What The Hell Is Google TV?

By Nigel Walley – Augst 2010

So Google and Sony have jointly announced the launch of Google TV – a range of set top boxes running a version of Google’s Android software. Google have also announced a range of other box launches in the US before Xmas.  You may have seen the press notices about this, and we would like to offer an explanation and opinion on its importance.

First thing is to understand the background landscape.  Broadly, there are three types of competitor in the TV market at the moment: the pay operators (like Sky and Virgin) who make their own boxes and software; the set top box manufacturers who are making Freeview and Freesat boxes with all sorts of fun stuff added over-the- top of broadcast  (sometimes called the ‘over the top’  or OTT  boxes); and the device manufacturers, like Sony,  who are desperately trying to grab ownership of the TV experience in the home with a device centric strategy.  Google TV has relevance for both the OTT and device manufacturers.

At the moment, the OTT phenomenon is being driven by some box manufacturers (like Humax and NetGem) and by service providers like Fetch (who  use a NetGem box).  None of them has a great heritage in making great software or interfaces, so Google TV represents a potential new bit of software to use in the next generation of their boxes.  This must be attractive given that is it free to use, and is supported by the weight of Google’s R&D team.   The fact that it gives Google software a route onto TV is important, but secondary.  The only problem, in the UK of course, is that this puts Google TV in direct competition with the other group developing a free-to-use bit of set top box software – Canvas.    Google vs the BBC’s Canvas would be a great head to head bit of competition were it not for the fact that they are both so desperately late to market.

For the device manufacturers like Sony, on the other hand, Google TV could offer them a way out of a problem of their own making.  The device manufacturers are connecting all their devices to the web and trying to create interfaces and on-demand packages that are available without subscription.  However, right now their offerings are very clunky and have no intelligence because the device manufacturers have no experience of putting together ‘services’. The current crop of connected devices (screens and BluRay players) are a shambles of incompatible consumer interfaces and remote controls.   The way to view Google TV’s deals with companies like Sony, therefore,  is not necessarily as a ‘web-on-TV’ initiative, but as a Sony initiative to make their connected TV devices more intelligent.

But Google may not even be able to mop up all the device manufacturers.  Samsung have just announced a deal to work with Tivo to launch DTT PVRs.

However, the key element to recognize with Google TV is that this is another ‘future TV’  initiative which fails to integrate broadcast into the emerging consumer experience. Yes, it will supercharge the search function on any TV system using it.  It will add functionality to EPGs (eg search) and the on-demand environment but will do very little for the core experience that most people have of TV – watching a live channel.   The consumer  outcome on one of these emerging ‘device-led’ systems is very fragmented – and will continue to be, even with Google’s input.   On these devices, it is impossible to move seamlessly from a broadcast show into the related catch-up shows (because there is no connection between broadcast metadata and on-demand data) or even onto the EPG and back.   This is what the BBC Vision Multi-Platform team call ‘flowing audiences’ between content.  It is a compelling vision of how broadcast, catch-up and red button content can be fused into a cohesive whole in this new IPTV fuelled TV world.   However these new device based systems, which will use Google, view each content type as separate and distinct, requiring the consumer to launch a different app each time they want to move from one to another.  It is not clear that they even recognise the idea of interactive content within broadcast.   It is a PC experience writ large, not a TV experience.  It is most certainly not consistent with the type of TV future that the interactive teams in the UK have been trying to achieve over the last few years.

This has to be viewed in the wider context of a battle for the soul of TV between technology and broadcasters.    There are groups of technology people around the world who are working on a vision of TV that largely ignores the primary role of broadcast.  They tend to be people from an internet engineering background who have been put in charge of TV projects.   These people are creating a vision of an ‘on-demand’ and ‘device’ centric TV experience, which is an outcome based on thier personal preferences not research into the mass audience.

In this world, the programme brand takes over from the channel brand as the primary organizing device, and the web as the primary distribution context.  A seemingly un-connected announcement this week from the BBC, about the iPlayer now connecting with Facebook, makes this point.  The BBC on-demand team have not yet successfully connected their catch up TV with Sky, Virgin or BT Vision, (through which 15M homes watch their broadcast channels) but FM&T have achieved a ‘breakthrough’ with a social media site.  These people are building what they personally want, and are not creating a TV future that has relevance to the mass of the current TV audience.  (The astonishing thing is that senior TV management in broadcasters like the BBC, are letting them do it).

