01 March, 2006

My relationship with television - and yours, probably - seems to change constantly. Whether it's the number of channels to choose from or the time or place that I sit down and watch my favourite shows, nothing stays the same.

More choice was the original pay-TV premise. The PVR breakthrough has given me viewing flexibility; set-top boxes, TV-capable mobile devices, wireless connections and the internet have provided new places to view. But just when I thought things might settle down for a while, along came the concept of place-shifting.

This is not some de-materialising trick from the transporter room of the Starship Enterprise. No, place-shifting means I am able to carry my pay-TV channels and all the capabilities of my PVR, around the world. It's a very disruptive technology (which means it's going to rock some established business models) and it's already attracting the attention of some of media's biggest players, including cable TV veteran John Malone and studio-to-hardware company Sony.

Sony developed a tablet device with an attachable base station called LocationFree in 2004 that had a place-shifting capability. But it took an entrepreneurial California start-up to offer a simple, mass-market version. Called Slingbox, it launched in the United States last July and is now being sold by Amazon.com and Bestbuy.com; it's expected to come to Europe later this year. Looking a little like a large, silver three-block chocolate bar, the Slingbox plugs into your home TV network, and then allows you to access it (via the internet) from anywhere. This means you can watch channels on your laptop whether you are in the Czech Republic or China. Or you can watch recorded PVR programmes. Or you can set your PVR recorder to catch something new. Once you attach the $250 (é210) Slingbox to your TV, it's like having a long-distance remote control; you can shift the place where you watch all your 'normal' TV. Of course, you cry in unison: place-shifting!

And the technology is also going into mobile phones. So you will be able to "sling" content to your mobile wherever you happen to be, on the way home from work or in another country. Of course, the data charge might be a bit prohibitive at the moment, but think about the implications for mobile operators. They are all busy signing content deals with studios and TV networks. Will we pay for this content if we can just place-shift from our home subscription? I think not.

There is a potential threat to the business model of pay-TV companies as well: why get a second subscription if you can place-shift? Well, place shifting is just that. It still only allows one person to control the TV remote, so as long as your loved one at home wants to watch the same shows as you, fine.

Place-shifting has already attracted the interest of some big pay-TV names; John Malone's Liberty Media and Charlie Ergen's Echostar, the big US direct-to-home pay TV operator, were part of a recent $46.6m investment round in Sling Media, the owner of Slingbox, that will fund development and international expansion. Malone controls Starz Entertainment Group and QVC as well as cable systems outside the US, while Echostar's satellite platform has more than 12m subscribers. What will Malone and Ergen do with place-shifting? It could be used to extend and integrate their TV shows with other internet content or even with advertising. It could extend a viewer's ability to vote remotely for the next episode of X-Factor. So far Liberty and Echostar have said very little about the strategic thinking behind their investment. But clearly, pay-TV operators are looking to put together new kinds of content-delivery deals as broadband and video-capable, digital gadgets become more available.

For satellite operators such as Sky, PVRs already allow a sort of near-VOD service capability to counter the true-VOD offers from cable and, increasingly, the net and the telcos' IPTV networks. To some extent place-shifting is a more flexible technology than the rather clunky portable PVRs now on the market. Why carry yet another device with you when all you need is the place-shifting software loaded onto your computer and a broadband connection at your destination?

Will place-shifting software eventually be integrated into the set-top box? If the pay-TV operator thinks it can add value to its subscription, then the answer has to be yes. Operators can't afford to ignore the cash being generated by Disney and CBS from offering their programmes on the net and for download onto portable devices.

Consumers increasingly want to view content - from digital photos to music libraries to favourite TV shows - on the move. The battle will be about how all this gets to consumers and which companies in the content creation and distribution chain get paid.