I want my, I want my, I want my web TV

I installed Vidzone, the new video jukebox service for PS3 this week and was suitably impressed by the breadth and usability it offered. Entertainment services, such as Vidzone, are designed to extend the appeal of consoles to the whole family and bring the console out of teens’ bedrooms and into the living room. My own family remains firmly unmoved by electronic entertainment of any type, my dad regards time spent watching a film as time that could be better spent playing with wood... So it’s no wonder I’m wracked by guilt when I spend an entire day on the sofa.

However, safely away from the shires my extended family has a slightly less Luddite attitude to technology, my girlfriend’s dad likes Blu-ray, her mum enjoys nothing better than mangling Kung-fu fighting on Singstar and her little sister, Analcheese, is eighteen so spends her entire less plugged into some device or the other. The measure of success lies in Nan, we replaced her antique video player with DVD at Christmas, I don’t think she’s quite forgiven us for chucking out her Stephen Segal VHS collection (she’s not a typical 85 year old) at the same time and none of the replacement disks have been taken out of their packaging. She’s always been fairly indifferent to technology, but I suppose when you’ve lived through the eight and half decades of change over two centuries it’s hard to keep up? I don’t think we’re ever going to make her a silver surfer but there was a small breakthrough with the Wii, she won’t go anywhere near the games (which I understand I’ve always been a bit underwhelmed with the control system but more on that in a post to come I’m sure), we managed to win her over with Gene Kelly...

More specifically with a clip of Singing in the Rain on YouTube, we explained that through the Wii we had access to a whole library of film clips available through the TV, rather than having to use one of those funny computer thingies and finally we got a reaction other than the normal “that’s nice dear”. Of course it furthers the ambition of the big three consoles companies to develop the perception of their brands as lifestyle products as opposed to mere games machines and internet and IPTV services are central to this strategy. This is made clear by Sky’s deal with Xbox and the availability of YouTube and BBC’s iPlayer on PS3 and the Wii. From a consumer perspective the roll out of new entertainment services is to be applauded, the only barrier to the success of these services in the UK comes from the ISPs.

Despite the fact the BBC claims the iPlayer and similar services only need a broadband connection of 2MB to function, I’ve still experienced service problems and I have an (up to) 8MB connection from Virgin. BT has recently been accused of bandwidth throttling of internet TV during peak time, BT has retaliated by protesting (fairly I think) that web TV providers cannot expect to get a “free ride” any longer. It points out video services take up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth compared to other web traffic and this puts an extra strain on their infrastructure. It now wants to charge video content owners a premium to share the extra costs incurred, unfortunately Google, the owner of YouTube, has previously made it clear this is not an option it is willing to consider. Of course it’s likely that some of the added costs will be passed on to consumers.

Against this unhappy stand-off 4OD, Channel 4’s online video hub, has announced its decision to follow in the footsteps of Film Four and drop its pay to view business model and move to an ad funded one. I’m glad 4OD has made its back catalogue free to view, it’s a great move to get me engaged with the portal again. It’s just a shame that it’s currently only available over a PC internet connection. I’d like to see the service available on my TV, admittedly Ethernet enabled TVs are already on the market from the likes of Sony’s Applicast range, the eventual fusing of TV and computer is inevitable but the current generation of web-ready sets are expensive and arguably haven’t yet cracked it. A recent survey of 1,500 UK consumers by Entertainment Media Research revealed that 75% (unsurprisingly) wanted to access web content through the TV set. 4OD has some great programming and it would be great to be able to access it in the best format possible, IPTV service Project Canvas is moving on apace and 4OD is very likely to play a part in that, but how about an interim option – Sky and iPlayer have taken the plunge onto consoles – come on Channel 4, it’s clear the demand is there – just ask BT!