Does the television service of the future consist of a giant online library, where viewers search for their chosen content using peer and professional recommendations? Or is this technology-driven hype?

Even those who are cautious about the rhetoric recognise the emerging changes in audience behaviour. In the USA, top-rated shows gain the same number of eyeballs but instead of accomplishing this at one 'appointment to view' they use a wide range of routes that includes traditional broadcasts, online catch-up and DVD sales.

Ardent's Jonathan Pfitzner believes even more radical change is coming. He sees video being consumed via, for example, social networks: "If I'm on my social network and I've got that piece of content, I want somebody else to view it, I will send it to them there and then, I would expect them to watch it then. So, it's totally outside of any traditional TV model."

Some commentators expect online, broadband and mobile providers to begin originating quality content. Peter Smith of NBC Universal thinks this will only happen when they pay the right money to lure creative talent: "It's hard to say to a top writer, or a top producer, 'We'd really like you now to go and make a tiny little show, and we're not going to pay you to do it, and it's got to be a compelling script, a great cast, great content, do all that, cheap.'"

For many, the hype around new channels ignores a more significant development – the upgrade of home entertainment systems. Harish Thawani of Nimbus Communications feels this is much more likely to revitalise video consumption: "With the launch of high definition television, and the growth of high definition DVD, I feel that television and DVD are re-inventing themselves sufficiently to keep people motivated to watch them in the conventional format."

Chorion's Waheed Alli is happy to admit that he doesn't know what will happen over the next five years. For him, the time horizon is much longer: "We are buying, developing and building content which will last not just for the next five years, but for the next fifty."