Any speculative design that wants to change the fundamental activity that takes place in the living room is one that must be simple and captivating. This design has to beg for interaction and should stir creativity amongst users. Naturally, this device must be a sort of self-publishing device. This will bring the breakthroughs and spirit of the Internet to the living room in an intuitive way.

Imagine bringing the public access television studio into your living room. Giving everyone the ability to self-publish and create their own television shows or their own messages would make the consumer active and bring communication back to the forefront of the living room.

First and foremost, this technology will rely on the digital cable bandwidth mentioned previously. The average digital cable channel, such as HBO, takes up 19.39 Mbps using MPEG-2 compression(16). MPEG-2 compression at that bit rate is extremely high quality (and often just plain extreme.) With the current maximum cable capacity of about 1000 channels, you have a serious amount of bandwidth being delivered from cable centers in America today.

Now, if we actually take those high definition signals and split them to about 300 or 500 Kbps (which is what most web sites use for "high-quality full screen video") you'd notice a perceivable decline in quality. However, the quality in a system of self-broadcast is far less important than the ability to give every person a voice. Some cable channels should still be left allocated to HBO and its variants, but many of these excess channels can become "personal channels."

Broadcasting from these personal channels has to be simple or else people will not be interested. In order to make this an "all-in-one-box" experience each Personal-Channel-Box will come with its own simple camera. Naturally, high-end producers can replace the camera with their own, but this camera can provide basic functionality.

Once a "broadcaster" pays the monthly fee, which will be in the range of $10 - $20, he gets his own channel on the spectrum. When he is ready to record he just pushes the "record" button on his remote and his broadcast starts recording. He can pause, rewind and "edit" his recording and even stop and come back to it later. This is all done using a simple VCR like interface. Once he is happy with his recording, he commits it and sets the time he wants to broadcast it using the same numeric keypad he uses to change channels. He can even decide to only privately broadcast his showing to certain people (which he can specify by phone number, or their personal channel number.) This allows the average consumer to not only broadcast on a massive scale, but also to a select few close friends and family. Hence, not only is his creativity and expression peaked, but he also communicates more with family and friends.

The remote would mimic a TiVo remote, with a record button that instantly starts recording what you do.

Some issues do come up regarding this personal channel. One of the most notable is the issue of content. With thousands of broadcasts, it becomes impossible to police these personal channels for content (much in the same way as the Internet.) The best way to solve this problem is by adopting the same method the Internet and cable companies have to filter out content. Using parental controls, inappropriate channels can be blocked from children. Naturally, since there are so many channels, a more viable solution would be opening up certain Personal Channels once they are approved by parents. By forcing parents to police their children's viewing habits, they not only protect their children from unsavory content, but they also get more involved in their children's life. Ultimately, the content does not need to be restricted, much in the same vein as Public Access Television today is not censored at all.

The next major road block is how to filter and catalog all of the broadcasting going on. How can we get people to watch our television show on channel 130451? The best way of solving this problem is to just watch it solve itself. Just as directories were created by enthusiastic Internet users in effort to catalog what is online, the same will occur for this medium. Aside from this, any broadcaster seriously interested in getting his word out or making his show successful will probably advertise it himself through various means (including the web.) This technology facilitates mass broadcasting, but does not eliminate the need for advertising and the job of bringing viewers to your broadcast. Hopefully some great independent broadcaster will strike it big with his student film or music on this medium and be introduced into the mainstream.

Finally, if the Personal TV concept gets very popular, there might be an issue of it taking up excessive bandwidth. Perhaps the cable companies might not be able to afford to provide this much bandwidth to so many personal broadcasters. First of all, assuming that even after reducing the quality of transmission dramatically and creating an instant pool of 100,000 channels does not succeed in fulfilling all requests (we should be so lucky), the immediate income made from each of these channels is more than enough to pay for the bandwidth increases needed. This would end up making money for the cable companies in the end.