"What's stopping this all from happening immediately?"

You forgot bandwidth. People are already talking about how services like Bittorrent and YouTube put significant strain on the internet. If TV ever fully migrates to the internet, more bandwidth (especially on the end user side of things, I mean there's no way your getting HD video with a 200 KB/s connection) will be neccessary.

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What do you expect from a guy who wrote a book in the 90's called "The Road Ahead" which mentioned the Internet exactly once. Gates gets credit for being a technological visionary when he certainly is not, he is a visionary businessman.

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How would having a Tivo allow me to make the meatpuppet talk about the results for my area during an election?
How will Tivo let me watch the entire Archery competition during the Olympics when no one airs more than 2 minutes of it during the 17,000 hours of coverage?
*That* is what Bill is talking about. The internet lets you find results and/or footage of the bits you're interested in, not what the networks tell you you should be interested in.

And Tivo don't do squat outside the US? :)

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Bandwidth does not effect your internet connection if you don't use your computer connection port to view. Most 'net users have above a 1.5Mbps connection already dedicated to their PC. For the television feed you are strictly using the RG-59 cable connection, connect that into your PC and you are running faster than your modem is rated at for net speed.

As for HD TV, it is more compressed in band than analog. It'll allow for more channels on the same pipeline at a better resolution. It's all the compression of data that allows for a faster/tighter stream.

Television will be fighting it for how they make their money; the commercials. If they don't have us watching the commercials, the companies will need to force us to see them, stream them on the sides or bottom of the screen to make their money. Only the people setup with traditional TV will be forced to see the adds during breaks while we can skip over them.

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Even with a 1.5 Mbps connection your still pressing the limit.

"In general, an HD signal in the current standard of compression known as MPEG-2 gets encoded into 19.4 Megabits per second. That is several times the rate of standard-definition channels, which are typically coded at 2.5 to 5 Mbps." - Multichannel News (http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6400524.html)

Those numbers are for cable television, but it would probably be pretty comparable because any tv service would have to similarly compress channels.

Even considering that consumers could get a slightly faster connection (due to bandwidth limits artificially put in place by ISPs), you have to remember that for many connections (like DSL) speed also depends on how much the network is being used. Just like normal phone service, DSL is actually sold beyond its capacity. If everyone using a companies DSL lines was concurrently maxing out their connection (with, say television) they wouldn't get near the amount of bandwidth that their service plan was supposed to provide. This isn't a problem currently because its extremely unlikely every DSL subscriber for a company would be maxing out their connection at one given point in time. However, its much more likely with the addition of television, because its used much more often and takes up more bandwidth.

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I'm a proud TiVo owner plus an owner of Media Center for on of my computers.

Yet I will never watch a TV show on the PC because it is horrible. For most people who can't sit back and watch for ten minutes PC-TV is fine. That is why they're called clips.

I want TV with extras, a 50-inch dedicated box that is smart enough to go online if I need more info about a show. For instance if I'm watching "24" and an extra looks familiar I want a button to press that will list all the credits or do a screen capture. If Jack has a cool cell phone I want to hit a button so that I can order it online(hint: there is your ad revenue).

TV may not die but the with all these tiny UMPC/laptops don't expect many desktops to survive.

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Convenient that Bill Gates was the one who thought that internet is (Was) and i quote "A passing phase".

Ironic, no?

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I take with a grain of salt, anything that Bill Gates says about the internet, I remember Microsoft took a long time to integrate Windows to the Internet because Bill thought of the Internet as toy for computer hobbyists

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Man - "I want TV with extras". That would be awesome.
I think a few companies have tried that and it was met with lukewarm response. Maybe they just need better content.

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Internet clips are fine as a 2 minute amusement, but I want 30 minute programs with high (as in UK, not US) production values, 2 hour films, and intelligent content from my news programs. Not just another dumb kid falling off a skateboard, or some rant about the injustice of not being allowed to steal music, or whether one set of PC hardware is prettier than another. In short the internet is a fine place to visit, but it's not as good as real life.

BTW TiVo is irrelevant and expensive when you have a hard drive recorder.

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who is bill gates and why shouldn he know anything?

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RichP at #9, believe all the flavor is chewed out of that "user generated content is dopey kids doing jackass tricks and free music rants" meme. Online video services have become a rich repository and reflection of the culture at large, with everything from juvenilia to consciously crafted art, first person journalism (including footage from extreme conflicts), and everything in between.

