NEXT.TV(TM) Announces Revolutionary New Internet Television Service on Hewlett-Packard Consumer Notebooks Worldwide

Next.tv is a ”revolutionary new, next generation Internet TV service that delivers over 50 channels of high quality TV content to you no matter where you with a wired or wireless broadband Internet connection.”

I'm not sure that what Next.tv is doing is exactly revolutionary, in fact there’s a few companies that are doing similar things. Check out www.joost.com, which was made by the founders of Skype and Kazaa. However, it’s interesting because IPTV is slowly becoming a reality and it’s entering people’s homes… and that means nothing but good things for low-budget horror and niche cinema. Maybe not right now, but definitely down the road…

Huge theater chains pick which movies they’re going to show and the major networks pick what programs they want to air by finding content that appeals to the broadest demographic possible. This way, they can reach as many eyeballs as possible and justify how expensive it costs to advertise. IPTV should change the whole system because the control should shift to the consumers. Next.tv is only offering 50 channels, but what happens when IPTV is fully integrated into our homes? Since more content just eats up memory on some server somewhere, the choices we'll have should be endless. Then, it won't be a board of directors telling us what we watch, but the consumers who will be able to search through all the content and pick and choose for themselves.... and that system will create the need for more choice, which can only be a good thing for low-budget filmmakers.

We'll see, I guess...