At the World Economic Forum on Saturday, Bill Gates forecast the demise of television in five years with the increasing popularity and greater flexibility of online video. "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had.." While not exactly an earth-shattering prediction, it is still brave to suggest that TV will be irrelevant. While there is certainly something of a benefit to be had in being able to choose viewing content on the internet, there is still a gap to be bridged between traditional television and online video. In addition to this, online content needs to mature before it can "take over" television, and Download Squad makes a good point in saying that a "convergence device" (read: something like the Apple TV) will be needed to really merge internet video and TV. But then again, there is also the issue of bandwidth. So, maybe it's not that simple... what do you think? What will become of television over the next five years?

Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis have unveiled their latest creation. Joost pronounced "juiced" is a web based video browser that aims to TV up the Internet. Users download the Joost software, and browse channels much like regular TV.

The system generates revenue through advertising, though in a less obtrusive way than television. Joost is also in the process of signing deals with content providers, making things nice and legit. Of course the system has a peer to peer element, meaning users will be sharing video with one another.

Joost will mark the third venture from Zennström and Friis. Both file sharing software Kazaa, and telephone over Internet provider Skype have proved lucrative for the Scandinavian duo. Time will tell whether or not they've scored a hat trick in the increasingly crowded video content market.

Late Show with David Letterman music mixer Harvey Goldberg likes doing things the old fashioned way. He has a background in studio mixing, which helps a great deal with his current job. Every night, Goldberg is in charge of mixing both the house band with Paul Shaffer, as well as the musical guest... and he's still rockin' it analog.

Goldberg uses a massive (by broadcast standards) 80 input console, which he divides down the middle, allotting 40 per band. He has conceded to record everything digitally to a pair of 24-track RADAR units, which he feels are " the closest thing there is digitally to the warmth of an analog tape deck." Surprisingly, Goldberg says he has a harder time mixing the CBS Orchestra, than whatever band he met 20 minutes ago.

All this info was provided by Dan Daley over at Studio Daily, who had a chance to talk with Goldberg. Honestly, his article will be appreciated by by those of you who are much bigger audiophiles than I am. Still, it's interesting to read about all the gear, setup, and intricacies of a show like Letterman. For a link to the complete (and fantastic) interview from Studio Daily, click READ below.

YouTube is considering creating a television show and/or a TV channel. The content will consist of user-generated clips that are handpicked from the millions of clips it currently hosts. This is a nice idea, it will quickly replace the TV viral shows and compete against programs like "America's Funniest Home Videos." But you have to wonder if the creators will be compensated in any way. And if the answer is no, why not? It is one thing to put it on the web, it is another to put it on TV. Though I remember reading that Youtube license did indicate that Youtube could in a sense play the videos on any platform. Meaning they covered their bases.

(via Gizmodo)

Ahh to be young again! Full of dreams, uninhibited, not a care in the world...except for how many DV tapes it will take to record you friend Joey's birthday party...

My Life As A Child is a 6-part documentary series where children record their lives on video from a first person perspective. The Learning Channel selected 20 youngsters ages 7 to 12 for the project, checked out some video gear to them, and let them tape for 4 months. The footage they captured makes up the 6 one-hour episodes, and marks a first for TLC in melding user generated content and television. The show claims to be "frank, intimate, and eye-opening" as children share their perspectives on growing up in the 21st century.

I couldn't find any hard DVGuru info about the production (camera info, production notes, behind the scenes info.) Still, I can't help but be a bit fascinated by the fact that this sort of thing wouldn't have been possible 7 or 8 years ago. The relative price of camcorders, this generation's experience with video, and the popularity of "viral" video content all seem to culminate in a project like this one.

My Life As A Child airs on Monday, February 26 at 7PM (ET/PT.)

Manufacturer Snell and Wilcox claim their Kahuna switcher is the first machine capable of combining both HD and SD sources. Other combo switchers support only one format at a time, and usually require a reboot to move from standard to high def. Kahuna was designed for flexibility from the ground up, which makes it a great choice for stations like Thailand's iTV.

Independent TV of Thailand just installed the Kahuna, and will use it in a strictly SD capability for now. As they gradually gain HD equipment, the switcher can be upgraded via software to handle 'dual' definition. Once iTV makes the complete jump to High Def, they simply shut off the SD features, and use the Kahuna in HD.

