Looking Back in Anga

In Cologne today with friends taking a critical look at the cable & IPTV exhibition called Anga. Many people are talking about quadruple play - providing mobile, TV, web and VOIP services. I am not sure that I would want to be that dependent on just one provider. The sudden massive Internet outages in the Netherlands a few weeks back were a reminder how vulnerable many of these backbones are - and I understand KPN, who were the cause of the problem, is planning to play around with the software again in the coming weekends.

I was amazed at the rather poor quality of High Definition material displayed by companies at Anga, some of which were smearing all over the place. The problem was the standholders actually thought the pictures weren't that bad. The HDTV set-top box business is still in a post-beta period. Pictures are not "as advertised". I guess it is similar to the bandwidth promises we get from some providers. Juat think of what you could do with all that bandwidth you paid for, but never had.