Internet founding father envisages end of TV

Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, has predicted the end of traditional television, saying that TV was close to its iPod moment.

Washington, August 28 : Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, has predicted the end of traditional television, saying that TV was close to its "iPod moment."

Speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Cerf said that viewers would soon be able to download most of their favourite TV programmes onto their computers in the same way that they download music onto their iPod.

"You're still going to need live television for certain things, like news, sporting events and emergencies, but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later," Contactmusic quoted Cerf, as saying.

Cerf told the audience that the developments of Internet TV would carry on, and that people would soon be watching the bulk of television through the Internet.

Some critics have claimed that the increasing use of the Internet to download huge video files would ultimately lead to the collapse of the Internet.

However, Cerf rejected the warning as "scare tactics," saying, "In the intervening 30 years it's increased a million times over ... We're far from exhausting the capacity."

Cerf, who helped build the Internet while working as a researcher at Stanford University in California in 1970s, is now the vice-president of the world's leading search engine Google.com.

ANI