Anyone who works in live TV can tell you the importance a good switcher. for those of you who haven't had a chance to experience the shear joy that is broadcast (wink, wink) a switcher is a machine that controls which of nearly a dozen sources is currently on the screen. With the push of a button, the tech director can switch (hence the name) from video tape, to a satellite feed, to a studio camera and back again.

Switchers are an absolute requirement for virtually all TV worldwide, including HDTV, which is not an easy pill for most stations to swallow. The prospect of having to replace all your equipment at once would simply be financially impossible. That's what makes the Kahuna so cool.

Click READ for a link to the Kahuna information page including a video presentation.

It's funny being a video technology blogger. most of the year, you find yourself scraping the web, looking for stories your readers will find interesting. Then CES happens. I'm drowning in a sea of press releases, product demos, and tech announcements.

As could have been easily predicted, there's a bunch of Digital Video Recorder(DVR) stuff coming out of the trade show this year. I thought I would round up some of the more important announcements in the world of digital time-shifting.

TiVo finds a home at Comcast. The DVR pioneer has had a tough go since breaking up with Directv. This deal has to be good for them.

Dish Network announces DishDVR advantage. The satellite provider is taking the guesswork out of the DVR, by offering them first party, and not hiding them in the bill, or charging extra for them. Dish Network is also offering a complementary High Definition DVR to new subscribers.

Avid offers HD DVR software for the PC. Pinnacle PCTV To Go offers users the chance to place and time shift their HD content on their home computer.

Diego offers DVR direct to the consumer. The company originally supplied it's Moxi set-top technology exclusively to cable providers. Giving this stuff direct to consumers had to make the big content providers a bit nervous.

Sling Media announces Sling Catcher. Sling Catcher is actually technology that will be used in two new products. Sling Projector allows you to take your media, as well as all other functions of a standard PC to your living room set, while Sling Player lets you watch your TV on someone else's set.

for complete coverage of events at CES, Click READ to visit our friends at Engadget.

My wife says buying an HDTV doesn't count as a New Year's resolution. I argued the point with her for 20 minutes, but she insists I pick something more constructive for '07. After much deliberation, I deiced my resolution for the new year will be to stop setting myself up for failure...and look into a new TV.

Dennis Barker over at Electronic House wrote a great summary of all the latest TV tech we can expect over the new year. According to Barker, we can expect "microdisplays" to bring 1080p into the realm of the common man. DLP and LCoS (AKA D-ILA's awesome cousin,) two rear projection technologies. allow for more affordable 1080p HD with a relatively thin footprint. In other words, they cost less than Plasma or LCD, and don't take up much more space.

Of course, if you are still set on a flat screen, be careful, and get your facts right, as the boundary between the two technologies continues to blur. LCD keeps getting bigger, and better, while the price of Plasma seems to be coming down a bit. For more info about advances in microdisplays, flat panels, and even the old CRT tube, click READ for a link to the complete article

If you're hoping to get your hands on Apple's new iTV next week, you may have to wait a bit longer. The word from AppleInsider is that it is still going through some QA testing with the embedded OS and will probably be delayed until late January or February. We should still get all the details, including anything Apple's been holding under their hat concerning this device. But then again, it is Apple and anything can happen.

Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett (Producer of Survivor & The Apprentice) are working on a reality television show that will pit 16 young directors against each other to win a 1 million development deal with Dreamworks. The show will be called "On The Lot" and is to be produced by Fox Television. Unlike Trump on The Apprentice, Speilberg will not be a regular on the show, he will be, in a sense, the reward and will only appear at the end. The show is to air sometime next year.

I am intrigued but here is how I think the first season will play out. Most of the 16 directors will be complete morons, power hungry, wannabe-divas that will be eliminated as early as possible. There will be a couple of the good conformist types. The final two will consist of a conformist and a diva. Of course, the conformist will go on to win the show.

Filmmakers across the planet will scoff at the drama but at the same time wonder if this is how filmmaking should be. Non-filmmakers that find themselves on movie sets off-the-lot will be disappointed at the absolute boredom. Because film is very much like a baseball game. Besides the catcher, pitcher and batter; the rest of the players wait for the action to come to them.

