Boxee Founder Avner Ronen On The Future Of TV (Video)

At our 2010 New York conference, entertainment changemaker and Boxee founder Avner Ronen shared his predictions for the future of television.

Watch his presentation below:

Some highlights from his talk:

- “The internet rather than proprietary networks will be the backbone for video (tv is just one more connected screen).” Boxee is a great example of how this would be implemented. As a mutli-media browser that combines the “worlds of The Internet and television,” Boxee allows users to stream entertainment from across inputs, channels and platforms (i.e. LAN shares, DVD, and online services like BBC iPlayer, Last.fm, NPR, ABC, Blip.TV, CNN). Companies like Boxee that aggregrate rather than segregate, will be the entertainment operations of the future.

- “For the most successful shows, video will only be a piece of the offering (coming: gaming, social interactions, mobile.)” Ronen predicts the rise of transmedia and the fluid movement of entertainment across platforms and media (we’ve already started seeing this happen around cult shows like Lost, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos).

- “Discovery of entertainment will remain mostly passive” here, Ronen points out, is an opportunity for innovation. How we discover entertainment is still largely a top-down process – how can we create apps and technologies to change that dynamic – so that audiences are discovering shows they like in an active, seamless way?

- “Audience fragmentation will grow (platforms will become audience aggregators).” With access to new and diverse content constantly growing, niche markets are becoming stronger, larger, and more myriad. Platforms are evolving into audience aggregators – taking over the role that networks once held.

- “The future of TV – there won’t be TV.” A reality that won’t come to fruition for at least several years, says Ronen, but a truth entertainment and media companies must come to terms with if they want to survive.

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