The future of television

[jfman]

These threads would be much shorter if OB would stop doing that.

I think there's pretty broad agreement on a number of things if he'd just define his terms clearly so we know what he means.

FAST channels are a red herring - the term doesn't add anything meaningful to the discourse at all. A 24 hour a day TV channel (sometimes called a 'linear' channel) is just that whether it broadcasts news, sports, general entertainment, documentaries, or 24 hours a day of Casualty episodes. Being able to do this over IP has reduced the barriers to entry (cost) but it's fundamentally the same thing using a new technology.

There's two (quite interesting) but distinct conversations to be had.

The technologies to deliver television (both linear, channels and on demand). Digital television in the UK will be 30 years old in four years time.

DTT: There's competition for that bandwidth from mobile operators.

Satellite (in the UK): The three satellites broadcasting from 28.2E reach end of life on paper in five years. In practice however, lifespan could go beyond 20 years. Elsewhere in Europe the satellite operator (SES) is commissioning Astra 1P and 1Q - taking their broadcast commitment well into the 2040s across the continent.

Cable: Virgin with long term plans to retire the old network could push an all IP solution over their new full fibre network (when complete).

The second conversation - is how people consume television. This has always been a moving picture (pun intended). VHS in the 80s to PVR products in the early 2000s have always given people the capability to timeshift and watch what they want, when they want, from the previously broadcast content. Sky+ was a gamechanger in this regard with no degradation of quality and the ability to watch one channel while recording another from the subscription channels. Cable had on demand services that were good but hamstrung by weak STBs and interfaces. Yet still watching television, as and when it was broadcast, has remained resilient.

IP creates 'streaming' opportunities for on demand content. It removes the need for additional hardware as with on demand services over cable and to consciously choose to record something from the end user. Despite this streaming services such as Peacock in the US carry around 50 linear channels as well as their on demand library.

Another thing to bear in mind is network resiliency - if everything is delivered through Broadband, and all recordings are in "The Cloud*", what happens when the network goes down?

A prime example was last week - local thunderstorm and lightning strike took out a bunch of cabinets near us, and we had no VM connection to the WWW. With present technology, we could use our existing aerial and digital channels, and the recordings on the V6, if we so wished.

Pretty sure no Broadband providers are going to provide resilience (such as 4G/5G back-up hub) free as part of the PSB remit**…

* "The Cloud" is just someone else’s computer/storage…

**making sure viewers can access a wide range of public service content on a free-to-air basis

This.

BT’s full-fibre offering comes with 4G redundancy (which to my knowledge has never kicked in once in the 2 years we’ve had it) but even if it’s never consuming bandwidth there’s a hardware cost due to the 4G modem which is separate from the Homehub. It is a premium product, and even if it becomes a standard product when they have some newer premium innovation to sell, the one thing it is never likely to be is a free add on to a socially necessary bare bones broadband contract.

[jfman]

While we are in broad agreement something to add is even if you offered 4G back up this would very quickly become overwhelmed in the case of a local issue and even for an issue with a single line relies significantly on the positioning of the device.

The average user, in the average house, with their modem next to their phone socket or ONT that was optimised for where it could be positioned to minimise the work in the house (or a central cupboard probably in a new build) will likely get a data connection to keep them 'online' but not anything necessarily like what would be required for TV continuity of service.