TV Guide of the Future

Yeah. Really good point! I didn't think of that, but looking at streaming services I wouldn't be surprised if Television became the same.

This would also make room for personalised advertisments

We already do to an extent. Sky AdSmart. Targeted adverts from your box as opposed to whatever being broadcast.

I'd never heard of that before as I don't receive Sky Satellite.

Very interesting

Adsmart is very widely used ...and is clever
not only technical , signalling I Frames and splicing in the box so no one can see the join ..
But also marketing wise with over 200 demographic flags as well as regionalisation
https://www.adsmartfromsky.co.uk/how-sky-adsmart-works/

But back to the topic.
In the future there will not be Broadcast specific emission ,
So the emitted linear channels that exist ..... not many probably
Will be carried by Telco emission like 5G ...
But not necessarily as 5G Broadcast,....

Let break this down .... roughly the same number of people who get DTT
can if they pay get over say 50 Mbit/s broadband NOW in 2020
so most of the tech for delivering Programmes or channels to houses is here
(And as CDNs off set the need for multicast in core .. so it sort of scales)

So you perhaps only need to emit just a few universal access channels ..
The dozen or so PSB channels plus a few e.g some daughter channels,
And a few from say UKTV and Discovery ..... and may be QVC !
Say 20 max .... and it may be that itv and five are not there ..
But these can be unicast on 5G just from the cells where people are watching,
and if there are more than a few switch to broadcast mode in those cells only
All very spectrum efficient and not that much different from streaming different content for many viewers .

Problem is does every Telco provide this service ?
or is there a universal Arqiva-like broadcaster 5 G provider ?
And who pays what ... net neutrality etc ..
At the moment the tech for this is a long way off ..
As 5G Broadcast is mostly to internet of things & downloads etc
And the tech of segmented antennas ( other than Huawei ) is not well developed
And seamless handover etc which very very few other use cases need, has not been described .

So it may be that emitting the same thing from every mast is not the future ..
Just to confuse thing more there are political pressures to maintain
high tower mass coverage for 5G ... Public safety is a major driver ....

But by say 20 years time ..5 years after the current uk contracts run out
It looks very possible !
But the future will be different,

I'm guessing that the main terrestrial channels will still exist in their current form as "wallpaper" but I don't think the likes of E4, ITV 2 etc will still be here.

I feel that getting rid of scheduled stations would be wrong for the reasons of keeping PSB (if that still exists) and also due to familiarity. To have a system totally made of IPTV might be confusing.

BBC News Channel in 2040... interesting.

I must admit, despite being a member of TV Forum I don’t watch much of it. I have an addiction to rolling news and the 6 & 10 — something that sadly will probably become less and less popular through the years (and will have to take a more analysis approach as most know the news by 1,6 and 10) but we will just have to see

The BBC News Channel around in 20 years time? It's barely even around now, just simulcasting nearly every other BBC channel.

I am a fan of the BBC but the binning of BBC3 or BBC4 may not be a bad idea such as the merging of Cbeebies and CBBC as BBC4 only starts at 7pm and we could fit content from both channels onto BBC1 and BBC2, anyway BBC3 before 2015 tended to be a hotspot for daily repeats of Family Guy

Channel 4, even though my favorite channel may need to ditch its sister channels as they are all repeats.

I think 30 or 20 years ago it was better with less channels in terms of quality and this even applied for SKY multichannels

We say that but there is little sign of even +1 channels being axed yet. Sky have launched 5 new linear channels in the last six months or so, and even if they are just a front for their on demand content it shows they're still valued. I think 90% or so of viewing is still linear TV, so it's not dead yet.


What you'd think has to happen in the next few years is a streamlining of streaming services. I've lost count of how many there are but long term they can't all survive at £5 -£10 a month.

Sky's a bit of a different case compared to FTA.

Linear TV may well still be 90% of viewing (I don't know) but it's 90% of a pie that's smaller than yesteryear.

I still think there will be a place for linear TV well into the future but it will need to be leaner and more focused on what it does best: live events, news & current affairs, public service broadcasting, first time viewing of new series. Time delay channels may be nominally useful but not really the best use of bandwidth, especially now that most people have the internet and iplayers can offer such a service with far more flexibility. If anything, the continuing existence of +1 channels is quite probably the PSB stations filling up their share of bandwidth cheaply. "UK Gold style" channels are also something that could be better catered for on iplayers, where people could seek out particular episodes of something like Only Fools or Top Gear rather than tuning in midway to a random episode on TV.

We also have to consider TV's share of frequency. 5G has reduced the range reserved for TV broadcasting. 6G, 7G etc will quite likely do so furthermore into the future. Additionally, a full migration to HD or to even higher standards in the future will mean more bandwidth needed per TV channel. Of course, it's likely technological innovations will allow a digital mux to carry more in the future than it does today but we can't safely assume it will keep up.

In response to Tim, I will repeat what I said on the BBC Four thread: I'd sooner we had a reduction of the pure commercial services before the PSB ones. Channel 4 currently needs those channels to help it compete with the current plethora of other channels. A reduction of PSB services, say, back to just BBC One, Two, ITV(1), Channel 4/S4C and Channel 5 with no equivalent reduction on the purely commercial side would be detrimental to the viability of these services.

Surely the pie is bigger if anything. Worth adding too that the linear figure falls with the younger demos quite dramatically I think.

Most viewing will be VOD and TV channels will be "streams" in the sense there will be less effort from a presentation point of view (but more focus on the UX or user experience of the service), promos will still air, but these will air randomly and the frequency depends on the viewers preferences, the same with adverts. These streams can be customisable by the viewer's preferences or there's some preset ones from the broadcaster where shows will still premiere, as some viewers can't decide what to watch and need some help in decision-making. DVB will be gone, everything will be IP and OTT based through the mobile network or fibre or Starlink if that project is a success and aims to have a lower latency than fibre.

News channels won't change because of the nature of the channel, special reports and current affairs shows can be viewed on VOD as well as individual short reports, just as it's like today.