The Broadband Video Dilemma

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Broadband is at a juncture where the bandwidth almost rivals the data pipe of the good ol' Cable TV. This post earlier on the world's fastest home broadband connection. In what might be a Tipping Point for broadband use in broadcasting media, the entertainment industry is poised for a shift.

The shift will involve not only big networks going the broadband way, but also the millions of YouTube and other video sharing network users who can expand services to the Long Tail of video consumers. As more and more people connect to the internet, there is a bigger and bigger market for niche video. Just as Netflix does business with almost all the titles it carries, the day is not far when we will see a market for a channel for Monk episodes.

Ok - I'm no great Techie, but this is what I had in mind: Instead of making channels for viewers, why not just tag the videos (aren't users doing this already?) and have a service that serves videos of any particular tag at a time? In essence, tags ARE channels! Networks like Blinkx already offer inexing indexing services for videos across platforms. And can you think of a limit to the number of (text) tags a video can have? If each tag were a channel, the number of options available will only be limited to the number of tags available across platforms - a big number indeed!