Wishes come true?

In this morning's post I made reference to IPTV, with hopes for it replacing my current cable service. Well lo and behold, this afternoon there is a post on HD Beat about Comcast jumping on the IPTV bandwagon.

I really shouldn't get my hopes up too much about this, since it will unlikely mean much difference right away, and TV will almost certainly be continued to be recieved through a set top box. I admit that I have done very little reading about the technology, but my two main hopes for IPTV would be finer selection of channels in order to (hopefully) reduce costs, and integration with PC and HTPC software. For channel selection, IPTV isn't required, as current digital tv technologies really allows it, so it's more on how the cable companies package it.

As for HTPC application, IPTV could definitely allow for true integration without the need for set top boxes. The problem is that these channels are still gauranteed to be nearly or completely proprietary and locked down, like premium HDTV over cable is today. Furthermore, digital cable could be delivered easily enough to PC's, since it's just MPEG2 (I think) data. CableCARD should be the solution, but the implementation and industry backing is horrible. From my understanding, even consumer electionics don't really work right with it, and there is no support for PC's. Microsoft's announcement about CableCARD support in MCE is a great step in the right direction, but most likely too little too late. So mabye IPTV will realize more of the potential of digital cable, maybe not. While I hope for great HTPC integration, it will likely be as much of a headache as digital cable is.

So the technology is definitely interesting in how it can change current TV, but will it really? A couple of comments:
- Will IPTV allow for more competition in the provider market, since distribution relies on the Internet? We've seen some great ideas for small startups in the HDTV space, but they have all failed. IPTV may be their real chance.
- While I don't consider the ability to play TV shows on the video iPod anything to get too excited about, the fact that TV shows are now being sold through services like iTunes is an interesting concept. The combination of IPTV and VOD could very easily promote a pay-per-view type model, where you pay for each show you watch. I doubt this will happen, since people are too used to the current TV broadcast model.

All this being said, who needs IPTV when you can use BitTorrent to quickly download shows right after they air?