TV on alternative platforms

The technological advances of recent years have brought about significant changes in how we can choose to access video content. They have given us the ability to timeshift and create our own viewing libraries, to choose between downloads and live streaming online, and to access on-demand programming both online and through the TV set.

The latest developments - TV sets with built-in internet connectivity, YouView, the internet-connected TV set top box, and Google TV - are finally bringing the convergence that we have been talking about for the last decade. Like many TV developments before them, they promise to change the way we watch TV forever. At the very least, they will certainly fuel the debate as to whether live viewing via traditional broadcast TV is soon to have had its day, rendering traditional funding models unviable, as broadcasters struggle to work out how best to make good the loss of revenue from traditional streams by capitalising on the success of on-demand content.