Update: The official site is here. You can submit your films if you want to be part of the show.

BitTorrent will get yet another boost in credibility when BBC will begin to release hundreds of television shows through the file-sharing network after a recent partnership with Azureus, best known for their own Bittorrent client of the same name. Azureus recently launched their own video sharing service, Zudeo, which offers hi-def content unlike other similar services, and BBC will make their shows available for purchase through this network. Unsurprisingly, the content will be DRM-ed, but it's at least interesting to see BBC use BitTorrent for distribution.

(via Hacking Netflix)

Rumors are still flying around the blogosphere that the major TV networks are looking to create a YouTube clone to bring down YouTube and give them back control over the content. Obviously this idea is presented with the problems of fighting a legal battle against YouTube and Google as well as trying to persuade surfers over to the new site, which will probably be considered 'evil'.

TechCrunch has said that Viacom and Disney have already dropped out of the discussions entirely while Fox and CBS are still trying to put a deal together. If the site was to go ahead and became successful I very much doubt it would end up favoring small time video producers as the power would be back in the hands of the big production companies.

Here's a beneficial read for all the home theater and HD geeks out there that sets the record straight on when differences in high resolutions are more easily apparent. The article includes a chart showing, for any given screen size, how close a viewer should sit to the TV to notice the benefits in a higher resolution screen, such as 1080p. The article concludes that you will have to have a properly set up space, sitting the appropriate distance from your television to notice any benefits of higher resolutions. Otherwise, you won't gain anything from your shiny new plasma or LCD TV. Check out the full feature for more in-depth technical nerdery.

(via HDforIndies)

I've been on this kick lately about finding stories that highlight the inevitable unification of Internet and TV. Whether its the rise of IPTV, or the use of fiber optic for production, the 'net' and the 'nightly' are closer than ever. Over all, I'm happy to see this trend, but one thing I didn't factor into the equation was advertising.

What I thought was a quaint little article about Internet pop-up blockers thew me for a loop. Thomas Claburn over at Information Week sites some 81% of broadband users are employing ad-blocking technology. In the same article he goes on to state that 15% of TV households are using DVR technology to do the same thing.

I don't know about you, but in my head, I had never lumped commercials in with pop-ups and spam. For some reason, (perhaps because I work for a TV station) commercials always seemed innocent and good, while Internet advertising seemed like the 4th member of the axis of evil. Is it possible that consumers don't differentiate either? Honestly... probably not. But just like TV trends mentioned earlier, we are headed in that direction.

What all this amounts to, is that advertisers need to be smarter about the way they do things. Take a look at the the "I'm a Mac" commercials from Apple. People flock to the website the day those things come out. The spots have developed a following more typical of a television show than an ad.

I am excited by the prospect that every commercial might be a mini program itself, but not everyone has an Apple Computers budget. Where does this leave local small business owners? I can't see Mikes Sporting Goods, or Hometown Floral spending precious ad dollars on something nobody will watch.

Click READ below for a link to the article.

Denver 8 TV, the official cable station of the the City, and County of Denver announced today plans to incorporate fiber optic transceivers into their camera setup. The station, which mainly provides coverage of local, government, and community events will essentially be able to jack in the city's existing fiber optic network, and transmit data back to a control room across the street. The new gear will save them time, and provide audio, video, sync, and communications signals across a single cable.

the camera-mounted CopperHead transceivers (pictured here with additional battery packs) are the latest gadget from Massachusetts based Telecast Fiber Systems. The CopperHead features all the ins and outs of a standard transceiver, and is capable of sending NTSC, Digital SDI, or HD/SDI signals over distances of 20 Kilometers, or about 12 miles. The little black box is fairly small, fitting between the battery pack, and the butt end of a standard ENG style camera.

This seems like a great resource for studios and production facilities with an existing fiber network. In fact, it could even be a good incentive for start up companies to look at fiber as a single cable solution. The best part is, the network can still be used for super-fast transmission of regular old data. If nothing else, it's a great example of the narrowing gap between the television, and data networks.

click READ below for a link to the Press release