Television ga ga 2.0

Before i pick up from where i stopped in the previous post , let me tell you about this incredible site called -' Paleofuture ', this site has ideas of future predicted by various 'experts' in previous century in 1920's , 30's , 40's etc of world 50 yrs henceforth . Needless to say most of the so called experts got it wrong. Which just proves nobody is qualified enough to make accurate predictions about the future . So i guess i can easily stick my neck out and make a prediction for future without much worry !

Why are we always visualizing all these home entertainment ideas with TV in the centre ?

So what i feel is when convergence arrives , TV will not survive . Internet revolution has touched us all and Computers have managed to integrate themselves into our lives and has managed to enter a huge number of homes and the growth in the coming years is expected to shoot up exponentially .

Now why will people continue to back TV as the central medium in a convergent era , its fairly obvious that the mantle will be passed onto Computer (with a wide LCD screen if u may ) DVD player/ set top box might become redundant

I guess its bound to happen sooner or later ... now ubiquitous television set will get replaced by its more powerful nerdy cousin which can not only display visual images but can also do processing and various other activities.

Already this is slowly happening around us , some of my friends no longer watch TV they download their favorite programs on laptop and watch at their convenience without any commercial breaks in between to bother them ! In last 2 years i have watched 5 TV series but i didn't watch any of them on TV. I had downloaded the episodes and had watched it on my laptop whenever i was free. A friend of mine recently told me he had set up his house with all electronic gadgets except TV which he felt was not needed at all if you have a broadband connection. Yes he sure misses the odd live sporting action , but then most of the other stuff can be viewed with internet , live online feed for sporting action also wont be so difficult i guess. Life without conventional TV doesn't seem all that difficult !

This is fairly easy prediction to make , one of the harbingers of this new wave is 'you tube' . the day wont be far when there is a channel on your tv/computer which allows you to search and watch videos you want - movies/ songs / concerts / college fests / video shot by a friend , or any random stuff ! Given the way reality shows dominate the programming in normal tv channels of today , going forward we would have more and more content featuring ordinary people , prepared by users , circulated among groups ... reality TV driven by us / featuring us .!

In short we might move from 'Broadcast' where channels create stuff they think people want to see and beam it to everyone , to an era of 'Multicast' , in which we move away from one size fits all idea of Television channels , idea would be to simultaneously make many things available and user is given much more power to choose what he/she wants to view.
Come to think of it the most popular videos could be the ones shot by people like you and me wont it be funny it were to be a song like "Television Ga Ga" or even a "Internet killed the Video star"