It's Easy to Predict the Success or Failure of IPTV

You may use this content, but please cite (c) 2005, Dr. Bruce Klopfenstein.
As mentioned earlier in this blog, I predicted back in 1979 that "video is the literature of our age." I've noticed more and more people climbing on the bandwagon because now it's becoming obvious as TV goes mobile and broadband is bringing video to the desktop. While we may take the latter development for granted,

this is the first time in the history of man that television is carving out a presense in the workplace.

Readers of this blog will make the connection that television continues to follow the radio example, although it has been much slower to creep into the workplace.

The red hot topic now appears to be "IPTV," television that will be delivered by the same protocols that deliver other multimedia content on the Internet. The future of this technology is incredibly easy to predict for two major reasons:

1) the quality of signal simply MUST be there; we are used to satellite and cable delivered digital quality and history has shown (yes, dating back to radio) that audiences will tune in the best signal even if the programming is not their first choice.

2) the content has to be of interest; in this case, I have the example of the videodisc player, an amazing technology from the late 1970s and early 1980s, that absolutely flopped because if it's ridiculous limited catalog of disks. Make no mistake, this was a corporate error of monumental proportions, leaving RCA (for one) to write off nearly $600 million in 1984 dollars.

One of the nice things about being a new media expert is that we don't have to be rocket scientists (althogh we can play the roll when called upon). In most cases, the technology will be there. It's those who are stuck in the paradigm of the previous medium who err in trying to force old content into new media.

Dare to question me? I welcome your comments and criticisms.