Taken in part
from an article of THE TIMES (Great Britain)
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Two years ago, it seemed impossible that the internet could ever replace the television as the hub of home entertainment. Now it’s common to see groups of youths gathered round YouTube, or swapping viral clips from Big Brother rather than bothering with the whole tawdry televised affair. Cheap and easy broadband has made internet TV possible; and for those who still prefer their giant plasma screens to their PCs, new-generation televisions are coming with web browsers built in.
It’s what Paul Berrow, the founder of Log.tv, calls the “million-channel universe”. To stand out, Berrow has chosen the pleasingly old-fashioned approach of quality over quantity. Hence his collaboration with comic talent such as Peter Richardson, who directed the Comic Strip’s movies: it’s he who has dressed the ex-EastEnder Gary Beadle as a fox for Call Mickey, the ribald but strangely charming misadventures of a male escort. So successful have the internet episodes been, that film producers have commissioned a feature treatment. Even better, Richardson and Log.tv are hammering out a deal to bring back Stella Street, original cast and all, as an internet exclusive.
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There were even doomy predictions, at one point, that the internet itself would collapse under the strain of our growing video-watching habit. Berrow pooh-poohs this, saying that new solutions are being invented all the time. In particular, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, which this summer will either reveal the origin of the Universe or suck the world into a black hole, required a whole new kind of internet to be invented to handle all the data. “It’s about a thousand times faster,” Berrow says. “And given that it was invented by the same man who developed the original internet, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just makes this one public as well.”
Hm.
Much of what is currently broadcast on the net is complete manure, and a delivery mechanism that allows it to hit the fan at a thousand times the speed seems a mixed blessing.
But don’t let me put you off: there are some gems, if you know where to look…
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