Think the Internet will replace TV ? Think again – Blog Maverick – www.blogmaverick.com _ Mark Cuban is out with a post on Internet TV and his opinion that Internet TV will not be replacing regular TV for quite some time.
“The last mile into our homes wont have enough bandwidth to support all that we will want to do via our internet connections at home. There is no moores law for bandwidth to the home. THere is a huge misconception that bandwidth will just continue to experience unlimited expansion for every broadband household. Its what we are used to with hard drives, processors, all technology. It gets faster, cheaper, bigger. Thats not the case for the next decade with bandwidth
The net result is that TV is going to be TV, delivered like TV for a long time to come. (I consider IPTV to be regular TV). There wont be enough bandwidth for it to be any other way.”
Unfortunately, Cuban is probably right. As much as the dream of all of this amazing HDTV microcontent at our fingertips is worth salivating for, getting it into your home economically is probably unfeasable for the near future.
While we still will mostly likely continue to see low res stuff the likes of Google Video, YouTube and iTunes, you probably will not be watching HDTV via download anytime soon.
Bummer.
Update: Mark Cuban adds in the comments: “Personally, i think we are going to ship around hard drives, or people will go to Hollywood Video and just pay to load up the hard drive with movies. Walking or driving to the video store and loading up is faster, cheaper, better and will be for the next 5 years or so. Particularly as users start expecting HD.”
Cool. Sneakernet.