Broadcast television is about to be turned on its head. While many media proprietors (including free-to-air, pay-tv, cable and satellite operators) are still breathing a sigh of relief from the costs to switch to digital, the real battle for supremacy has only just begun.

At stake, is control of the entire television advertising business model, worth globally in hundreds of billions of dollars. With it, is control of the global television syndication and distribution business as we know it.

“CableCARDs have failed to stimulate a competitive retail market for set-top boxes.”

Speed and Access Only Part of the Story:  While most of the press attention on the FCC’s recently released Broadband policy plan focused on increasing broadband speed and availability, little attention has been paid to some significant changes proposed for in home internet access equipment.  This includes home gateways and set top boxes.

[Read the rest of this article on my IPTV Blog:  http://wp.me/pyWiU-5S ]

Pop quiz! How many boxes do you have in your home entertainment center? You probably have one for the cable/satellite/telco video system; one for the audio system; a DVD player, or two if one’s a Blu Ray; perhaps a CD player if you think you get better audio from a standalone unit; maybe a turntable or tape deck—especially if it’s one of those new deals that record old vinyl onto computers; maybe a lingering VCR that hasn’t quite gasped its last breath; probably at least one game console; and perhaps a modem or some other computer-related device.

Pop quiz! How many boxes do you have in your home entertainment center? You probably have one for the cable/satellite/telco video system; one for the audio system; a DVD player, or two if one’s a Blu Ray; perhaps a CD player if you think you get better audio from a standalone unit; maybe a turntable or tape deck—especially if it’s one of those new deals that record old vinyl onto computers; maybe a lingering VCR that hasn’t quite gasped its last breath; probably at least one game console; and perhaps a modem or some other computer-related device.

Thanks to Erin Flood and to Will Kreth at Time Warner Cable's OEDN.net for sponsoring our show and for putting together this very nice photo essay of our TV of Tomorrow Show 2010 in San Francisco. Nicely done! On to your next adventure....! Congratulations to Will for his Award for Leadership in Interactive and Multiplatform Television this year! You deserve it.

--Tracy Swedlow, Editor [itvt]

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So Steve Jobs has come down from the mountain and presented the world with the Apple tablet and the world literally is a-twitter. The iPad, it’s said, is going to change the world the way iPods changed mobile entertainment, iPhones changed mobile phones and iTunes changed music.

Anyway, the earliest glowing reports state that the iPad is the most amazing tablet since Moses carried a pair down from a mountain with a few societal rules. The thing I thought was most interesting — not compelling, you understand, interesting — was early talk that the iPad would save newspapers.

Here's the 3D TV I want in my house. -- Tracy Swedlow, editor [itvt]

Commercials are like blogs; the more controversial or funny or outrageous, the more attention they get. If you don’t like a blog, you can skip forward to something else. If you don’t like bland advertising, well…that’s why they created “fast forward.”

I’m not anti-advertising. There are certain ads that just make me stop, look and listen and move my finger off the FF. While I’ll gladly fast forward through laundry detergent ads or shots of cars with bows on their roofs or male enhancement pitches (although I can see why some guys might pause at that point), when the Boost Mobile pigs show up (click here for video), I’ll stop and have a laugh. Those pigs remind me of trade shows.

When did you last attend a ‘Digital Convergence’ conference?    I’ve just got back from one which had the usual mix of internet, mobile and telco delegates and what surprised me most was that there are still people beating the 'bandwidth limits product' mantra.

Finally am posting the great conversation between Tim Kring and Brian Seth Hurst - it was very well received at the conference.  There are 4 parts to this conversation.

To get to all the videos click here

-- Tracy Swedlow, editor, [itvt]

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock — or woolen blankets avoiding frigid weather and a pile of holiday debt — you’ve noticed the buzz around 3D. Television makers, now having made HD ubiquitous, see 3D as a way to spiff up their products with a new gizmo that will make people go out and consume. Programmers, particularly sports programmers, frightened of selling such dramatic fare as golf without Tiger Woods or football without Andy Reid, are looking for ways to bring any kind of sporting action right into your family rooms with the athletes gliding and hitting and running right amongst you and your friends.