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RICHARD COLE
Within four years, a PC could serve as the average home's central entertainment platform, panelists at the Western Cable Show panel on streaming video warned cable operators.
Jonathan Taplin, president/CEO of Intertainer, says that, without a set-top box that can handle Internet-style streaming media and interactive content, programming would migrate to a more hospitable host.
The computer will be connected wirelessly to the family television, the stereo and perhaps game platforms, he says.
"I do believe in a world where MP3, games and other things are sitting on a PC platform; there's a very good chance the PC could be the entertainment center of the home in this wireless connected universe," he says.
Richard Wolpert, strategic adviser to RealNetworks, says broadcast and cable television will continue to be a major presence in the home, but he saw a new platform emerging, perhaps somewhere between a PC and a cable box.
Ease of use and connectivity will be the key, he says, recounting his wife's frustrations with TiVo, which she found cumbersome when trying to move a show she recorded on the living room television to the bedroom set.
"I think there will be a solution - and I don't know exactly what box wins - where I can watch a broadcast, I can do things on-demand, and there's something in the home that acts as a hub for the other media viewers in my home," he says.
Not everyone saw change occurring that fast. Inertia will keep most Americans using the same media in the same ways they have traditionally, says George Bell, chairman/CEO of Excite Ninety-nine percent of television viewership is shared by the traditional networks and a handful of cable channels, he notes.
"I am a believer in media inertia - it's going to take time," Bell says.
MSOs will be confronted by another revolution in the next four years.
"There will be 40 million people in this country with an always-on, high-speed access connection," he predicts.
That will include 5 million to 7 million simultaneous users downloading streaming video, playing immersion games and other interactivities.
"So that means you're going to have exceeded the simultaneous usage of some of the most major cable programming networks within four years - on something that four years ago people thought was pixie dust," he says.
Streaming video is still seen as a threat by traditional cable operators, according to the panel.
Bell said cable operators had placed a 10-minute limit on Excite's video transmissions, in part because they feared competition from the new medium. That struggle continues.
"There will be a conflict," he acknowledges.
There are problems even for the ISPs when it comes to broadband. As an example, Bell points to his company's experience with interactive games. The service has had up to 25,000 people playing interactive poker a night, using up enormous bandwidth that no one pays for.
There is no future for his company in running a broadband network without the ability to make someone pay for massive increases in demand that they have, in effect, been receiving for free, Bell says.
With the advent of broadband, users who downloaded bandwidth-hungry streaming videos may be asked to pay more than those who simply look at text files.
While streaming video on-demand may be the future, RealNetwork's Wolpert says there is a social element to television programming that cannot be duplicated.
He says NBC promoted last week's broadcast of Titanic by emphasizing that millions of viewers would see the film at the same time. Millions watched The Lion King premier on network television even though they had the video at home and had been forced to watch it dozens of times by their children, Wolpert said.
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