Originally Posted by OLD BOY

All I ever meant to put across was that watching linear channels the way we do now will cease to be. The terrestrial transmitters will not be used and all viewing in the future will be IPTV and - let's say - the vast majority will be streaming or watching by VOD.

I confess that I did not foresee Pluto's way of presenting linear TV, and that may still keep going for the foreseeable future, but I have to say that the BBC i-Player does much the same thing - select a channel and you can opt to watch live or from the beginning, as well as select from the VOD library. Having said that, I think few will use the live version of Pluto by then; most will have already opted to watch their fayre via the on demand section of the site.

The main thrust is this. In my view, BBC1, 2 and the rest, ITV, ITV2 and the rest... and so on, will no longer exist in that form. Instead, the BBC will have one streamer for all their channels, as will ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky. The terrestrials may all come together under one umbrella, such as Britbox. All Sky material will be in one place as well, and presented in 'on demand' or 'streaming' forms via IPTV. I think Peacock, rather than Now TV will be used for this purpose, but Sky could choose to keep Now TV going as their cheap and cheerful service.

Linear TV in future will be streamed TV, and of course, the technical issues including latency will be overcome by then.

I do hear what people say about flopping into their armchairs and just watching what's on, but I'm sure that the various streaming services will find ways to address that - for example with lots of previews playing on full screen or in PIP while you gather your thoughts or search, or perhaps a programme could be automatically selected randomly from the library.

I hope that gives a sense of what I think will happen.

---------- Post added at 14:14 ---------- Previous post was at 14:09 ----------



Maybe not cable, but why would Sky continue to pay out for satellites when they have IPTV? Of course satellites will exist for the time being, but once broadband is rolled out at appropriate speeds all over the country, prepare for major change.