Hybrid Internet-TV Makes Progress in Europe
PARIS — Internet television has become so popular that some European broadcasters want to put it on TV — the one in the living room. — Within several months, viewers in Germany with specially equipped televisions may be able …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands as the payoff to a question the coverage has been circling since at least 2005: whether the internet would remake television, or the other way around. The rise in online TV viewing tracked back in 2007 made clear audiences were moving to the PC, but the living room stayed closed.
As recently as February 2009 the New York Times framed the gap as TV's hesitant march to the net — convergence discussed more than shipped. The shift reported here is that European broadcasters stop waiting for viewers to come to the computer and instead push internet video onto the television itself, starting with specially equipped sets in Germany.
First-order effects
- German viewers with hybrid-equipped televisions gain direct access to internet video on the living-room set within months, no PC required.
- European broadcasters get a route past the PC bottleneck that had confined their online offerings, putting their internet content on the device where most TV watching happens.
Second-order effects
- Television manufacturers able to build hybrid capability into sets gain a differentiator in the German market first, pressuring rivals to add the same functionality.
- Cable and satellite distributors, who currently control what reaches the living-room screen, face broadcasters delivering programming over broadband alongside traditional signals.
Third-order effects
- If hybrid sets spread beyond Germany, the gatekeeping position of pay-TV operators weakens across Europe, with broadcasters and setmakers rather than distributors deciding which internet services appear on the TV.
- The pattern points toward broadcast and broadband merging at the device level, forcing regulators and industry bodies to treat internet-delivered television as part of the broadcast landscape rather than a separate PC phenomenon.
The trend: After years of internet TV confined to the computer screen, European broadcasters are pulling web video onto the living-room television through hybrid sets, making 2009 the year convergence moves from concept to hardware.