Cable wants IPTV too.

While IPTV has been seen mostly as an invasion of the Telcos into your living room (and a friendly knock on the door to cable and sattelite TV companies), Time Warner, provider of Cable TV services thinks they may like to have IPTV too. They've launched an IPTV Trial in San Diego using PCs with RealPlayer as the delivery mechanism (if all goes well, they plan to switch to set top boxes).

I'm not sure why Time Warner is thinking of moving away from their established cable TV services, but I think it may be so they can actually go beyond the living room with their content. As broadband speeds improve (not just wired, but WiMax, EVDO, as well), TV may be coming to you just about anywhere you go (for better or worse). SBC's initially challenge is to bring TV to your living room over their pipes, but they have to figure that "hey, cable and sattelite operators already do that, why would someone choose our TV service over the established players?" The answer of course is the flexibility afforded to the consumer that comes with delievery over IP. It'd make it even easier to bring TV content along in different formats as you roam the globe. It also provides a way to break away from the established media giants completely and latch on to shows produced by your local professional underwater basketweaving team. The cable and sattelite companies, seeing and probably fearing this shift away from their coveted "exclusive, pre-filtered" content have begun searching in the dark for the golden hammer that will slay the telco monster invading their territory. See? Who said competition is bad?

Anyway, this is all heresay and conjecture on my behalf...if you have a theory, please share!

may have a little something to say about that. The way they see it is people want to watch TV on their PCBlogola » Time Warner Launches IPTV Trial in San Diego