File-served Television
File-served Television
Fortune magazine uncovered yet another aspect of the coming peer to peer age in technology, by pointing out that the current âcentral server basedâ methods for interactive TV are woefully inadequate to match supply and demand:
âEssentially, file-served television describes an Internet for video content. Anyone--from movie company to homeowner--could store video on his own hard disk and make it available for a price. Movie and television companies would have tons of hard disks with huge capacities, since they can afford to store everything they produce. Cable operators and satellite companies might have some hard disks to store the most popular content, since they can charge a premium for such stuff. And homeowners might have hard disks (possibly in the form of PVRs) that can be used as temporary storage for content that takes time to get or that they only want to rent--or permanent storage for what they've bought.â? (http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=208364 )
"The new TiVo technology, which will become a standard feature in its video recorders, will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder. Although the current TiVo service allows users to watch broadcast, cable or satellite programs at any time, the new technology will make it possible for them to mix content from the Internet with those programs.â? (personal communication)