Even the uninitiated will have realised by now that the World Cup is about a lot more than football. This time round the greatest show on earth, which will attract an estimated 3.6 billion viewers, will also provide a test bed and a showcase for two innovative ways of watching television.
At one end of the scale, high-definition broadcasts will provide those who can afford the equipment with pin-sharp pictures and cinema-quality sound, while at the other, smartphone users will be squinting at their screens to see the highlights of the latest match.
Britain’s mobile TV market is lagging behind that of Italy and Germany, where matches will be broadcast live to mobile phones, but consumers seem to have taken high-definition (HD) television to their hearts. Sky TV has struggled to meet demand for the set-top boxes that will allow viewers to see the BBC’s high-definition broadcasts from Germany, and research released today suggests that HDTV sets have become status symbols to rival luxury city breaks and designer jewellery.
"What is really surprising is that HDTV has become No 1 so quickly, because it is still a new technology," says Mel Taylor, director of European marketing at Viewsonic, the screen manufacturer that commissioned the research. Consumers have been disappointed by recent incremental improvements in television technology that have not lived up to manufacturer’s hype, he said, but HDTV will provide demonstrable advantages.
"It is the biggest step change in picture quality since colour," he says. "It’s the first time there’s a real benefit. At the end of the day, nobody can tell the difference between a 50Hz TV and a 100Hz TV, but with HD you can see the picture quality and that’s what’s going to drive the adoption."
An HDTV screen contains roughly four times the number of pixels as a standard TV, providing a picture that approaches cinematic quality. However, once the World Cup is over, the vast majority of broadcasts will be in standard definition, and Mr Taylor acknowledged that some people may not be aware that they’ll see no improvement in picture quality when they’re watching standard broadcasts. "I don’t think they are," he said. "I think people are going to be demanding HD broadcasts very quickly."
Viewsonic’s research, which sampled 2,394 British consumers, found that HDTV is being launched into a market that’s anxious to own the latest technology. A quarter of people asked said that they were embarrassed about their out-of-date home entertainment systems and more than 60 per cent said they would spend more on TVs that were better looking but technically identical.
The inexorable rise of the iPod has sparked a great deal of discussion about technology as a status symbol, but according to Dr David Oswell, a senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College and media history commentator, television became a marker of technological one-upmanship long before white headphones started to grace our streets.
"If you look at the introduction of TV in the late 1940s and early 1950s," he says, "both the box in the living room and the aerial on the roof were signifiers that this was a modern home."
Television and other technologies have played a central part in shaping the modern home, and HDTV may yet add its own twist. Once TVs became cheap enough that households could afford multiple sets, they lost their role as the focal point of the home, a position they had inherited from the radio and, before central heating, the fireplace.
The fragmentation has accelerated in recent years with the rise of games consoles, home computers and the internet, but Dr Oswell suggests that the introduction of HDTV may bring households back into the living room, at least for as long as most homes can afford just one HD-ready set. "With HD," he says, "because of the cost you might get a refocusing of the family around the sitting room."
If HDTV might sharpen the focus of television-viewing habits, the other development being trialled during the World Cup, mobile TV, is likely to pull in the opposite direction. Broadcasting television to mobile phones is still an emerging technology, but if and when it does catch on it is likely to drive forward the fragmentation of the market. People will watch mobile TV on their own, on the move, and they will probably be watching niche channels catering specifically for the mobile viewer, analysts have suggested.
"Certain genres will lend themselves well to mobile TV," according to Dave McQueen, author of a report on mobile television published today by Informa Telecoms & Media. He says that the subjects most suited to mobile TV are news, weather, soaps, reality TV and bite-sized portions of drama known as mobisodes. Plus, of course, major sporting events. "The World Cup is the springboard to launch these services and show what they can do," he says.
Mr McQueen and his co-author, Mark Burk, say that British mobile TV services will be hampered by limited spectrum availability until the analogue TV signal begins to be turned off, freeing up radio waves for alternative uses. Once that starts to happen and the phone companies have built up the infrastructure needed to broadcast television, public use is likely to grow strongly. They predict that in five years’ time, one in ten of the world’s handsets will include a TV receiver.
The good news for the existing broadcasters is that they're unlikely to be put out of business by mobile phone companies that have discovered a creative streak. The report’s authors predict that existing content providers will benefit most from the opportunity to deliver their products though new channels.
The phone companies, on the other hand, are wary of trying to foist technology on customers without being able to demonstrate its benefits. They got their fingers burnt with 3G, Mr McQueen suggests: "They were trying to sell a technology solution rather than a service," he says. "If the mobile world ignores the content that we trust and watch at home then it will die. We want to watch Sky Sports and we want to watch BBC News. If it’s Vodafone News, we’re not going to want to watch it."
For HDTV, Germany 2006 is a chance to prove it's mettle. For mobile TV, this tournament is more of a laboratory, at least in Britain: its big commercial test is more likely to come during South Africa 2010. By then, HDTV will be old news and retailers will no doubt be touting the next big thing, but Dr Oswell is confident that we’ll probably be willing to pay for that too. "The myth of technology and what it can do is still fairly big," he says. "People might be cynical but they’re still willing to buy into it."
Click here for a guide to the costs and advantages of HDTV
