What do I think? Well, I think On-demand services are the future of television. Of course, there will always be live TV (at least for news and sport it is essential) but streaming TV shows is so much more effective than recording.
The only drawback is that many broadcasters insist on a limited time to watch the show before it is removed or dropped in quality. This is natural to protect future sales of the show, or alternative broadcasting. But this is a major issue for people who want to archive their favourite shows, or even people who just don't have 7 days, or even a month to necessarily be able to watch some shows.
But in reality, many of the shows that Dave broadcast will never be sold direct to customers. People won't buy a year old episode of QI. But they may be interested to catch up on older episodes from time to time.
The key will be how they deliver this content. Web On-demand is so old hat these days. Sure, there was a time when people were so excited that they could stream their favourite show, that they were happy to watch TV on their small laptop or PC whilst sitting in an office chair. But most of us want to watch TV on an actual TV whilst enjoying the comfort of our sofa.
So, will we see this on iOS with full screen Airplay Will we see this on popular Smart TV Platforms like Samsungs, LG, Panasonic etc. What about other devices like Roku and You View?
There are some organizations out there which are quite progressive like iPlayer that offer their content on an enormous range of devices right up to HD where available. There are others like ITV which sort of sit in the middle, comparatively poor quality compared to iPlayer, but on many devices to allow it to work on a TV.
Then there are the backwards players like 4oD, who had a great website but left it at that. No ioS Airplay, no SmartTV apps etc.
Where will UKTV sit? I would imagine more in the 4oD catagory. Content Providers are some of the main reasons why we have so many issues streaming TV shows to TV's. Their licensing policies can be so draconian that it gives broadcasters very few options.
