by Scott Lyle Cohen
Remember when the Internet was all text? As bandwidth gets ever faster and cheaper, Internet Protocol (IP) is absorbing one medium after another—print, radio, telephony, and now the final frontier: television. DigitAll spoke with five top execs from the next generation of IPTV companies to explore the future of tomorrow’s TV. Are you ready for the revolution? They certainly are.

Mark Sigal
Co-founder, vSocial

ONCE UPON A TIME, IPTV referred to a closed platform for delivering TV over an Internet protocol network. Now, once upon a time was only a couple of years ago, but IPTV is morphing into video over the Internet. It’s open network versus closed network.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN the older IPTV model and video over the Internet is that with the old model, content providers had to get distribution by striking a deal with a major telco or cable provider—you had to get on to somebody’s closed network. With video over the Internet, all you need is a camera, a computer, an Internet connection, and a community.

A COMMUNITY is a virtual water cooler.

THE LIVING ROOM OF THE FUTURE is going to be a battle on several fronts. First, the Xboxes and Playstations of the world are going to be, for some, the gateway that ties together video, pictures, gaming, and communications. And you’ve got cable and satellite providers who are no less motivated to be the gateway: Comcast, Time Warner, and Direct TV, are all pushing digital video recorders. But I think there’s room in the market for a specialized device that’s focused on video content originating from different sources. The video box that focuses on capturing and licensing the best talent and providing it to viewers is going to be a major force.

WE’RE moving from a text-based web to a video- and sound-based web. Anyone can be a producer. Anyone can be a broadcaster.

PRODUCTS, PROGRAMS, AND SERVICES are going to build heat by providing a bunch of kindling wood on the Internet: Somebody uploads a clip on vSocial and pastes it into his MySpace page, another person comes across it, grabs it and pastes it into her blog....Multiply this by millions, and you start to get an idea of how you can build a network that has greater reach and distribution than a closed proprietary network, and that benefits both the consumer and the content provider.
At vSocial, we know every time a video clip is played, if that clip is shared, and where a person grabs it from. There’s a trail that, from an advertising perspective, means targeted opportunities and the ability to generate customized ads. The advertising community is going to love this.

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