This panel was focused on the new television technologies. The group focused the discussion on content distribution, in home media management, DVD-make-on-demand and the role of set top boxes/rental boxes.

Panelists
Ashwin Navin, President & Co-Founder, BitTorrent
Anton Monk, Board Member & CTO, Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA)
Jeff Siegel, SVP, Regional Sales, Direct Response & Emerging Media, ESPN
Perry Solomon, SVP, Product Mktg, Monetization Solutions, FAST Search & Transfer
Brad Auerbach, VP, Strategic Business Development, Hewlett-Packard
Moderator: Kurt Scherf, VP & Principal Analyst, Parks Associates

What’s exciting about this space?
The ability to enjoy internet content in the living room. It brings huge diversity of content and new monetization options. The ability to discover, personalize and move content around the home and across the three screens. This concept of mass personalization seems to be the exciting thing for the panel.

What ideas do you see as not ready for prime time?
Kurt the moderator suggested that we’re not ready for Facebook on TV. Ashwin says he does not get the TV rental boxes or the real value proposition for these boxes. Ashwin says the cost of moving large volumes of data is still expensive, which is where P2P distribution comes into play.

What technologies should we be watching?
Brad Auerbach observed that there are still a lot of DVD boxes out there that still need to be fed. There is still lots of opportunity for manufacturing and distribution of DVDs on demand. Brad points to three buckets of DVD on demand – kiosks, buy online make to demand, and buy online burn at home,

Ashwin points to P2P technology as a way to lower costs of distribution substantially and re-deploy capital from the network to devices that can make use of high definition content.

Kurt asks about recommendation engines and Perry responds that sophistication of technology is increasing and will help make recommendation technology more effective. Anton points to the increasing capacity of home servers and broadband within the home as an important development in improving the in home experience.

Anton makes a good point that we will not see the set top boxes go away any time soon as the cable operators have considerable rights that protect their positions and the functionality we see in other boxes (eg Xbox) is integrated into the set top box. He also points to the integration of services like showing a telephone number from an inbound phone call on screen so you don’t have to go check the phone as further evidence that the set top boxes are here to stay.

How will the television user interface change?
Kurt points to UIs like the Wii as a new way to interact the TV. Anton says that the carriers avoid changes to the UI because they are afraid of the cost of the phone calls they will get from changes in the UI. He thinks this will hold back innovation in the UI.

[tags]Future of Television, television technologies[/tags]