In the UK, where innovation has historically been led by the platforms,  we have an opportunity to create a completely different approach, in direct competition to the Google TV / Sony vision of the future.  This is dependent on the TV platforms (Sky, Virgin and the Canvas group of companies) launching the next generation systems in which broadcast is central to the experience.    This experience should recognizes that the channel is the primary navigational device that consumers understand, and would include features that lock broadcast into the future, such as ‘next generation red button’,   ‘jump to VOD from broadcast‘, and  ‘play-over from the EPG’ in creating  a new interactive consumer experience.  In this light, Project Canvas has an opportunity be the pre-eminent example of a broadcast centric platform – designed to show what the future looks like from a channel controller’s point of view.  But they need to deliver against this promise, not get sucked into a ‘me-too’ apps-centric strategy like Sony, or Samsung.

We have to ask is could Google TV be good for UK broadcasters?  The answer is probably not, but in the same way that Hulu and Joost weren’t good for broadcasters – and they were seen off.   So it will be possible to minimize the impact of even Google in this world, if the broadcasters act in a co-ordinated way.  However, this is where it gets tricky.

Five have broken ranks already,  launching a Demand Five app on Sony TV,  and Channel 4 have broken ranks with the YouTube deal.  So, we are fast approaching a situation where UK broadcasters are unable to act in concert to achieve a broadcast friendly outcome.    Decipher believe that broadcast channels in the UK need to decide which camp they want to play in, because it will be impossible to support both platforms and devices in a single country. (It is important to note that in countries like Germany, with very weak platforms broadcasters may have to work with the device-led OD offerings to achieve significant roll-out of their catch-up content).

It is Decipher’s contention that the most commercially viable future for a commercial broadcaster is in the type of integrated future provided by the existing TV platforms.  However, the platforms have to deliver the required functionality to do this, and they need to do it in a consistent, integrated way between them.   This will require them to talk to each other about functionality that is used by broadcasters across all platforms.  In the past they have failed to do this, as anyone working in red button will tell you.  If the platforms want to fight off the Google TVs of this newly emerging world, they need to learn how to co-ordinate on the development of broadcast-centric functionality and do it very quickly.

Filed under: Future Content, Interfaces & Functionality, IPTV

Is The VOD Industy Lying To Us Or To Themselves

By Nigel Walley

Martin Johnson, the England rugby coach stood in front of the cameras after the England Scotland game at the weekend and said that he saw improvement in the England team.  Like most of the English sporting audience, who had just watched a dire display of turgid rugby, I gulped in shock  and stared at the screen feeling very uncomfortable.

My discomfort came from the fact that Martin Johnson should be able to do no wrong in my eyes.  He is someone I revere, and for whom I desire success in a very difficult job.  But he was talking rubbish.  What I couldn’t work out was whether he knew he was but was fronting up, or whether he actually believed the stuff he was saying.  It is discomforting when people I like, and want to succeed, spout stuff that is not believable. Particularly if I am not sure that they believe it either.  I am beginning to feel this way about a whole host of new media initiatives that are currently underway.

We are in the midst of a significant wave of big consumer technology and service punts at the moment. If you look at the level of commercial activity around PC VOD, TV VOD, HD TV and even 3D TV, the volume of launches planned for 2010 and 2011 feels like the height of the dot.com boom, apart from the small inconvenient backdrop of a global recession.  As part of this frenetic activity, all sorts of people who I really like, and want to succeed, are quoting numbers at me which make me feel uncomfortable.  The numbers in the business cases being expounded, were they to come true, represent significant changes in consumer behaviour, mass adoption of a host of new things, and general consumer enthusiasm for things which, if truth be told, there has been little indication of demand.  And once again, I can’t work out if the people involved believe the numbers either.

Consumer demand is a tricky thing to understand.    There are times when we, we are told, that we ignore the consumer at our peril. The customer is king. But almost by definition, our industry has always worked on the principle of ‘if we build it they will come’.  None of the great things that the internet has spawned were based on meeting an explicit demand, so why should I worry now.

Also, at the heart of many of these launches are good old competitive fights for market supremacy.  PC VOD is a case in point.  It is quite clear that there won’t be sufficient consumer demand for all the new PC VOD players to succeed, but the consumer will benefit from the competition.  As consumers, do we now care what happened to Netscape, or AltaVista?

