IPTV enjoyed subscriber growth of around 40 per cent in the first six months of 2005, with the total number of global paying web TV subscribers reaching 1.5m by the middle of the year, market watchers revealed today.
“Some key markets are stalled at the regulatory hurdle, there are infrastructure and kit supply issues in others and in all markets there will likely be battles against other well established suppliers of TV programming,” said John Bosnell, senior analyst at Point Topic
Isn’t this a polite way of saying that consumers are getting screwed by the usual suspects?
Some key large markets like Korea and Germany have yet to start, Point Topic predicts. In others IPTV is in trial phase like China (up to 100,000), serving niche operators as in the USA (200,000) and the UK (24,000), or slowly building subscriber numbers in more accomodating and mature markets like France (270,000).
Shanghai Telecom launched a couple of days ago and expects 10,000 subscribers in the next 4 weeks — and millions of subscribers in the next 6 months.
related link:
IPTVDaily
While I have hope for IPTV, especially in relation to the UTOPIA project here in Utah, I have yet to see a “simple” implementation of the technology. Will there come a day when IPTV isn’t a royal pain to put in place?
I saw the Microsoft demo of IPTV at CES last year. I think it looks wretched. If you have more than one TV/device on at a time it just uses way too much bandwidth for current connection speeds. There are workarounds such as PVR recording “upstream” at the provider to reduce bandwith but that’s still a workaround. I think for this to take off we’re either going to need really fat internet pipes (that aren’t being locked down by ISPs) or move to a model that doesn’t rely on broadcasting and appointment viewing, eg. shows download to a local box overnight and then you watch them at your convenience.
the way i see it, too much importance is being put on set top boxes — most living rooms are already drowning in gadgets, do we need another one?
in my view, IPTV is best delivered to wifi’d laptops.
a screen on every bed…
I agree on the gadget comment, alessandro, but believe the set-top box is more part of the solution than the problem. The idea of using an HTPC as your primary tuner for more than 5 channels, even with a CableCard, is folly.
I’m a fan of devices that do their job well. A set-top box that had some sort of Slingbox type functionality along with a PVR would beat the hell out of anything one can build with Windows MCE or MythTV.
Germany is already ahead, tax-wise. From 2007-01-01 onwards they will charge a TV-set fee for each and every PC (even office PCs) with Internet access here, although no programs are offered.
Great scheme. As you may run truck simulations on a PC as well, why not charging truck taxes for each PC?