I somehow ended up on a mailing list of European Travel Commission NewMedia Trend Watch (phew..!) newsletter and came across an interesting article summarising what Google CEO Eric Schmidt thinks about the future 5 years…
Two points grabbed my attention:
1. Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
All I can say is we’d better learn fast, I heard it’s not easy! 
On a serious note though, I recently caught up on all series of The Hills (please, don’t judge me!!) via at least 5 different sites, all Chinese*. To be honest I didn’t have any problems trying to work out where my next episode is, the quality was sometimes unbearable, some sites only allowed me to watch 72min in one go (then I had to wait for 1h before I could start again, which I did. Again, don’t judge me!!!). It wasn’t the worst experience… But I would never have done that a year ago, I would get frustrated, bored of waiting and I would moan about quality! What’s changed? I do not know. Maybe, by being surrounded by so much crappy quality video content online, the acceptable standard lowered for me, and it is more about the content now (not that The Hills has a very deep storyline!). Would that ever be the case for TV? Hm…
2. Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance, and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
Schmidt also talks about superfast broadband. I remember speaking to Beth (hi Beth!!), one of my colleagues who recently visited Korea for some OTT media fieldwork. Apparently Koreans complain even if something takes a millisecond longer than they expect (forget my 1hour waiting or even buffering!), Koreans have been spoiled with such amazing technology, it makes me want to live there! I don’t want to wait another 5 years
Anyway, it was a Santa Claus Day in Poland on the 6th December, so Best Wishes to all of you who still believe in Him!
Magda
*Essential Research Ltd does not condone or encourage illegal file sharing or streaming
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