Each year around January, the world waits in anticipation to see what big electronics companies have in store for the coming months in terms of the latest in computers, gadgets and home entertainment.  The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is akin to “Disney Land” for all gadget aficionados with  a handful of new solutions grabbing a predominate portion of the media’s attention.  This year the buzz centers on Google’s Nexus One, a new smart phone deemed by many as the “iPhone Killer” (doubtful it will knock iPhone off its perch – but we shall see).  Flying a bit under the radar at this year’s show yet gaining tremendous traction in the real-world marketplace are solutions for blending the Internet with television.

Early talk about IPTV positioned the technology as the telco’s secret weapon for entry into a space cable operators have forever dominated.   Now, cable operators themselves are looking towards Internet based television as an avenue for lucrative service offerings with many analysts and industry experts touting it as the next big thing in cable.  Helping cultivate this push, equipment vendor Cisco Systems announced in late 2009 Cisco Blue, an interactive guide for cable-based IPTV set top boxes based on a Web-browser where widgets pull data from various sources such as Yahoo News or Twitter allowing subscribers to easily use their television to interact with the Internet.  In addition, Arris demonstrated how IPTV- over-DOCSIS 3.0 can deliver more than 50 percent in bandwidth savings over traditional RF QAM channels.

Now that video and audio streaming already constitute 27 percent of all global Internet traffic (based on Sandvine’s 2009 report analyzing over 20 million broadband subscribers) the need for a much smarter and efficient Web will become even more critical as potentially millions of new Internet- enabled sets plug in. Internet-based TV has a great potential to not only modify the way the Web is managed, but to turn market sectors such as advertising on its head just by the very nature that people will watch their shows and interact with others online.

Much like how IP voice communications was slow to take off, and at one time even scoffed at due to quality of experience issues as a result of jitter and latency, Internet-based TV has experienced the same slow start.  We are however at a tipping point where it is no longer a matter of “if” but “when” IPTV will surpass traditional television services – and that’s a story much more worthy of media buzz than the latest smart phone.