About Pervasive.TV
IN3's research into the future of video includes a daily blog, a weekly
e-newsletter, special research reports, public seminars, private workshops and this web site
POSTED DECEMBER 10, 2004 BY JACK POWERS,
EDITOR
Video is breaking
free of the TV sets in our living rooms and finding new forms on our office
PCs, in mobile phones, pocket computers, car dashboards, advertising
billboards and retail store signs. Pervasive.TV will transform our graphic
environment and create new communications business models, new advertising and
marketing opportunities, complex creative challenges and a culture of the
moving image.
Frequently Asked Questions
We're borrowing the term from "pervasive
computing" (more infelicitously known an "ubiquitous computing"), the
computer science idea that computation is gradually being integrated into the
environment instead of being limited to standalone computer devices in
computer rooms or on desktops. There are
CPUs and network links and digital data in cash registers, bank machines,
smart cards and toll booths, for example, but we don't think of them as
classic computer systems. Similarly, video is moving out of the standalone TV
set into the everyday world, doing more than just playing back sitcoms and
olds movies, pervading our visual environment and changing how we consume,
create and communicate with moving images.
Streaming media —
digitized video that's fed over the Internet to web browsers running Windows
Media, Real Networks or Apple Quicktime plug-ins — is one of the first
examples of TV pushing its way into a new application. Before the Internet,
not many people watched television at the office. Today, millions of employees
use their company's juicy broadband line to watch TV — for fun as well as for
business. Streaming and downloading video over the Internet is one of many
delivery technqiues that characterized pervasive TV.
We think of five main avenues for pervasive TV:
Office TV: streaming and downloaded for
business news, webinars, teleconferencing, security and vertical applications;
Personal TV: personal video players,
multimedia PDAs, streaming media mobile phones, heads-up displays, and
augmented reality;
Auto TV: rear seat entertainment
systems, visor and headrest video screens, and multimedia navigation aids;
Outdoor TV: video billboards, digital
signage, retail shelf TV, chain store networks, and place-based media;
and the consumer electronics applications that are driving advances in
Home TV: networked home media servers,
TiVos and PVRs, WiFi TV, , plasma, LCD and OLED screens, HDTVs, DVD-Rs and home theaters.
Yes. Programming gets to all of those pervasive
screens through many different channels, including on CDs and DVDs.
That's one of the things we'll track in the
Pervasive.TV Project. In the U.S., for
example, we know that there are 108 million
U.S. homes using television and at least 51 million
broadband PCs regularly streaming video. Worldwide, at least 250
million streaming media players have been
downloaded, some 5 million video-capable
PDAs are sold each year, another 5 million
cars have a rear seat entertainment system with more to come, and digital
signage equipment sales are projected to double from $1 billion in 2004 to
$2 billion in 2006. Japan expects
25 million 3G video mobile phones by 2006,
while European analysts project 240 million
3G users by 2009. By the end of the decade, we could easily see four or
five times as many TVs out of the home as in
the home.
Advertising, mostly. Sponsored content. It
won't be 30 minute sitcoms or 2 hour movies —
except maybe in cars. For one thing, Hollywood is too dumb to break its
copyright fetish and distribute video to all the new markets coming on-line
this decade; for another thing, there's just no time for old fashioned
television. Pervasive TV producers have to grab our attention and tell their
stories in the 2 minutes it takes to make a phone call, the 30 seconds it
takes to drive by a billboard, the 5 seconds it takes to walk by a store sign.
Building on the fast cuts and strong visual themes of the 500-channel cable
universe. With digital cameras and desktop editing, the most interesting
pervasive TV may be created by amateurs, the video equivalent of bloggers, who
zap their work around virally from mobile phone to desktop PC to car TV to
cafe billboard.
Professionals will surely make high quality
programs, commercials and collateral video adapted to the new pervasive
formats, but there will be many more prosumers at home making spots, and
plenty of broadcast TV segments and movie sequences dubbed off the air (or off
DVD) and passed around for comment. The moving image fulfills a basic human
need. If you shoot it, they will watch. Let a thousand terabytes bloom.
Advertisers tracking the future of television
Retailers and consumer product
managers visualizing new in-store environments
News and entertainment
producers and publishers
Media company
executives
Hardware, software
and telecom professionals
Architects and urban planners
Video producers, designers
and event planners
Journalists, educators,
media analysts
Technology and media
investors
What is IN3.ORG?
Since 1982, the International Informatics
Institute has offered original research, education and consulting on emerging
media technologies. From digital imaging, minicomputers and desktop publishing
in the 80s to interactive media, CD-ROMs and the Internet in the 90s to
wireless communications and digital video in the 00s, our mission is to
analyze and explain the important communications technologies shaping our
world.
Pervasive.TV
is the project web site with the latest research and information about our
hands-on workshops
and the
P.TV NEWS. Jack Powers'
Pervasive.TV Blog
provides daily news and comments on the field. Add your own notes and
comments on the blog and subscribe via RSS with
this XML link. The Institute main site is
IN3.ORG.
Pervasive TV developers, innovators and
marketers of new video systems are invited to keep us up-to-date on their
latest work.
Contact:
Jack Powers, Executive Editor, Pervasive.TV
Project
IN3.ORG: International Informatics Institute
405 Fourth Street, Brooklyn NY USA 11215
phone +1 718-499-1884 | email jpowers (at) in3.org