For new media, these existential issues are nothing new.  But for the TV market, this is probably the craziest phase we have ever seen.  This week we have seen the announcements that some of the major electronics brands are ready to launch the new generation of Flatscreen TVs.  These things have 3D capability, IPTV capability, DLNA home networking capability and, almost as an afterthought, the new HD chips in their Freeview receivers.  Everyone seems to want to get into the market before the World Cup and the launch of Sky’s 3D channel.

Ignoring the cyclical problems caused by the recession, which will naturally dampen consumer demand, this explosion in TV technology is predicated on a level of consumer willingness to spend over the next two years, which would be hopeful in the good years.

The new media industry has always accepted this craziness as a cost of doing business.  But lets not forget that, alongside all the success stories, there have been a long series of high profile, venture capital sapping, failures along the way.  I liked the people at Boo all those years ago, but didn’t believe their numbers.

This blog is the original, unexpurgated version of an article that appeared in New Media Age in April 2010.

Nigel Walley

Filed under: Commercial Models, Distribution & Devices, Future Content, IPTV, 3D, DLNA, Future Programming, On-Demand, PC VOD, VOD

Why do I still watch broadcast TV?

Adrian Stroud – June 2009

I recently challenged myself to work-out why I still watch so much ‘live’ TV. I don’t mean news or sport because I can rationalise those genres quite easily. I mean bread and butter programming.
The challenge came about because I was debating just how much more damage all the VOD services and PVRs will do to live TV viewing figures in the long-run. This is important because it is those live viewing figures that contribute the vast bulk of advertising impacts. VOD currently delivers far, fewer impacts per hour of viewing than live TV, so the ‘end game’ for advertising funded TV programming is defined by this question. My guess was that live TV won’t drop more than perhaps 25%, no matter how many VOD and time shifting gadgets like Sky+ launch, but I could not say why. I suspect I’m making the mistake of confusing the technology with the benefits.
VOD and the PVR are the rational way to consume all but the livest of live TV events. So, when VOD has all the content you want and it is available on every screen in the house, why would you want to watch ordinary old broadcast TV at all?
Live TV has one strong thing going for it – ‘missability’. When you turn your TV on, the rational thing to do is to check a few favourite channels to see if something is sneaking past you that you might like. If I find something valuable in this initial foray into live TV I’ll add it to my Sky+ planner. But here is an odd thing, having committed to recording a newly discovered programme and all subsequent episodes; I’ll probably continue browsing likely sources of live entertainment. When I’m in this mode I’m not actually looking to make a commitment to something I really enjoy. I’m probably expecting to be interrupted or be forced to change channel to meet someone else’s taste. The stuff I really like is salted away for some future, quiet, uninterrupted hour that never comes. So missability is a factor for me at the moment but what if just about every TV programme you could think of was available on demand? How can you miss something then?
Misability is not always what drives me to the broadcast channels first. The conditions under which it seems appropriate to commit to a piece of VOD material are quite specific. The kids must be in bed (a deadline that slips further and further into the evening) and a joint decision must be made with Mrs Stroud as to the duration available for shared viewing and of course there is then a debate about exactly what to watch.
By habitually recording things I like and then delaying their consumption to some future ideal moment that never arrives, I could easily end-up watching less programming that I really enjoy than I did when I had to strike while the iron was hot.
Here is another odd thing. Watching one of my ‘favourite’ programmes sometimes just does not appeal as much as watching short bursts of fairly random content. When left alone with the remote control and hour to waste, I’m likely to channel hop. I might leave a programme in a dull bit and give it another chance a few minutes later knowing that it will have moved-on.
The use of Sky+ to time-shift seems to have levelled off at about 15%. This is an average drawn from a very wide spectrum of behaviour so don’t worry if you are not typical. It is not an average like the average shoe size for men is 10, it is more like the average score for a blindfolded darts player will be 10.
Maybe 15% has always been the average amount of consciously planned TV viewing, and VOD and PVRs have simply revealed this underlying truth? Maybe 85% of viewing was always low-commitment and ‘a bit random’ and we were unconsciously quite happy with this. Let’s face it, how could TV have become such a world-wide hit, occupying many hours a day for most people in most countries if ‘fairly random, low commitment viewing’ was not fun?
So the reason I watch live TV is rational but it is not about being live, it is about serendipity and the way it can be randomly sampled – it is a about browsability. When I channel-hop into a programme half way through, I know that is what I have done and that is exactly what I wanted to do. I don’t want to navigate a hierarchical menu system, highlight a title, see the channel indents, pre roll and then sample ten minutes of scene-setting before a drama gets going. I want a random few seconds somewhere in the middle. I don’t even want a ‘sampler’ of best bits edited together. If I go back to the same programme five minutes later I want it to have moved-on by five minutes. If I’m channel hopping while the children are still around I want to know that I’m not going to stumble across something violent, rude or frightening. Of course, when they are safely in bed these become positive selection criteria.
I have yet to see a VOD system that has the browsability of live TV and that encourages the same happy-go-lucky lack of commitment to viewing a whole programme. But surely a VOD system could mimic these attractive features of broadcast TV and offer added benefits? I suspect that the current generation of VOD systems are assuming that our TV consumption is more planned and sensible than it really is.
Rather than thinking about what the end-game is for live broadcast versus on demand, the real question might be how much TV viewing will remain low-commitment, fairly random sampling? It would be surprising if on-demand systems did not eventually meet the need for browsability better than the current broadcast channels. But if they do, will they be able to deliver about fifteen, spots an hour like live TV does? If you have some cash for research I’d love to see what can be done.

