Digital Home Thoughts: ITVN

"Apple's surprise iTV announcement set the tech industry abuzz, clamoring: "What innovation! On-demand movies, TV, and music over the Internet and through to your TV!" It is exciting, but innovative? Not exactly. ITVN, formerly known as XTV, has been in the Internet Protocol Television space for almost two years, using a sub-Mac mini–sized box to feed standard-TV quality movies from the Internet to your television before iTV was even a glint in Steve Jobs's eye. So why doesn't anyone know about ITVN (Interactive Television Networks)? One reason is that the company started by selling "XTV" boxes and services that delivered only VHS-quality porn to subscribers' television sets. It wasn't until nearly nine months later that the rebranded ITVN appeared with more PC (politically correct, that is) content. Now the company has overhauled the ITVN interface and added Starz and Encore on-demand and channels to its content lineup (for an additional $14.95 a month.) For the most part, this is the real deal: on-demand TV through a tiny box with no more than an Internet connection."



Just as services like Vonage and Skype may eventually get rid of standard telephone service, services like this may do the same to the cable/satellite TV industries. Other than for redundancy purposes, it really does not make sense to have lots of different data pipes coming into our homes. While this product is a first step, I'm betting iTV will probably blow it out of the water and that it will still take years to come up with a product that will have mass appeal. Also, I'm betting on a name change for one of the two since iTV and ITVN are just too similar.