New Technology Promotes a Convergence Between the Internet and Televisions

Only a few years ago the idea of streaming video directly to your TV was unheard of. But today there are many supporters of the digital technology age, and they are working towards a convergence of TVs and the Internet. Once accomplished this could lead to the downfall of both satellite and cable companies

New Television Technology: The supporters

Some of the companies that have been actively pursuing this goal include Netflix, Hulu, and now even Google seems to be jumping on the bandwagon to total television freedom. Whether this is a good thing or not, depends entirely on your perspective.

New Television Technology: Televisions freedom

As long as the Internet remains free and open you will continue to see a mass of media widely available on it, and be less limited then with the average cable or satellite provider. However, under the circumstances it stands to reason that once this cuts into internet provider's budgets, they will start capping bandwidth just as they have done in the past.

New Television Technology: How will current providers respond?

The realm of possibilities with television and the Internet is wide open to interpretation right now, and one can only speculate on what the future may hold. My prediction is that just as Comcast began cutting bandwidth for VOIP (Voice Over IP or internet phone services) they will do so once again with streaming video in the near future.

It's in cable and other television service provider's best interest to nip this in the butt while they can, because as television viewer's decrease, and more people begin streaming all of their favorite television shows, these television providers will lose a large part of their market.

New Television Technology: The fall back plan

All is not lost to cable and satellite providers though. Cable and satellite television providers have a fall back, and that is the internet service itself. Since these service providers are a large part of the backbone providing our Internet services. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Whether they throttle back streaming video, or simply stop providing television services over land lines, opting to become dedicated internet service providers.

New Television Technology: TV killed the radio star

Much like the age of TV killed the radio it seems almost assured that soon the age of the Internet will kill cable and satellite. While television will thrive and continue on, it won't be in the form we have become so accustomed to. Let's take a look at what services Google TV (coming out this fall) has to offer its consumers.

According to Popular Science October 2010 Issue, Google TVs system lets you swap between live streaming video and on demand programming provided on the Internet. Google TV will be coming as both a standalone box and a service provided in certain televisions being released at this time.

Not only will you be able to digitally check the show line up for your live broadcasts coming through cable or satellite, but you will also be able to stream from the internet, search Google, tweet and check up on Facebook. It's likely all of this will be done side by side, while you watch your regular programming.

According to Popular Science, the next stage in this convergence is a smart television, one that can prowl the web for you, and find just the footage you want to see. You may for instance want to see clips of your favorite football player, so you would then search the name and football and the TV would prowl all the streams on the Internet finding footage of that player and identifying him by his jersey number.

New Television Technology: Resources

Google TV

NetFlix

Hulu