So it’s the first full week of December. It’s getting colder, some snow is falling and everyone’s thoughts are turning to Christmas. And, or course, Christmas shopping! One of the biggest sellers this year is Internet Connected – or Smart Televisions. They enable you to sit in your living room and watch web based video directly on your tv. The war of convergence is over and the television is the victor!

And a whole host of new services are launching to take advantage of this change. Tesco and HMV have both recently launched Video on Demand services and Netflix is leading the charge from the United States. All the content you ever dreamed of, right into your living room.

According to a study just out from Bain and Co over 60% of households will have one of these connected televisions by 2014. One of the report’s most interesting findings is that 50% of people surveyed expected they would access this content in different ways. Instead of simply watching a channel they would use search engines and social networks to hunt down specific content they were interested in fueling discussion of a major transformation in viewing habits.

But despite this flood of content most people surveyed didn’t think they would watch more television. And they certainly didn’t think they would pay more for it. When it came to new forms of content – such as ‘webisodes’ – few respondents said they would be prepared to pay anything at all.

So where does this leave us? With the rapid expansion of connected devices – not just televisions but phones and tablets as well – there are more ways than ever to watch video. With this rapid expansion has come an explosion in available content it is safe to say there are more and more ways to watch more and more content. But here lies the paradox. With the same amount of money funding rapidly increasing content the amount spent creating each piece is going to fall. And yet given all this ‘noise’ the only way to reach consumers is through what the report calls an ‘improved content experience’.

So it’s all about sending the right piece of great content to the right person. And I guess that hasn’t changed – whatever device you choose to watch it on.

What’s a web based tv channel look like? Perhaps that’s a pretty strange question coming from me. But I’m concerned that we’re getting so caught up in the jargon (IPTV, video on demand, broadband tv, and so on) that we’re losing sight of what’s really happening here.

The reality is that people are now flocking to the web to watch video. The figures are quite staggering. Let me give you an example: during February’s Super Tuesday US electoral campaign coverage CNN.com boasted 8.3 million unique viewers watching a total of 86.2 million minutes of online video. And we all know about the 11 million streams from the BBC’s iplayer in January.

What’s more all this is actually changing behaviour. A recent informal survey which investigated how North Carolina students at Fayetteville State University, Methodist University and UNC-Pembroke obtained their news on the US presidential campaign, revealed that forty-six percent turn to the internet as their main news source, while 41 percent prefer television. Not one student claimed to rely on print editions of newspapers as a first source.

All this is ironic because newspapers started producing credible online versions in the 1990’s and that process is now accelerating as readership declines. Online publishers nationally and regionally have been revamping their websites to include video and audio to consumer demand. Publishers have adopted a broadcast model by effectively turning online readers into viewers by delivering on-demand over dedicated video channels.

So there are now plenty of video content providers matched by an array of technology. You can watch your episode of the hit show Damages on digital TV, through an IPTV set top box, on your PC or even downloaded through iTunes on to your iPod. And I guess that’s the point. The demand is massive and it doesn’t really matter how you access content or even who you get it from. All that matters for broadcasters of all shapes and sizes is that you stay relevant to your audiences and that you have the correct economic model to thrive in this new environment.