sports, etc) as well as to VoD and the stuff you've got on your PVR. Could solve a lot of the obvious issues around live broadcasts watched by millions crashing IP networks.
Moving on slightly -- the interesting question, I think, is whether it will change the nature of film and TV: i.e. is digital, networked video just a distribution method, or is it a new medium.
A further quote from BG, from a conference a couple of years ago...
Bill Gates: "the difference between watching TV or film and playing a video game won't be the black and white difference that it is today; soon, there will be a spectrum of shades of grey".
Now before you write this off, note the following from Peter Jackson about six months ago...
Peter Jackson: "what's interesting is...conveying stories using (digital) technology which will allow an interactive component - but they're not movies and they're not games... there should be another form of entertainment... what's interesting is the crossover"
And Guillermo del Toro (director of "Blade II" and the amazing "Pan's Labyrinth"): "in the next 10 years, narrative media will shift to a hybrid of video games and movies"..."like the shift from silent movies to talkies; some movie people will be able to make the jump, but many won't."
There's a possible parallel with the development of film: in the early days, some filmmakers thought film was basically like theatre: so in their movies, the camera didn't move, the scenery was theatrical flats, the actor's whole body was shown, there were few cuts. With time, people realised film wasn't a distribution medium for theatre -- it was a whole new medium. And with it came close-ups, moving cameras, outdoor locations, etc.
IMHO we're at a similar stage now, where people are starting to see that broadband (and possibly digital cinema, later) is not just a distribution method for traditional linear film and video, it's a whole new medium with its own unique characteristics. Like any medium, it rewards those who understand and work with its characteristics.
This does NOT mean naive (and doomed) movies where you "choose-the-ending". In broadband, it means creating pieces where, within the limits of the technology, you can converse with stars, explore artworks, listen to talks customised to your interests and level of knowledge, play beach volleyball, etc. There are a number of interactive video pieces online demonstrating that this sort of thing works.
What Gates and Jobs see as the future of video devices is just the beginning of opening up the creative possiblities of video with interactivity.
He missed the boat again (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes you just want to chill out. (Score:3, Insightful)
What will become of todays broadcasters then? (Score:4, Interesting)
For most of these years, our biggest expense after payroll and related expenses is the power bill. We have, by way of charging the seller to advertise his product, called a commercial, been able to survive, and even pay our better employees fairly well.
To bring enough bandwidth into being to do this for all the broadcasters, and there are around 800 of us, sufficient bandwidth buildout will be a major expense, and will of course be charged for accordingly.
Our power bills range from say $5k/mo for a vhf operation, going up to maybe $10k for a full power digital running in parallel, and back to maybe $7k/mo once ntsc is turned off in 2009. For UHF broadcasters, multiply those figures by about 3x.
We would need up to 30MB/sec per channel transmitted this way in full HD, and at todays charges for bandwidth, would make our power bill look like pocket change. That of course is a CODB.
Now, while its going to be technically feasable at some point in the future, I detest people who are only passing fans of a dog in this fight, with little of their own money invested yet, making predictions as to when this will happen.
There are all sorts of regulatory hurdles to contend with, starting with the market access exclusivity that the designated ADM's the FCC has setup, preventing to a large degree, access to our local market by outside stations. I personally am a bit ambiguous about that, but it goes a long way toward keeping our broadcast material flavored with the local area culture, and this is a Good Thing(TM), while at the same time effectively keeping ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/WTBS/KTLA's time peddlers from walking the streets in our market and effectively stealing our income.
OTOH, folks would like to be able to grab the network signals without all those local commercials and the clamor for exactly that is being heard about the land and in our governments reactions to that in the form of the SHVA acts. But, stop and think about the downside to that too if there were no SHVA. If CBS, whom we are an affiliate of, were to be allowed free access to 'our' market, a couple of things would happen, one because of their networks construction, they would have the power to hit several differnt locales around the country with commercials taylored to that locale and they do that right now, sending a dog food commercial to the deep south and a toothpaste commercial to the west coast, etc etc. They would have to do that because there is not enough time to do all of what they could sell if they used our rate card unless they could resell that time slot several times. They'll have to use our rate card or lose the sale as in this market there is no one that could afford a
The other thing is that because we could not realisticly compete in that un-limited access scenario, we would have no choice but to fold our tents and go away, leaving maybe 10 super powerfull 'stations', all of which will be at the governments mercy and be fed pablum for news and we would then be no better off than the russian people were at the height of Stalins power. You could be summarily shot if found in possession of a radio capale of picking up the VOA broadcasts.
Because there are now many of us, maybe as much as a third with full time 10 or more employee news departments, supporting in our own case over 3 hours of local news a day, we can shine a lot of sunshine on things that aren't always as they seem, and we make it a point to do just that. If one of our reporters is denied access to a city council meeting, its on the 11 oclock news because its a blatant violation of the sunshine laws here in WV. Yes, that local news is a cash cow to us, but still, where would this co
Is it the same guy who didn't see Internet coming? (Score:3)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Wny TF would anyone even listen to this guy anymore?
Gates is way behind on this one (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://and-still-i-persist.com/)
We have a couple of Panasonic PVRs (one with an 80GB hard drive and ethernet port) for standard time-shifting and protection in case of interruption, but I even use those less and less. Typically what I have done is watch the first few episodes of the season, then once I get behind, I simply wait for the DVD set to come out at season's end.
However, even that is now shifting to buying episodes from iTunes -- and that's the real innovation. And now that my wife has a 30" cinema display on her Mac, it's not as though there's any real loss of quality. And, as with the DVDs, it's so nice not to have to even use the 'CM SKIP' button to jump over commercials.
I'm less convinced about the future of streaming video over the internet. We already have streaming video into homes: it's called cable and satellite. They have the bandwidth. The internet, as yet, does not, particularly at the final mile. While I'm a Netflix subscriber and fan, I haven't tried their streaming video service yet, and probably won't; if there's a movie I want to watch that badly, I'll order the DVD from Netflix (or simply buy a copy) and watch it on my living room TV.
The major innovation I'm waiting for is for a series to be financed in part or all by advance subscriptions. For example, suppose that SciFi decides not to pick up Battlestar Galactica for a fourth season. Then suppose that the production company offers to create a fourth season if enough people subscribe in advance, each paying, say, the combined cost of an iTunes 'season pass' and a complete DVD set. Those funds are held in escrow until the necessary amount is reached, and then the season goes into production. All subscribers get a season pass, a DVD set, and their names listed as 'associate producer' in a special credits feature on the DVD set. The production company could throw in some other perk as well; e.g., each subscriber gets a pass for two people to an end-of-season wrap party (yeah, it's a big party, but so what?). The next step would be for a production company to do this for a brand-new series and bypass broadcast TV altogether.
There was a brief, unsuccessful (and unauthorized) effort to resurrect Firefly this way, but that was pre-iTunes TV.
I think that within a few years, iTunes (and its competitors...does it have any competitors?...) will be selling first-run episodic video content of quality matching current TV shows but not appearing on TV (or only appearing after a delay -- sort of the reverse of what happens now, where a given TV episode becomes available on iTunes a day or two after initial broadcast). However, even that will require some bandwidth enhancements along the way; right now, with a solid broadband connection, it can take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes to download an 'hour-long' (typically 43-minute) episode. If iTunes is releasing first-run content on a weekly basis, then we can expect massive download spikes each time that occurs.
So, as per my title: if Bill Gates is just now saying that "internet will transform TV within 5 years", he's merely making an obvious statement rather than a perceptive or unexpected prediction. The net is already transforming TV.