TV formats in turmoil as Internet hits home

AMSTERDAM – Some TV trends that were supposed to happen but never did, or that observers had been skeptical of as they came and departed, came around once again at the International Broadcast Conference (IBC) here last week.

The examples range from Interactive TV, Web TV and video on demand to IPTV, HDTV and mobile TV. Newly added oldies on the hot list this year include: 3D video, Ultra High Definition TV (now called Super Hi-Vision), Peer-to-Peer TV and Social TV.

In sum, broadcasters and technology suppliers are scrambling to re-define next-generation “TV,” in the hope of molding, or at least anticipating, consumers’ evolving TV-viewing behavior.

The crux of this argument, as Leonardo Chiariglione, founder of the Motion Picture Experts Group put it in his keynote address, comes down to what he calls WIM TV – the convergence of Web, Internet protocol (IP) and mobile television – technologies that extend television away from the traditional living-room TV set and beyond the control of traditional broadcasters.