Bill Gates predictions about Internet TV

In an interview, Bill Gates predicted that television will be interactive and we will watch it only via internet. The cell phone will become a remote control. We will be more and more connected to the network in the kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and car and in the open, in order to be informed and to share digital life.

Actually what Mr. Gates predicted can be called connected entertainment. More precisely, movies and television will come into our living room via network, a high-resolution one. You can watch TV via consoles for games or media center, the version improved by a computer, which can be connected to flat screen TV, a computer that, after a warm start knows a unique boom, especially in the USA. By Christmas, 80 % of the computers sold were media center. There are already, all over the world 30 million units, says gates. Thanks to these systems connected to the internet and television, you can purchase a movie only clicking via the remote control.

IPTV can offer everything you expect from a great television experience. You can watch and record standard television programs or high-resolution ones, and you can as well search quickly favorite programs as actor, title, or director. It will be a new television, interacting with the computer. You can chat with your friends who are online while you are watching a match or share images, music, texts.
You can live an experience of total connection, 24 hours a day. However, there cannot be found a solution for the time spent sleeping…

WebTV the combination of Internet and television

WebTV is one of the most recently developed internet technologies. If you do not have a computer, but you like watching television very much, WebTV brings the internet directly onto your screen. Via a receiver or a special terminal, you will have the possibility to use the remote control in order to switch from the internet to your favorite television channel.

This combination of television and internet has started in September 1996 when WebTV Networks has offered the first terminal to internet users. These WebTV terminals for the internet use technologies, which already exist in telephony and television in order to allow the user, commute between television and internet. Even if at the beginning there were many skeptical people, the combination proved to be a remarkable success.

To continue with, WebTV configuration is simple. You must have either a terminal for WebTV telephone, Internet Terminal, either a receiver WebTV called Plus Receiver, as well as a monthly subscription for Network Services WebTV. WebTV Networks offers two levels of services: the network WebTV (which needs WebTV as internet terminal) or WebTV as plus Network, which uses WebTV as plus receiver. You can choose the first option if you only want to complete the facilities of your television set, with the internet access facility. If you want to integrate the internet completely as well as television, you can choose WebTV plus.

There are many people thinking that WebTV is a challenging concept, for both television and internet.

Internet Television the playground of the future

Traditional television is threatened! It is not threatened by any disaster, but by the internet. The difficulties which traditional television faces nowadays can be compared with the crisis of the radio when the first television shows were broadcast.

It is not news that more and more people prefer to spend time on the internet instead of watching TV. Moreover, in many cases the web, which is omnipresence, has become a more important source of information than television. Television people are worried because the number of viewers who migrate towards the internet in the disadvantage of traditional television is constantly increasing and practically every year 12% of the viewers choose as main source of entertainment and information the internet, not a TV set, even if they provide flat screen or plasma versions or any other sophisticated ones.

Internet TV, on the other hand offer many entertainment opportunities to users. It provides online shops and other applications, which help them find more quickly films, music, or favorite information, via sites like Amazon or iTunes Music Store.

At global level, television industry produces every year 31 million hours of programs belonging to different categories, but users have access only to about 3-4% of them and the percent of the programs, which are watched, is even lower.

If this tendency will continue, in about 4 years the number of people who want only internet television can exceed with 5% the number of people who constantly watch television, and this can be a warning for traditional televisions which must find solutions if they want to survive.

Online television for kids

Children are the most important aspect in family life. This is the idea on which online television for kids is based. Children do not need only entertainment programs like games, films, or cartoons; they also need educative programs and useful information for their parents. This television online can be one of the most generous and the most successful one.

Children need the most beloved cartoon characters, famous songs with and for kids, the most spectacular zoos in the world, and of course plenty of games provided by artists who are able to enter children’s minds. Otherwise, they can be boring because children want every minute something new. They want entertainment and interesting programs to stimulate their mind, their creativity.

To continue with, televisions online for kids can be useful as well for their parents and they can join their kids while they watch their favorite programs and they can explain them many things which otherwise can be misunderstood by children. Thus, the number of visitors can increase.

Moreover, children can send their own films, or photos or stories and they can enrich the archive of the site. Besides, such televisions can be very interactive as kids can ask questions, can comment on the films they watch or can send answers to questions.
Children’s imagination is stimulated by songs in foreign languages, drawing lessons, other different entertaining, and educative programs carefully monitored by a team made of television staff, teachers, and psychologists.

Furthermore, you all know that children love surprises; therefore, they have the possibility to enjoy them accessing a special online television for them.