If you've got a broadband connection, chances are you've been forwarded Internet TV at one time or another. It's the latest rage on the Web: a two to three minute clips of a pair of Chinese students
lip-syncing to a popular Backstreet Boys song, or the "Brokeback Mountain" spoof "Brokeback to the Future," in which a series of edits suggests a romance between Doc and Marty McFly. Such video,
ranging from the amazing to the hysterically funny to the heart-warming and cute, is changing content on the Web. Sites like YouTube are becoming primary time wasters for teens and twenty somethings,
but right now, the filtering of pornographic and violent content on the Web is not what it needs to be, says one executive at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. She says there's a lot of
experimenting, showing off, and some dull content on broadband TV sites, but "eventually, the better stuff will survive, and people doing it for a thrill will fade away." Right now, nearly half of all
Internet homes, about 34 million, have watched streaming video online. The ease of posting video content on the Web and the possibility of 15 seconds of fame has given rise to a new generation of
wannabe stars, but now that interest in video clips has exploded, Hollywood and media companies are starting to notice: MTV is starting to make videos available on YouTube, and NBC, after yanking
several clips from the video site, is now reusing them on NBC.com. CBS and Yahoo have teamed up to stream the NCAA tournament live for free but ad-supported. As Internet TV marches on, it is expected
to hit 29 billion streams by 2007, according to AccuStream iMedia Research.
Read the whole story at San Francisco Chronicle »
