At a Fred Wilson/Brad Burnham brown-bag lunch about exploding TV last fall, I argued that the future of TV should be P2P distribution with means to measure audience, attach ads, and verify delivery. Then, when advertisers will again support free TV in a new network nobody owns, P2P will become everybody’s friend. Chris Anderson meets Bittorrent creator Bram Cohen and comes away making the same arguments.
Regarding this:
“Make those protected videos expire after six months or so, so they won’t be around to compete with the DVD if and when it comes out.”
I don’t think people will want files they have downloaded to become unusable. They should at least have an option of paying for a version which isn’t varporware.
The dvds can have bonus material to get people to buy them.
When people record tv shows on their VCRs, they don’t become unplayable after 6 months, and neither should P2P tv shows.
Re: Expiring Videos:
If this “post-media, small-is-the-new-big” era is all about Conversations and if Trust is the new currency, then any marketer that uses technology to punish his customers is doomed.
The difference here is that while Newspapers are declining and Podcasts are better than the sad state of radio programming, TV is still good. . .
Full Comment at SkinnyFarm
Unfortunately, what I see happening is that TV will go to a “pop up” ad format. We are already seeing this on some networks with the “animated logos” and the “coming attractions” that are placed on the bottom of the screen at the beginning of the programs. More and more of this will begin to happen as Tivo and similar devices make standard ad formats obsolete, on the theory that the user can’t “skip” these ads without also skipping the program they are wanting to watch.
And soon, we will see ads the entire time the program is on. First it will be a little logo in the corner of the screen, such as VISA(tm) or COKE(tm), then it will progress ( if progress is the right word… ) to a “strip” of logos across the top of the screen.
Of course, that’s the day I give up TV entirely. As it is now I only watch it for sports programs and the history channel.
Nice.
Gotta give props to the BBC. Check out this link below:
P2P-Tv – BBC Style.
Enjoy.
-jr