BigShinyThing

Technology Review reports claims from a company called MatrixStream that it can now stream HDTV content in realtime, over the public Internet. That’s big news, for a couple of important reasons.

It makes moot the outcome of the format war between the HiDef successors to DVD: if it’s possible to stream HD content on demand long-haul over broadband, it’s unlikely that (m)any punters will take a chance on ending up stuck with the ‘BetaMax of HD’. Instead, they’re going to wait until Apple releases its much-anticipated HiDef ‘media centre’ device. Long tipped to feature iTunes-enabled online access to first-run and classic films and TV series, Apple’s box is an even more compelling proposition if that content can be made instantly available through streaming.

Streaming HD not only marks the death of physical media. It also defines a new battleground: one where encumbent media behemoths will have to fight it out not only against consumer-created content (the Cat Channel) but against existing professional content producers as well. bruckheimer.tv? Hell, that would be on my playlist. Content is media. True today, ubiquitous tomorrow, on a thousand ‘channels-of-me‘.

The only question is, which content will show up on streaming HD? MatrixStream claims to be betting on the long tail:

[...] Independent content producers who could use high-definition Internet IPTV to reach niche audiences with premium programming that makes today’s streaming video look primitive. “We’re talking about the real long tail,” says [MatrixStream's CTO] Chung. “Instead of 500 channels, you’ll have a million. Or, to put it another way, you’ll have just one channel — yours.”

That’s a lot of content, and it will take a while for producers to create (and financiers to see the value of) high-quality niche programming. In the interim, we’re sceptical that punters who have just paid out for their HD home cinema ‘experience’ will use it to watch the same YouTube nonsense that keeps them busy in the office. Likewise, we doubt that MatrixStream’s system will herald the crossover of fan-created TV into the mainstream (not yet, at least).

We think they’re most likely to get bought out by Apple and end up streaming the same glossy, professionally-produced content we’re busily consuming on our Sky+ boxes and at the cinema — the revolutionary aspects of this technology will be in the way it opens up the market to different media and channel models. Assuming of course that Apple (or whoever gets their deals in place first) doesn’t just lock it all down with DRM and create a media monopoly that Charles Foster Kane himself would have envied. Stay (ahem) tuned.

Psyop have created six 15 second station idents for MTV’s high definition channel which will feature exclusively HD work and 5.1 surround sound from MTV, VH1 and CMT. The idents are extracts from a 90-second film which will also be aired in its entirety on MTV HD. According to Justin Booth Clibborn, Pysop’s executive producer:

MTV asked us to “do our thing” and create a spot that would really push the limits of the format. They gave us their complete trust and support to come up with something very different and unexpected. What we gave them can best be described as a ‘visual haiku,’ a spot that is all the more detailed and effective because of its seeming minimalism.

For those of us old enough to remember MTV’s heyday of allowing experimental filmmakers to do its idents, this is a nice return to form. It is also for our money the first truly interesting bit of HD promo work (if you exclude the BBC’s pushing of Planet Earth) that also gets the possibilities of the medium. Co-creator Marco Spier says:

We’ve done HD work before, but always with the knowledge that the work would also be viewed in NTSC. This time, viewers will only be seeing this in HD. We had the unique opportunity to take advantage of the technology and include detailed elements that would be very problematic to accomplish in NTSC. That’s how this spot ended up with so many thin, high-contrast lines that would buzz like crazy on regular television. We were able to actively work with those kinds of elements, knowing the resolution would support it.

Via lovely Proteinos. Watch the full film via the Dexigner site.

The Technology Liberation Front have just published an article that says apparently half of all High Definition Television (HDTV) owners don’t actually use the HD capabilities of their set, and nearly a quarter think they are watching high definition video when they actually haven’t set it up correctly. Bless.

Forrester Research have predicted that by the end of the year some 16 million U.S. households will have HDTV sets, but only seven million wll have HDTV reception. The Scientific Atlanta survey found that some 49 percent of households were not taking advantage of their HD equipment. About a quarter found that their HD set itself provided better reception, without taking the additional steps necessary to view HD. Eighteen percent said they didn’t even know needed additional equipment, such as a set-top box or antenna. A quarter admitted they thought they were watching HD video because, after all, the programs said at the beginning that they were broadcast in HDTV.

Story via Slashdot.

The BBC website reports that BBC director general Mark Thompson has pledged to deliver free-to-air HDTV on all BBC digital platforms “as soon as practical”, which is expected to be by about 2010.

The BBC trials aim to test out how HDTV broadcasts are transmitted and received. The corporation said they would not affect the reception of current channels.

Its trials are expected to last a year. The BBC has yet to decide how many participants will take part in the trials, or how they will be selected.

Sky plans to launch its own HDTV service in 2006, which will include live Premiership football.

Ah, the big questions of life — ‘Why are we here’, ‘Is there a Higher Power’, and most importantly for those of us working in media: ‘What is the future of TV’. But what is ‘TV’? Is it that thing you lug home from Currys? Or is it something experiential ? If TV once meant Sunday 7pm+living room+sofa+family+ugly-box-in-corner, does flatscreen+bed+timeshifted Sky+ count? What about HDTV-quality video+surround sound all downloaded over the Internet and watched via an Xbox? ‘TV’ is a porous, mutable concept. By the time we’re finished asking what it is, it will have become something else (c.f. ‘the record album‘). Perhaps at the moment there are simply too many possible futures of TV to even sensibly ask the question.

So let’s ignore TV for a bit, and think about the future of something a little more tangible — channels. Whatever TV is, channels have long been a part of it. Just as brands retain value as waypoints through a landscape of atomised experience, channels (and channel brands) help us navigate our way through increasingly diverse content.

Since the dawn of TV, channels have been made and maintained for us. We’ve tuned in or out, or (heresy!) turned off, dependant on schedules, mood and time of day. Since Sky+, the PVR-gifted amongst us have been enabled to create our own, personalised channel-of-me through timeshifting linked to EPGs: the revolution is upon us.

But step back a bit, and that revolution looks already a little stale: my PVR-driven channels-of-me are only available at my house. Crave the brilliance of my content selection? You have to come on over. Contrast with the promiscuous accessibility of the ‘channel’s emerging in other media: syndicated blogs as newsfeeds of personally cherry-picked news and views, networked iTunes playlists as ‘radio stations’ in offices. Maybe TV — even time-shifted TV — needs to get up out of the sofa and live it up a bit in the world of social networks and smart mobs. Forget channel-of-me, isn’t it time for channels-of-we? Shouldn’t the future of channels be a bit more sociable?

And you know what? We aren’t going to care about the delivery mechanism — content from online, conventional studios, the BBC archives can all fight it out for our attention. Is it TV? Who cares! While the pedants worry about the ‘death of the album’, post-’pod, the rest of us tune into iTunes or Napster and create the soundtracks of our own lives. The future of TV? Who cares! Liberate content: dice, splice and link it up to make channels wherever, whenever we want, for an audience of one or for one million. Lets forget about TV for a bit. Let’s play with channels. Let’s have some fun.