Still waters in Aussie TV land's little pond

The other day I had little rant about the death of TV, quoting Mr Bill Gate's prediction - however I concluded that:

"even Bill can't really know where sites like YouTube and new IPTV platforms like Joost are going to take us."

This is common theme from what I've observed about technology over the last ten years and looking indirectly at the past - i.e. it might not reach the hype, but life as we know it does end up changing.

So, it made me "giggle" a little to hear via Trevor Cooke that his wife, Julie Flynn who also just happens to be the head of an organisation representing Australia's commercial TV stations, also has "a fit of the giggles every year when Bill Gates turns up and says TV is dead."

Perhaps this is fair comment in Australia - I imagine that broadband and digital TV doesn't look like much of a threat to the status quo... I mean look at how much effort it takes to get a Tivo PVR up and running over here.

But meanwhile overseas:

• Google's quieter cousin, Amazon, is launching a new service that will let Tivo users in the US download from their Unbox service. Now, that does look easy to use at the end of a long day at work.
• In the UK, Aunty is running a survey about on-demand services that would offer seven-day TV catch-up over the Internet and cable, as well as simulcast TV over the Internet.

Nah, none of that could never happen here - could it? ;-)

Technorati tags: Death of TV, Bill Gates, Julie Flynn, Tivo, Amazon, Unbox, PVR, BBC