How will consumers use bandwidths of 1 Gbps to the home? Today’s video technologies offer intriguing clues to the future of broadband.

The arrival of ultrabroadband -- connections of 1 Gbps or more to the home -- will greatly expand the video choices available to American consumers. They will have access to hundreds of video channels and thousands of video files streamed on demand or downloaded and displayed on PC monitors, laptops, TVs and other devices. Much of this video content is likely to be in high definition, some may be interactive and it is a good bet that most of the content will consist of entertainment and news.

The Lure of High Definition

The last few years have seen a breakthrough for high-definition television as prices dropped, sales increased sharply and consumers became aware of the product. Households with HDTV report that it restores the luster of television and makes it a central focus of the room, not only because the image is sharper but also because the set is likely to be larger. Viewers are less likely to do something else while watching TV, since HDTV grabs their attention so strongly, and they are more likely to hold “TV parties” centered around sporting events or to play high-resolution content in the background at dinner parties. (This may be a short-term phenomenon, as in the early days of black-and-white television.)

Sound quality is critical to the acceptance of HDTV.

Most HDTV sets have very good sound capability, and some households add on high-end home theatre systems. However, interviewees report that the sound in HDTV productions varies from spectacular to terrible, and poor-quality audio sounds worse on an HDTV system than on a regular TV. Ultrabroadband content producers should not assume that the visual component is all that matters!

HDTV signals, even when compressed, require much more capacity than regular video channels. Many cable systems are down-converting the digital HDTV signals of over-the-air broadcast stations. Ultrabroadband networks, with their greater capacity, will overcome this limitation, and should have a competitive advantage as a result.

Video on Demand: Finding “Finding Nemo”

VOD lets viewers access specific content on the TV screen. Since VOD programs are stored on a server, there is no schedule and programs can be of any length. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of content, so ultrabroadband will have a competitive advantage in delivering unlimited menus. One challenge will be licensing all this content. Ultrabroadband providers will have to decide whether to provide content themselves, like cable systems, or lease parts of their networks to third-party content providers.

Another challenge is to make the content accessible. Designing a television user interface is harder than it appears, in part because TV menus are new and many people perceive them as ‘work.’ Some viewers say they have difficulty finding programs in the multiple layers of VOD menus. Others avoid the menus and may never see what is available.

Yet another obstacle is the delay in accessing VOD menus or retrieving content, which varies among cable systems. Even though viewers may have to wait only a few seconds, some are tempted to move on – another lesson for the architects of ultrabroadband networks.
 

The Web Converges with Television

The PC is decorated like a television.

With broadband, people are beginning to use the Web much as they use television. Typically, PCs with broadband connections are turned on whenever anyone is at home, as is common with TV sets, and people use them for much longer periods than dial-up PCs. Users may sit in easy chairs at these PCs and decorate the area on top of or next to the monitor with stuffed animals or family photographs, much as they decorated televisions in earlier decades.

Some people are using the Web in groups – for example, two or three children may sit together at the PC looking at an entertainment site. And since wireless networks have made it easier to locate computers anywhere in the household, PCs have entered rooms that were once the domain of TVs, such as living rooms and bedrooms. PCs equipped with DVD drives are used in many households as a "second TV set" to play DVD movies.

As the PC is used more for entertainment, it is easier to make the leap to video over the Web and ultrabroadband networks. The amount of Web video watched increased dramatically between 2003 and 2006. Much Web video content falls into one of six categories:

• Samples or short excerpts from longer television programs or films.
• Promotional trailers for TV programs or films.
• Traditional advertising.
• Full-length television programs and films, available as video streams or downloads.
• Two-channel TV, or Web video content that complements TV programming. For example, scenes that were not broadcast may be streamed on the Web. Two-channel TV fits within a larger subset of behavior involving simultaneous Web and TV use. Most of this simultaneous activity is unrelated (watching sports on TV while reading the news on the Web); recently, the activity is more likely to be related (watching sports on TV while looking at the players’ statistics on the Web).
• Parallel broadcasting, or the transmission of the same content on a cable or broadcast channel and on the Web, at or close to the same time -- for example, video coverage of a concert.

Web video is possible in a dial-up environment. However, the experience is better with broadband and better still with a faster PC, video servers located near the end users, advanced compression technology and other enhancements. Yet with all this, Web video still does not provide the same experience as cable or satellite television when viewed on a large screen. Ultrabroadband offers the promise of increasing the resolution to regular TV quality on a full screen or even to HDTV quality on a large monitor.

