Panel explores the promise and challenge of IPTV technology

The future of television: how viewers watch it, how broadcasts are delivered, even who creates the programming is up for grabs. The only sure thing is that rapidly advancing technology will play a role. To explore that role, Benn Konsynski, a chaired professor of decision and information analysis at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, pulled together a diverse group of experts to discuss the possibilities as part of his annual Academic Year CEO Panel. This year’s panel entitled, “IPTV – Internet Protocol Television: Turbulence in Video Markets – Television, Cable, Movies …,” featured six experts from academia, broadband communications, broadcast content development, digital television, and video on demand. The event was co-sponsored by the Wireless Technology Forum and alumni of Goizueta Business School.

In his opening remarks, Konsynski described IPTV as a "disruptive technology" and compared it to life-altering innovations like telephones and computers. "It's a pivot point and catalyst for change in industries or markets," he says.

As broadband access has increased, the popularity of web-based video delivery has similarly grown. Although downloading a program from iTunes or watching a video on YouTube is much different than IPTV—the delivery of real-time television signals over a broadband network. The technology is still in its infancy, but its potential is tremendous.

The proliferation of video on the web has implications in many areas. From users uploading their own content to melding professional programming into an entirely new creation, there was much material to discuss. “The Shakira video parody on Yahoo [for the song ‘Hips Don’t Lie’] is more popular than the original song,” notes Konsynski, commenting on how the “mashup” of existing content can have very interesting results.

But this mixing and matching may be just one of the challenges facing IPTV adoption. The panel noted that copyright infringement is an issue. “Copyright owners don’t take kindly to their content being sent all over the place,” observes panelist Jeff Levy, chairman and COO of PurDigital Media, Inc., a digital-service provider.

Another challenge is bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth necessary to transmit a high-definition television broadcast in Dolby 5.1 stereo requires an amount of bandwidth that dwarfs standard web browsing. This requirement frequently makes high-quality, on-demand video transfer impossible. Finally, unlike text or photo search, there is no convenient way to search for video images.

For two hours the panelists discussed those challenges from a variety of perspectives and offered their ideas for the future. For more information on the panel visit http://www.emory.edu/BUSINESS/iptv/ and look for an upcoming article in Knowledge@Emory at http://knowledge.emory.edu. —Eric Rangus.