The future of television and its tribulations with a video-enabled Internet became a hot topic in web-centric blogs today, pulling some big names into mistakes over what matters in the future of the living room.

A report from GigaOM referencing Crankygeeks and pointing up the 1200 TV channels that are available through Free Internet TV claims broadband cable networks should be worried.

I don't think so. Free Internet TV, and channelchooser, also referenced on the Crankygeek, joins a growing band of companies that are reselling terrestrial TV channels and terrestrial TV has failed the audience test. People are switching it off.

In fact cable companies have to carry terrestrial channels - it bulks up the schedules - but that is not where the butter will be and it's hardly what they're exploring for future revenues, nor is it what we demand.

First though, what do Free Internet Television's channels consist of? If you look at these they are actually a mixture of programmes and channels, some of which are no longer shown. It's a kind of YouTube without pictures on the home page.

Here's a sample:

U.K - BBC Talkingpoint (45K)
U.K - BBC Weather (80K)
U.K - BBC Breakfast with Frost (45K)
U.K - BBC Workinglunch (45K)

(It carries 17 BBC channels.)

There are many competitors doing a far better job.

Greengrass are a growing company with a novel business model that may or may not succeed. Vodeo are bringing new uses of video to the web, as are the IPTV companies, Akimbo (with its vblog channels), Narrowstep (with dozens of new TV channels) etc, and independent networks like Mixcast who will transform our culture with GDB showing how it might be done in local TV and Africast showing some of the geographical niches that will evolve.

On top of all that you have what the cable companies really want to do — turn the TV back into the heart of the TV, connect people across physical space, creating buddy systems to facilitate useres to co-watch programmes in different houses, instant storage and replay in the consumer's hands across geograohical locations, creating personal and UGC content, facilitating UCG applications on the TV set.

What's going on right now is a land grab — who will win viewer attention and become the viable portal for channel information? I don't see Free Internet TV being a leader there, yet. The remnants of terrestrial TV are not that important.

In five years time we'll be co-creating new web applications on our TV sets, co-watching a ball game even though we're a thousand miles apart, peeking into a buddies' personal schedules, uploading a quick video of what we've made for dinner and how, sharing memory and lists in P2P networks, co-creating our local natural history channel, managing a new tourism app we've built on our mobile phones and that airs on our home TV channel. The possibilities are as endless as they are on the web and the PC.