Are you going upstream, mainstream or downstream? Come on in and get your digital content.

Although the term “podcasting” has been squatted by audio, Apple’s new iPod just opened Pandora’s boom box to video. If you have any doubts about where the future lies, just follow those pillars of new technology early adopters — the church, the pornographers and MTV (VH1, Comedy Central, Spike TV, Nickelodeon, etc.), which just snatched up IFILM Corp. (created in 1998) for $49 million. IFILM is significant because it is a distributor and aggregator — much like those two other pioneer dot.com bubble survivors, Heavy.com and Icebox.com (launched as an “Internet Animation Studio”) — of original, viewer-created and amateur content as well as teasers and trailers from Hollywood.

Like…? Disney, of course, which just signed a deal with their partner Steve Jobs. Imagine, a TV show or old film for just $1.99! (Boy, is that a bad precedent… except for us content providers, of course… erm, I mean distributors of original content, rather… read on.) IFILM also reputedly has the largest collection of video shorts on the web, something that somehow reminds me of the music video business plan that MTV pioneered.

That’s right, it’s always audio-visual, to start. Meaning, video is about to kill the radio star… again. And you and I are sitting in the catbird seat with VC2… “viewer-created content”! So, whaddya waiting for? Let’s get started on that animation theme channel!

Upstream, Mainstream and Downstream
Heavy.com recently announced it is launching “broadband’s first ever fall season of programming” with seven original machinima shows (animated digital videos using video game engines) called “Must Stream TV.” TV is bleeding through the black box breach into broadband and vice versa, in anticipation of the target date set by the U.S. Congress for the completion of the transition to DTV: Dec. 31, 2006. Upstream (i.e., going from the net to the TV) is Al Gore’s Current TV, the “first national network created by, for and with an 18-to-34-year-old audience,” which launched in August in 20 million homes with programming “pods,” from 15 seconds to five minutes long.

Mainstream (i.e., TV to net) are the existing terrestrial and cab/sat channels, now all digital and using streaming media. And downstream (i.e., local TV/cable/DVD to the net) are Christian web TV stations, the pornographers, community access, local government and commercial Spanish channels, video jukeboxes like MTV, pirate radio-soon-to-video-jukeboxes, bloggers and vloggers and other rogues, more or less. And, standing on shore waiting to get our broadcaster feet wet, there’s you and me.

Everyone thinks the Internet is eroding “on-air” audience through niche programming, but, thanks to digital, TV is here to stay for a long, long time.

At the moment, there are four ways to receive digital content: terrestrial broadcast antennae/set-top box or integrated digital television), cable (set top box/fibre-optic cable that carries TV, radio, phone, broadband Internet and interactive services), satellite dish) and broadband digital subscriber line or “DSL” (existing phone line.) While everyone seems to think the Internet is eroding “on-air” audience through niche programming that exists as blogs, streaming video and archived clips, TV is here to stay for a long, long thanks to digital television or, simply, DTV (i.e., digital modulation — of a signal’s phase, frequency or amplitude, to carry information — and compression to broadcast video, audio and data).

According to the FCC:

“With digital television, broadcasters will have the technology available to transmit a variety of data as well as presenting television programs in new ways. This means that broadcasters will be able to offer you an entire edition of a newspaper, or sports information, or computer software, or telephone directories, or stock market updates if they choose to do so. Not only will broadcasters be able to broadcast at least one high definition TV program, they may also, if they choose to, simultaneously transmit several standard definition TV programs. Another possibility is broadcasts in multiple languages with picture and information inserts and in some cases viewers will have the opportunity to select camera angles.”