The acceleration which has been imposed on technological innovation in the sectors of terminals and content distribution technologies makes future predictions truly difficult. However, we can always try…

First of all, what does television bring to mind? Most of us think immediately about the mod con perched in our living room or kitchen, and which we use to watch films, soap operas, football matches, the news and (obviously) reality shows. But if we move to the “internet generation” (i.e. the generation whose formative years coincided with the advent of internet) the answer is definitely another. For many, the TV is already, in a broad sense, any type of video content, watched wherever and whenever you want, perhaps on the “small screen” (if you have a cell phone that allows it). The viewer demands to be able to choose to what to watch, making up a programme schedule most suited to his/her personal tastes and needs. However, even if this dream comes true in the future, it will not imply the immediate death of “linear TV ”, but will be concretised, rather, in the context of the progressive emergence of “non linear” (a.k.a. “on-demand”) offers. In this sense, each user will have at his/her disposal immense libraries of video contents of every type, more or less recent, more or less professional (for example, the amateur videos which are driving everybody crazy on YouTube) which one can decide to view, interrupt, take up again or transfer to a different device at any moment. A typical example? I start to watch a film on my portable player while travelling by train, but just before the movie finishes my journey comes to an end. Once I arrive home I turn on the TV, synchronise the two devices and finish watching the film from my sofa.

TV = Multimedia sharing

In the future, the living room screen will no longer be the window through which broadcasted contents will be viewed, but will become, rather, the door by which to enter virtually into an environment where multimedia experiences are shared. Viewers will be able to express their approval (via texts or voting by phone) regarding contents viewed (as already occurs), but will also become producers and promoters of their own contents. Increasingly interconnected with other digital media, television will integrate applications born on the web, for which viewers will come out of the closet and take on a virtual identity, sharing their interests, judgements and opinions with other users. Micro communities will be created by people who share the same passion for a television programme or who have the same peculiar interests, and interpersonal links and friendships will grow within these communities (as already happened in the past on the Web Communities).

The written word will be replaced by images, and even virtual conversations will be realised via digital video cameras rather than keyboards. Low fidelity videos produced via webcams, video cameras or cell phones may be diffused through television both as an alternative to traditional phone conversations (and hence as an evolution of the video call on the TV screen) and as amateur products which might, for example, become part of special programme schedules and therefore enrich television programming planning.
It will be possible to share self-produced contents and also to distribute and promote programmes not currently available in the agenda of television channels. Viewers can suggest programmes or niche films which would otherwise be difficult to see via traditional viewing and promotional means (cinemas and general television schedules), and which in any case are generally precluded due to advertising exigencies.

Advertising

Advertising will likewise be different and will unite the best of “traditional” methods with the newer forms that we are becoming accustomed to on the internet. It will definitely be contextualised, i.e. still pertinent with respect to the content, but it will also be interactive, that is, it will give us the opportunity to engage with it at a level that goes beyond mere passive viewing. Given that in Europe the draft of the new version of the “Tv sans frontières” directive (which establishes the conditions for the transmission of television programmes within the single European market) would make“product placement”, legitimate, one can imagine that, at the moment in which the product is visualised, the interested viewer can decide to demand further information about its characteristics or, to give another example, as to where the closest sales outlets can be located.

SED OR NED?

It is by now a given that the “goggle box” is only one of the various types of apparatus capable of receiving television signals, whether this is of the type broadcast through the air or via unicast IP through a fixed or mobile distribution Broadband network. So far nothing new. But...

... just to mention several alternatives: in the future the existential crisis one goes through at the moment of purchase of a new television set will no longer boil down to “LCD or plasma?”, but rather to “SED or NED?”. In SED (Surface conduction Electron emitter Displays) technology, each single pixel is a microscopic cathode tube containing phosphorus that is lit up by a flow of electrons. SED unites the technological quality of CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes) such as viewing angle, the quality of the black and the pixel response speed, with the quality of contrast and the practical usefulness of a flat screen, characteristics of plasma and LCD. Energy efficiency is similar to that of an LCD and better than a plasma TV. Another very prominent technology is OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) whose materials emit light when they are shot through by a small quantity of current. Unlike liquid crystal displays, OLEDs do not require additional components in order to be illuminated. Overall you obtain better quality visibility, lower energy consumption levels, less weight and a better viewing angle, to say nothing of extreme slenderness which, together with printing techniques on plastic material, allows you to achieve displays that are so flexible they can almost be rolled up. In this way the sizes of the future generation TVs will no longer be a problem. They can be enormous to the point that they fill up an entire living room. But so what? You can just roll them up like you did years ago with the sheet you unfurled to show your slides!

Not only that, while all screens will be Full HD, people will already be speaking about Ultra HD or Super Hi-Vision, by which is meant a resolution of  7,680 × 4,320 pixels (which multiplies the current high definition by 16) and a surround system with 24 speakers! This will truly be an experience of the “immersive” type, anticipated in some ways by the appearance on the market of the semi-transparent screen. As regards 3D holographic projection (with 360° images that we can walk around: for example, the effect with which the image of princess Leia was projected by the R2-D2 Droid in the first episode of “Star Wars”), for the moment there are no particularly positive signs, but there may be some hope for 2015. More likely are 3D systems of the stereoscopic type, which will finally “free” us of the need to use those uncomfortable glasses. And the remote control? It won’t exist any longer. There will be various ways we can interact with the TV, from oral commands to gestural interfaces.

From the technological point of view, the years to come promise great novelties, to be sure. It is likely that similar innovations will affect business models and the value chains in a sector that is undergoing great ferment in the form of a progressive but not always painless interpenetration between the role of traditional broadcaster and that of telecommunications company.