The future of television

This part of what Altech chief technology officer (CTO) Steve Sidley sees as Television 2.0, the shift that is gradually occurring in the television space.

Writing in a quirky, periodic newsletter issued by Altech - but reflecting his views, not necessarily those of the company - Sidley said the future of television was all about video-on-demand, available on your TV, PC, mobile or any other handy device.

The back-end will allow the user to not only switch from one device to the other while remembering where they were, but also manage copy protection and content issues.

To get there, though, it's going to be a messy affair of sorting out the technology standards that will allow this to happen.

"Unfortunately there is a whole slew of competing standards bodies, all fighting for the primacy of their ideas," Sidley said.

"Even worse, there are big powerful beasties like Microsoft enforcing their own standards by the sheer dominance of their global footprint," he said.

Issues

Sidley added that there were a number of complex issues that needed to be sorted out, ranging from billing standards, to data transport standards, to home networking and copy protection standards, among others.

Telecoms operators that were trying to diversify their revenue streams either needed to wait for these standards to be agreed upon, or "throw caution to the wind" and back a vendor in the hope that whatever the outcome, they won't have to redeploy their services again at a later stage.

There would also probably be a slew of bold start-up companies trying to play in the Television 2.0 space, but some would fail, while others would probably get gobbled up by the elephants, like Microsoft, Sony, Disney and Cisco.

And as for Altech's role in this manic "gold rush"?

Sidley said after much research and 12 years of experience in the business - its UEC manufacturers set-top boxes in SA and for international markets, and stands to benefit from the country's move from analogue to digital television as well - Altech thought it had a "pretty good handle" on who was best positioned in this regard.

The group, he said, was "quietly moving along that track, but I can't tell you more, because then I would have to kill you."

- Fin24