How the Internet Will Change Television

Traditional television viewing is up, not down, so for TV viewers, changes facilitated by the Internet will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.  TV viewers will continue to expect video rather than web pages or menus on their TV screens.  For the TV industry however, changes will be revolutionary.  How will the Internet change television?

The Internet will make television viewing less expensive and more enjoyable.

TV service will be less expensive because TV broadcasting will no longer require a proprietary cable or satelite network and a proprietary set-top box.  By using the Internet, TV broadcasters will be able to stream video from the cloud directly to a viewer's TV. Television viewing will be more enjoyable thanks to an unlimited selection of TV programs, social networking, and a simpler user-interface.

A simple user-interface will be critical.  Try to imagine searching through millions of video choices by using the traditional TV remote and the traditional menu system displayed on the TV screen.  This is difficult even with today's video on demand services such as Netflix.

Mobile device used as a combination TV remote and interactive program guide.

The solution will involve using a mobile device as a combination TV remote and program guide.  The user-interface will always be displayed on the touchscreen of the mobile device. The TV screen will display only the video.  The advantage of this two-screen approach is that tasks such as typing of search quires, scrolling through long lists of video search results and making TV program selections are much simpler when the user-interface is in the viewer's hand rather than on a distant TV screen.