If it's real life your after (assuming you don't mean "real" real life, unplugged) you'll find it on the big mirror that is YouTube much more quickly and in greater variety than you will channel-flipping or browsing the aisles at Blockbuster.

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I would tend to agree with Gates, the internet gives you what you want when you want it. TV is a fricking rip-off, they charge you through the nose to watch channels that have commercials anyway, then people dump $45/season buying the crap on DVD!

Seriously, how many different channels does a person (or even a household) watch? 10 maybe? People SHOULD get sick of paying $100/month for 90 channels they don't want and download stuff off the internet instead. It's the only way to make a change.

The next step is to pull the monopoly of high-speed internet from the cable companies...

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This is the same man who said we wouldn't need more than 640k for ram in our PCs. I don't know about you guys but I have at least 512 MEGS in my computers.

MS has tried to break into the set top box market for years and years. Maybe they should buy replaytv, thats really the only way MS gets anywhere. Good luck Mr Gates.

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I'm not sure if comments are allowed that are grossly longer than the post that they are commenting on- but here goes my rant.

Greg, you may be making fun of Bill for being late to th game, but I'll make fun of him for jumping the gun on this one. It's going to take longer than five years for the internet to turn TV into a lame duck. Cable and satellite television combined with a PVR is a combination that is far superior to anything that can be delivered via the Internet within that time frame.

Mythor wrote: How would having a Tivo allow me to make the meatpuppet talk about the results for my area during an election?” and “How will Tivo let me watch the entire Archery competition during the Olympics when no one airs more than 2 minutes of it during the 17,000 hours of coverage?”

To get a “meatpuppet” to talk about the election as it relates to particular geopolitical concerns, you still need people to research the issues, people to write up the research, people to work the teleprompter, people to work the camera, people to work the computer that captures/encodes and transmits the image... if you don't have a local television channel then I really doubt anyone will go through that trouble for five people to stream into their homes. What you will get is someone in their home office doing some reading, taking some notes and then sitting down in front of their camcorder to pontificate on the subject... and 999 times out of 1,000 that person's pontification will be wrong and worthless.

While I am a fan of fencing, which gets about as much attention as archery, the best that we can expect is one locked down camera pointed at the action and feeding it live to the Internet. The network will have spent billions of dollars to get the rights to the Olympics and even though they aren't going to cover archery they will lawyer up and bury anyone who tries to walk onto their turf. The Olympics are in the business of selling the rights to show the sports and they will protect the billion dollar broadcasters – expect them to ban video cameras from the events. The broadcaster's team covering the events has a limited budget and they aren't going to pull $100,000 away from the money sports to give even cursory coverage to a sport that won't get the audience numbers to justify it. The Olympic Committee might be able to make marginally more money by selling the rights to individual sporting events rather than an overall but the broadcasters will fight that tooth and nail as they try to get an exclusive.

Ed1040 wrote: “Most 'net users have above a 1.5Mbps connection already dedicated to their PC.” and “As for HD TV, it is more compressed in band than analog. It'll allow for more channels on the same pipeline at a better resolution.”

There are still millions of people who own televisions but have NO Internet connection of any kind. While a lot of 'net users have what is euphemistically called “broadband access”, it is actually medium bandwidth at best and that 1.5 Mbps is just enough to squeeze ONE streaming standard definition feed... if nobody else in the house is using the DSL or nobody in the neighborhood is using your cable Internet. And this can only go on for a short time before most ISPs will throttle the access back because you have gone over the limit that they have set for your monthly or daily traffic. Just downloading an hour of HD to watch offline (since you can't watch it streaming) would get most services throttled unless you throttle it yourself or set it up to download during a non-peak time. The ISPs always promise “up to” x.xMbps for a reason, that is the highest they can hit when the traffic is light. If the Internet access viewership becomes even 25% of broadcast television then the infrastructure would be brought to its knees- there isn't enough bandwidth for even that fraction of the population to switch from over-the-air/cable/satellite and there won't be for a lot longer than five years.

Joost, because it uses peer to peer delivery, is attempting to get around the bandwidth problems and while it technically may work, it still ignores traffic limits that most ISPs enforce. And we are still left with the fact that quality content still has to come from the professionals.

And nobody will be looking at HD digital versus analog of any stripe, they will be comparing digital to digital. The uncompressed high definition signal is about six times the data of standard definition television and even when they use greater compression on the HD broadcast signal they still have to give up about four SD channels to accommodate one HD channel. If we are talking about sending it over the Internet then there is no reason that they can't use a similar level of compression for SD and so they start looking at having to give up six SD channels for each HD channel... and then they start thinking that they could go to less that standard definition video and carry ten or twelve channels... and if they compress even more you end up with YouTube carrying twenty or more crappy feeds instead of one acceptable HD feed.

