Netflix CEO Foretells the return of Web TV

Nobody denies the eventual marriage of Web and TV. Technology, in fact, is taking the right step towards that direction. However, there are many competing theories on how that is to happen. Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has his own. He says that we should expect to see the Web migrate to the TV and not the other way around.

Hastings envisioned that one day, you will able to watch high quality web videos of all kinds on your TV set in the living room. Much of this video will be ad supported, just as it is today. Your broadband pipe will extend to the Ethernet port in the back of your TV. That TV will have computing power built in to run your favorite Web browser. You will use a new point-and-click remote to point at the content you want on the screen (ala Wii mote style).

Of course, all these will be realized later rather than sooner. One issue that needs to be addressed is the consumers connection speeds. Good for first world countries where most of the citizens are already online. But still, there’s the connection speed and bandwidth issue we have to take into consideration in streaming high quality content. Another reason where a lot of people are skeptical with this prediction is that somebody already tried it in the nineties and failed big time. That refers to WebTV, which went out of business in 1999.

But, Reed says, that was 1999. Where WebTV used dial-up service, standard definition video, an up-down-right-left remote and offered e-mail as its main Web app, the new TV on the Web will run on high-speed broadband and display all kinds of IP video on large HDTVs. Hastings says that, in the long run, it will be Web video companies that provide video content to the home, not the cable or satellite companies. He explains that Silicon Valley software companies are more innovative and fast-moving than large, slow moving cable and satellite companies.

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