Today I was invited to speak at the Classification Forum, a talk that was organised by all the main television channels, which was subtitled – the Search For Consistency.
The audience were all the people who manage the classification of the programs on tv. The subjects I covered was future technology, which included Windows 7 and the Sling Box; Blu-ray; BD Live; and the new National Broadband Network, which, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, you know will start arriving at a hub near you soon (particularly if you live in Tasmania!!). So what will Windows 7 allow you to do? Well, it will allow you to input a tv aerial card, put it in your PC and you will be able to record TV on your PC. Nothing too new there, but the benefit is you will be able to stream that content back to another PC anywhere in the world. Cool, eh? The sling box is a different beast, but does something similar. It can be used in your home to send content from your television or pvr, set-top etc to your PC (laptop or desktop). But the real cool part is that if you have high-speed broadband such as ADSL 2+, you can deliver the content to just about anywhere there is a high-speed connection. Blu-ray has been around for a while now, but has yet to truly enter the mainstream. It’s getting there, and I think over the next few years it will do to DVDs, what DVDs did to the video tape – make them redundant. What it will also add is BD Live, which is where directors and movie companies add more content from a movie to the internet, where you can then download it and watch it free of charge. Then there is the NBN which starts rolling out very soon. I know there has been a lot said about this $43 billion investment, but I can’t overstate how much difference this is going to make to peoples’ everyday life. The speed at which things will be able to be done is going to amaze you. Downloads will be a breeze, delivering information will be a lot quicker and more importantly your precious time will be a whole lot better managed.