Filed under: Ad Formats & Cases, Commercial Models, Distribution & Devices, Future Advertising, Interfaces & Functionality, IPTV, PVR / DTR / DVR, 4OD, BBC, BT Vision, CH4, CH5, ch5 on demand, demand five, iPlayer, IPTV, ITV, ITVplayer, Joost, Sky, Sky Anytime, SkyPlayer, Tiscali, topupTV, VOD

No Long Tail Please – I’m Human

Adrian Stroud

Commercial TV funded by advertising is an astonishingly scalable business. You can look at the richest territories in the world such as the USA and note that when it is fuelled by $70bn in TV advertising, the TV industry can produce a service that occupies 34 hours a week of leisure time for the average adult. Then look at Serbia, with a TV ad spend that is about 1% of the USA and, you guessed it, they keep the average Serbian adult busy 34 hours a week. I know this ignores other revenue like subscription but you get the point. With a business model that scalable you’d have thought the UK TV industry could absorb a reduction in advertising revenue of a few percent without all the talk of the sky falling-in. 

So why all the gloom? Here is how I imagine it works – If you are a TV company emerging in a primeval TV market, the first thing to worry about is what I’ll call the ‘cultural fit’ of your programming. Cultural fit is how well your programming represents the hopes, fears, morality, culture and aspirations of your host nation. A cheap programme with a good fit will easily beat an expensive one with a poor fit. Eventually, all the surviving broadcasters have achieved a high level of cultural fit and they are driven to try to out-spend each-other because once the cultural fits are all balanced, the biggest spender will win the most ratings. The TV production business will absorb all the money available to it – There is no point at which it will ever have ‘enough’ money. Hence TV (and film) production costs rise to excruciating levels and stay there. There is a ratio to be worked out here if you had the time, but I’d guess it is something like every £1 you spend on ‘fit’ is worth £10 on other production costs. That is why the best writers, directors and producers are so well remunerated – they can spot a poor fit and hopefully correct it before your blow your production budget on a turkey.

So in a mature market you’d expect a handful of broadcasters to have almost exactly the same degree of cultural fit in their programming and for them to be at the very limit of what they can afford on production and acquisition.  What happens to our terrestrial commercial stations in a recession then? In theory, they could all just reduce their spending a few percent and have perfectly healthy profit-margins.  We know this is true because lots of TV markets spend a heck of a lot less than we do and have just as much overall viewing.  But what if your major competitors include BBC and Sky – both of whom have an income that looks pretty recession proof?  Well, the outcome of dropping your production costs is likely to be a disproportional loss of viewers followed by further drop in revenue and you face the spectre of ‘spiralling down’ to some much lower level.  If my mental picture of ‘cultural fit’ being of paramount importance by something like 10:1 over production costs is correct, we can expect them to fight back with programming that is cheaper but that reflects the hopes, fears, morality, culture and aspirations of the average Brit even more closely than they managed before. Is that possible?  I assume the whole purpose of the public service remit has always been to prevent that very thing from happening. So yes, it is possible but not with the current burden of public service. If the public service leach is loosened you can expect more paranormal, studio-based, live, confrontational, reality game-shows than before.

