There’s another glimpse of the TV future in the FT yesterday (requires subscription to see the whole thing) in an article by Thomas Clark in the FT (here).
The article focuses on the work of Swarup Acharya at Bell Labs who is developing a system to allow people to "log on" to their pay TV services wherever they are (think being able to view your movie channels or sports channel even when you’re at someone’s house who doesn’t subscribe).
Today a premium television service is not really linked to a person,” he says. “It is linked to a location. Once you are outside your living room, it doesn’t help you that you have subscribed to a premium television service because you simply can’t access it.”
Bear that concept in mind when thinking about how TV viewing is going to evolve in the coming years. Mr Acharya draws a direct parallel with mobile network roaming to explain how the system will work. The FT concludes that the fact that Bell Labs is taking the concept seriously means we all should:
How far is the system from adoption? Barriers re-main high but a walk through the Bell Lab building suggests it should be taken seriously. It was here that the first sound projector, communications satellite and transistor were produced – devices that changed the world of sound and images forever.
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