Mobile Video Isn't So Mobile

The appeal of mobile video devices is that consumers can use them whenever and wherever they want. Surprisingly often, however, viewers use these 'mobile' devices inside the home.

Some portable devices stay in their primary locations – a laptop in the home office, or a PSP in the den – even when they're used for video. But with wireless networks, people can move the laptop throughout the home, and it becomes a portable Web TV set.

Cell phones are always available.

Cell phones and video iPods are also commonly used in household settings. Since many people keep their cell phones with them at all times -- attached to a belt, in a pocket or propped on a table -- and check them frequently for messages, the phones are always available for watching video.

A video iPod may be used as a TV set in a room with no TV, or even in a room with a TV (for example, a husband watches a comedy on his video iPod while his wife, in the same room, watches a drama on television). Others watch in bed to help them fall asleep. Often, people watch programs on their video iPods in brief segments: the first ten minutes over lunch; the next ten minutes later in the afternoon; and the last ten minutes in the evening.

There are synergies between mainstream TV and mobile video. Mobile video users watch more TV than they did before acquiring their mobile devices, because they catch favorite shows they would otherwise have missed and build more loyalty to the shows. Some devices even support 'cult' interests: One person reported watching an episode of “Lost” on a video iPod to see secret messages that were visible only in still frames.

Users of video iPods and cell phones are restricted, to some degree, to watching mainstream television or shows produced by mainstream content producers. The carrier acts as a gatekeeper for programs and program sources. While there are some ways to get around this, it requires a technological sophistication that many users do not have. This is less true for laptop (and desktop) video viewers who can access content from anywhere on the Web. For ultrabroadband networks that feed content to portable devices, an important issue will be whether to create an open network that any content provider can use to transmit programming or to restrict access.

What Does This Mean for Ultrabroadband?

The iPod goes to the mall.

New video technologies have changed viewing behavior and consumers' experience of television. They have provided more control over video viewing, created more active viewers, reduced dependence on schedules and increased the time people spend with video programming.

Overcoming complexity. We used to take it for granted that a television set was easy to operate: turn it on, change channels, set the volume and sit back to watch. Now TVs are computers with multiple modes, inputs and outputs, and complex remote controls to operate many functions. Some viewers, especially older people with little or no computer experience, have trouble operating these TVs and finding programs.

Eventually, TV consumers will become familiar with user interfaces and navigation for video, much as Web users became familiar with user interfaces and navigation after a few years. It helped that conventions were developed for Web user interfaces, and it will help if ultrabroadband service providers spend the time to develop effective user interfaces.

Acceptance of Web-based video. A few years ago, Web TV was dismissed by analysts who believed that Web technology could not handle video adequately and that people would not watch TV programs on computer monitors. However, some forms of Web TV have been widely accepted by households with broadband Web access. Today, short clips with little motion are best suited to the streaming Web environment, but as the technology improves over the next few years, other broadband video forms could be more widely accepted.

Anywhere-anytime expectations. The current media environment has created an expectation that media and content should be available on demand just about anywhere. One reason is the cell phone, which people now carry almost everywhere and keep on all the time (a practice that was not pervasive several years ago). The other is broadband, which is always on whenever most people are at home.

People also experience television in more sizes -- from 60-inch HDTV sets to 2-inch MP-3 player screens -- and on more types of display devices. No longer a single medium, television includes many different media with a common element of video, just as books, magazines and newspapers have a common element of print. Ultrabroadband networks must be designed to distribute content to many different devices.

Delivering proven services. It will be tempting to use ultrabroadband networks for grandiose new services such as 3D TV and holographic TV. But broadcast and cable networks have tried 3D TV many times and have failed to interest consumers. Simpler and proven forms of content are likely to be more attractive, especially if they are delivered with higher resolution and better sound and if they can be displayed on a broad range of devices.
 

Will ultrabroadband provide a faster version of today’s broadband Web or a radically new service for consumers? If ultrabroadband is predominantly a service for the computer, it will likely be just a faster version of broadband. But if the network feeds large-screen, high-definition TVs and multiple portable devices as well as computers, it could lead to more radical changes in the way consumers experience video.

About the author:

John Carey is Professor in Communications and Media Management at Fordham University in New York City. His research specialties include new media adoption, consumer media behavior and media economics.