This way of thinking can help to understand what happens in the international programme market. The cultural fit of American TV programming in the UK is not perfect but the production cost of the best stuff is so high that it can win decent ratings against UK originated programming. The same is true of US programming in almost every market.

The ‘cultural fit’ 10:1 model would predict that we should import almost no programming from territories that spend the same or less than we do on programming – and sure enough, we don’t.  It would also predict that we should have great difficulty selling our programming to the main US networks where they spend much more per hour on domestic programming than we do but we might succeed better with major channels in territories like Australia that have a similar culture and spend less per hour on their own content – both true.

Hollywood films have such massive budgets that they can bludgeon their way past the cultural fit problem.  Every now and again a low budget film is the first to spot that the cultural fit has changed and that the mainstream studios have failed to notice. They can exploit this observation and beat more expensive productions hands-down, Easy Rider is the most obvious case I can think of. Punk rock would be the music business equivalent.

What about older UK programming? Here is a surprise. The cultural fit of domestic programming declines steeply over time even in its home territory so programming from the past becomes rather like material imported from another country. This is because the very best programming matches the current profile of cultural fit so well that even a year or two later it has lost it’s edge and it’s appeal is fading compared to newer productions. As production costs rise, older programming also does not have the benefit of what were considered high production values at the time, so it gets a ‘double whammy’ in terms of damaged commercial value.

Even worse news for older programmes – humans seem to be programmed to seek out the ‘new’ so anything perceived as ‘old’ has a disadvantage for irrational reasons. That is a triple whammy so far and a fourth ‘whammy’ is on the way.  The combined effort of the worldwide TV production and film businesses is producing good new content faster than you can watch it. If your Sky+ is like mine, it is like a magic beer glass that re-fills faster than you can drink it. With what feels like an oversupply of good new stuff there is no point giving something a second chance some years later. Your Sky+ hard drive is effectively a personalised VOD service that benefits from the combined programme budget of every broadcaster on the platform. For a new TV series to get my attention it would have to be better than, LOST, Desperate Housewives, Heroes, Scrubs, Battlestar Galactica, Ross Kemp in Afghanistan, Country House Rescue, Grand Designs, Russia A Journey..… I could go on.  All these fantastic programmes are backing-up on my Sky+ faster than I can watch them.

The closer to origin date that you consume material the more value you attribute to it. Even with new material on my Sky+ the chances of me ever watching it must half every week I postpone viewing it.  This seems to be an unconscious and unavoidable human trait. You cannot prevent yourself from feeling privileged when attending a premier. The TV and film industries structure themselves to move the moment of consumption ever closer to the point of production. As a producer, the speed with which you can get your content in front of all its potential viewers influences the value you can extract from it. The faster the value is realised, the more of it there will be.

Where does this leave an ‘on demand’ TV services with a ‘long tail’ of archive material? It should have surprised nobody that ‘on demand’ would end-up meaning ‘catch-up’.  The winning services will always be the ones that offer the fastest access and easiest way to watch the newest, most expensive, best fit material. The engineers might not have known that but surely the TV executives did?

What is clear is that even in the most ardent TV homes, viewers only have so many hours in the day to watch television. If consumers are increasingly able to use new systems to find their favourite big shiny shows, they will have less time and inclination to drift down the channel line-up in search of something to view.

TV companies used to be able to schedule the ‘least worst’ programming at any point in time and be guaranteed a decent share. In homes that have all these systems available, the middle order of multi-channel broadcasters, particularly those that are merely deliverers of archive programming, could (and should) be decimated. The quality of past TV programming is seen through the distorting lens of memory until you actually try watching some of it. The few gems you remember distort your recollection of the whole. In reality 9/10ths of it is not as good as current TV and you have no need to ever re-visit it.

In this world, we could easily lose 200 TV channels, and the consumers would still be better off. Because of the new functionality, viewing is going to re-aggregate around the output of a smaller number of bigger, better, functionality rich channels, because they are the ones that make the high profile, new content that drives the TV market.  Decipher calls this ‘multi-function TV’ and once again, for media planners it will bring both questions and opportunities.

