All PVR

I have been thinking more and more lately about where is Video viewing is headed in the future.

WebTV is creating major disruption, yet, most people still prefer to watch quality programming with big production values. Of course we all enjoy a guilty pleasure in the style of America’s Funniest home videos, and maybe even Rocketboom programming. But is it sustainable long term? Will people make viewing of such shows part of their daily routine? or even weekly?

I think the core difference is hidden in understanding the different models behind TV viewing:

• Random time killing - This is what my kids do lots of time. They just want to be entertained as a stop-gap between doing X and heading to do Y. So they turn on the tube on random kids channel, and enjoy. Usually in they don’t care that they start watching show in the middle, though I suspect that even this model can benefit from ability to be able and rewind to the start of the show.
• Conscious edutainment - Yep, some people actually go and seek out video for what’s dubbed Edutainment purposes. They love the combination of educational yet entertaining programming. Great examples of this are Discovery channel shows, History channel, Food network, HGTV and the list goes on. Actual examples on the Web are a bit more scarce, with up and coming 5Min and video crawling Sutree, just to name a few.
• Primetime Entertainment - The kind of high quality, big production shows, that most of us enjoy, whenever there’s time to kill. Guilty pleasure of Lost and American Idol, are the kind of shows I am talking about here. They often turn into a necessity for people, once they’re hooked.

So, where does Web come in for each of those? For Primetime entertainment, the networks quickly caught on (major ones, at least) and now offer a lot of their primetime shows on-demand. This is great, so they just need to improve quality and make sure they are getting paid properly from the Ads. And bandwidth cost can get excessive, and fast, so they better figure out some sort of P2P model.

And where are Discovery channel shows? And History channel? And PBS video?

But what about random time killing? YouTube is famous for this kind of massacre. But, since it’s programing is being contributed by non-pros, most of the time you go through lots of low quality material until you find something worthy. Not everyone is willing to put up with that. And the quality won’t ever be there, because of two factor: users have trouble creating high quality (read: resolution, light, etc.) videos, and the bandwidth is preventing high quality streaming, for the foreseeable time period.

So how do you balance your TV time between all those? And should you, even? TurboNick anyone?