TV viewers are gaining control

TV is changing rapidly, ditching its predictable schedule and handing the controls to the viewer.

The Internet, digital recorders and DVDs have made it easy for TV junkies to watch anything they like without regard for network programming.

*** Many agree that we're headed for a time when almost every piece of video ever recorded – your favorite sitcom, your favorite movie, your favorite candidate's speech, your kid's soccer game – will be available and quickly accessible for viewing.

***What to expect in TV's future:

Schedule?

Channels and schedules won't matter.

***

Time travel will be easier.

All TiVo users have a common gripe, says Greg Papadopoulos. The TV recording device is fantastic, but it requires planning.

When Mr. Papadopoulos, chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems Inc., wants to record a program already in progress, he's out of luck.

The device can't go back and record from the beginning of the show.

"I have to have told the TiVo I wanted it before," he said.

"Why can't I go back in time?"

Someday, he believes, that will be easy.

***

TV will become more like the Internet.

Forget channel surfing.

Choosing what to watch will be more like Web surfing.

For example, viewers might search for programs by looking up the filmography of a favorite actor.

Or they might search by category, browsing through an index.

***

As always, viewers will also learn about shows from friends.

But in the future, friends may send video clips and favorite shows to each other the same way they do today on sharing sites such as YouTube.com.

Advertisers' messages

The programs will be different.

Since TiVo's commercial-skipping technology burst on the scene, advertisers have been trying to figure out new ways to get their messages across.

They continue to experiment with product placement and other ways of getting viewers' attention.

New technology could allow advertisers to get information about viewing habits and target specific audiences, Mr. Douglass said.

***

Everyday people will keep supplying video for the world to see.

***

Viewers will go solo.

Guy Hoffman and his wife used to meet on the family couch every Sunday to watch the latest episode of The Sopranos.

That was before they had a TiVo.

When each member of the family is able to assemble an individual lineup of favorite programs, there is no need to watch together.

Mr. Hoffman, chief executive of Plano-based Metallect, worries that the communal experience of TV viewing may disappear with the network schedule.

Portable devices could further separate viewers, just as iPod headphones allow users to ignore the outside world.

Technology companies are working on ways to make video even more ubiquitous.

For example, a viewer could one day be equipped with an electronic tag, allowing gadgets to know when the viewer is nearby.

In the middle of a movie in the living room, the viewer could get up from the couch and go to the kitchen, where a TV there would pick up where the other set left off.

The movie could follow the viewer through every room in the house.

Outside of the house, it could continue on the viewer's cellphone.

Fine. Cool. Swell. So here's the Big Question: with this technology near at hand (some already in fairly wide use), why on earth should the FCC trouble itself with matters of so-called decency? TV and radio sets have always been capable of tuning-out unwanted material, whether by changing the station, turning down the volume, or simply turning off the receiver.

With all these new choices, even the most pecksniffian born-again religious nut should be able to insulate herself and family from broadcasts of naughty words and pictures of various erogenous zones.

I'll tell you what I DO find frightening about all this. Some industry exec is quoted in the above story saying the communal experience of TV viewing may disappear.  For some years, it has been fashionable to worry over how television watching has isolated family members; how we have all but abandoned the partaking of the evening meal together (because of TV and scheduled-to-death childhoods).  So if watching TV together has become our most "communal" experience, a serious paradigm shift has already occurred, and not for the better, I'm afraid.