Filed under: Distribution & Devices, IPTV, BBC, cultural fit, Future Content, IPTV, ITV, Long Tail, On-Demand, Programme Library, programme sales, Public Service, Sky, TV Advertising, VOD

Overhead Projectors, Broadcast Channels and Other Redundant Technologies

Nigel Walley – Feb 2009

 

I used an overhead projector for a presentation at a conference the other day.  It was great.  You get to write on a sheet of acetate, like your teachers used to, and it shines up on the wall.  Joking aside, there was something immediate and human about presenting ideas with an overhead that is completely lost with Powerpoint.  I know that I sound like a music nut comparing vinyl to the CD, but in the rush to move into the digital age, we can sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water.   Before we got rid of overheads, someone should have stopped and questioned whether there was anything great about them that needed preserving.  In fact I think they may make a comeback

 

On that not, let’s pursue the point about music formats.  It is likely that we will have a similar situation with LPs.  There will be many people who will end up owning a vinyl collection, and an iTunes collection of music, but will forgo their CDs all together.  CDs may go the way of the VHS tape and the VideoDisc.  I find it difficult to imagine someone saying what I just said about overheads, about CDs.   I did hear a very persuasive defence of the audio cassette the other day, particularly its role in the creation of compilations, as a gesture of love amongst teenagers, but I think the days of the audio cassette are gone.  Vinyl will be the great survivor because there is something about LPs that is great and human, and that people don’t want to let go of.

 

CDs will become what the Americans call a ‘buggy whip’ product.  Apparently at the turn of the 19^th century in America, making hand held whips, for drivers of horse drawn buggies was big business.  Then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t. ‘Buggy Whip’ has come to be used to mean a product or industry that just disappears as a market is redefined rather than revised.  

 

The distribution format debate has now begun to rage in the TV world around broadcast channels.  It only used to be the most fundamentalist wing of our new media brethren who would speak about the death of broadcasting channels. Now everyone is at it.  I have heard the most sensible people talking about not needing broadcast channels, and how they are now 100% on-demand. Now there is a very sensible technical argument against the death of broadcast.  If you want 11 million people to watch Coronation Street at 7.30 every night, then sticking it up in the air, rather than through an expensive network, makes the best economic sense. However, two counter arguments are appearing. The first is a neat technical rebuff.  Once we get fibre everywhere, like the cable industry, there will be sufficient capacity to not worry and that we should just make it available on-demand from 7.30.  The second argument says that making everyone watch Corrie at 7.30 at night is an old fashioned construct.

 

Now this is where the human in me starts to revolt again.  Millions of people around the country build the social routines of their household – dinner, bathtimes -  around channel schedules. Do they do this because there is no alternative and with on-demand then broadcasts are the next buggy whip.  I am not yet convinced, and the argument fails around live football.  However, I can remember when Prince Charles used to talk about organic food and saving the planet and everyone thought he was a nutter?

Filed under: Distribution & Devices, IPTV, Broadcast, CDs, channels, Future TV, multichannel, Nigel Walley, PVR, TV

Was the Kangaroo A Red Herring?

Nigel Walley – Feb 2009 -

There is currently a huge fuss over the regulatory demise of Kangaroo (the online TV joint venture betbetween channel 4, ITV and BBC Workdwide!  But there is a school of thought which says it might have been a complete irrelevance. Two reasons: 80% of VOD use at the moment is catch-up (ie programmes from the last seven days) and, apart from Channel 4, the broadcasters were keeping catch up for their own sites.  This position was further undermined in the last few months by the BBC iPlayer team’s decision to also ‘series stack’ (God this industry is full of jargon!!) .  This means, as an example, if they have a 6 part drama being broadcast, then they will keep all six episodes available in iPlayer catch-up for thirty days after the last episode has been transmitted.  This robbed the concept of some of its most attractive catch-up content.  Without catch up, you are left with lots and lots of archive TV, whose relevance and attractivness has yet to be proven apart from some very niche audiences. (Yes there will always be a tiny number of wombats who want to watch all those old RedDwarf episodes).

Secondly, there is a big doubt over the long term relevance of PC VOD, in a world where TV VOD is rolling out. In Virgin homes in the UK, where they have TV VOD, the use of the PC variety is negligible. People have got everything they need on the big screen in the lounge.  As TV VOD rolls out further with the launch of Sky VOD in last quarter 09 / first quarter 10, the desire for archive TV delivered to a PC screen will just diminish.  The allure of all those ZCars episodes just won’t be enough to drive traffic!

Filed under: IPTV, channel4, IPTV, ITV, kangaroo, PC VOD, VOD