Man wrote: “I want TV with extras, a 50-inch dedicated box that is smart enough to go online if I need more info about a show. For instance if I'm watching "24" and an extra looks familiar I want a button to press that will list all the credits or do a screen capture. If Jack has a cool cell phone I want to hit a button so that I can order it online (hint: there is your ad revenue).”

This only works for a sliver of all possible viewers. They can't be interested enough to be caught up in the show- but they can't be bored enough to switch away from the show. John Cassar and crew are screwing up royally if you are watching “24” and idly wondering “who is that woman walking through the background... I'm sure I saw her on last week's CSI: Hoboken” or “That there is a mighty fine looking cellphone... I wonder how many minutes I would get with a two year contract?”

Ron Martinez wrote: “RichP at #9, believe all the flavor is chewed out of that "user generated content is dopey kids doing jackass tricks and free music rants" meme. Online video services have become a rich repository and reflection of the culture at large, with everything from juvenilia to consciously crafted art, first person journalism (including footage from extreme conflicts), and everything in between. If it's real life your after (assuming you don't mean "real" real life, unplugged) you'll find it on the big mirror that is YouTube much more quickly and in greater variety than you will channel-flipping or browsing the aisles at Blockbuster.”

Grant Robertson wrote: “More and more we're finding great entertainment in low-buck, short format indie video and, in five years, the upper echelon of 15-24 year olds who are currently rocking the funny on sites like YouTube will be a force to reckon with, possibly even taking notches out of networks like Fox and NBC.”

Ron and Grant- please show me ANY of this “consciously crafted art” or “great entertainment” that is “rocking the funny”! I am constantly scouring YouTube, Google Video, Revver, Metacafe, Brightcove, Yahoo Video, DivX Stage6, Blip.tv- and the best that I have EVER found was a pilot for a sitcom that was rejected as not being good enough for network television. I shot a two hour pilot for a television series - and despite having spent something over $50,000 on it and getting the equivalent of a couple hundred thousand dollars of services donated – the production values on it are not up to the quality that even cable channel's pilot is expected to have.

Youtube is a vast wasteland where the only quality is content ripped from established media outlets.

Even the mediocre television shows coming out of the studio system REQUIRE a good writing staff, a good casting director, good set dressers, a good production manager, a good first AD, good grips and gaffers, a good cinematographer, a good director, good actors and a good editor... all of this overseen by a good executive producer. For a show to be great, one or two of those can be merely good while the rest have to be exceptional. The chances that you can get together a group of people who are good in all these areas but not actually working at those jobs... and can volunteer their time... not gonna happen. The vast majority of the people who try to do any of those jobs will never be more than adequate at them even if they work hard at it. The number of people who will ever be good at those jobs is limited and the best that Youtube can do is showcase the raw talent that might, just might, be able to produce watchable material if they are put together with others who are already good at the other jobs.

I think that there is the opportunity for a couple of break out shows to originate and thrive on the Internet alone (I have an idea or two of my own for this)... but it will take an entirely new backbone and a hundredfold increase in overall bandwidth before the Internet eclipses over-the-air/cable/satellite television. I don't see that happening inside of five years. Until then, the Internet will be restricted to a support media and a distribution channel for niche and long tail productions.

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Bill Gates is right again and knows how close the solution for IPTV really is to becoming a reality. Advanced Technetix was founded to participate in the explosive growth of Digital Communcations and Entertainment related services. Through their patented technology, they have developed the ability to deliver HDTV quality content to both the home and PC environment utilizing their AccessKey technology. AccessKey combines a PC, home audio player, media storage device, residential Internet gateway and telephone all in one unit.

Basically, it functions as a normal cable box, but AccessKey merges cable TV, Internet access and telephone use. That same system used to surf channels can also be used to surf the Internet, play games and much more. Connecting with your Internet service via your DSL or cable modem also allows the unit to be your Voice Over IP access. Go a step further and attach a camera and now you have a videoconferencing. These systems are designed to provide total support for those features you desire now and into the future. triple play, quadruple play, music, games and secure data storage can and are a reality, all built upon our superior AccessKey technology and they can offer this to anyone anywhere in the world.

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From Download Squad:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/21/watch-tv-for-free/

Works nice, Tivo killed itself with DRM!

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