Did you know that South Korea leads the world in high speed internet connections? And now there is a government plan that will speed it up even more. The plan is for an increase in speed tenfold by the year 2012. This is good news for all internet TV viewers. They also plan to launch a mega HD TV system known as Ultra high definition TV which will give a jawdropping 16 x higher resolution than current high definition TV's offer. Over 10 million of worldwide high speed users reside in South Korea which is a rate of almost 1 in 4. Hong Kong is in second position with 2 in 10 and Canada third with just over 1 in 10. Surprisingly the US is in 11th position with around 1 in 18 although it has the biggest number of broadband subscribers, 19.9 million users. It is thought that the reason why South Korea is so far ahead is due to heavy competition amongst broadband providers there. It was announced yesterday that The Korea Communications Commission has decided that it will invest 24.7 billion dollars to build a ultra-broadband network, which will be one of the highest standards in the world for information highways by the year 2013. Providing 1 Gbps speed for the Internet which is 10 times faster than existing optical networks provide. Providing converged Internet services faster and at a greater quality featuring real time broadcasting plus interactive services. An integrated access device will allow a user to run the ‘multiple play service' allowing mobile Internet, telephone and mobile IPTV. Soon everything will use these super high speeds removing the need for fixedline and even current wireless, they will change to the new Internet protocol based network including VOIP. This could have great implications for internet tv and movie streams as the entire movie could be downloaded in seconds allowing much higher definition and many extra features such as different angles and subtitles [ directors commentary and much more. Removing the need for DVD's

Quietly something is happening. Without any fanfare, streaming movies are starting to take over. And it is because of our want it instantly culture that is pushing it forward much more quickly than forecast. Currently using mainstream methods involve having to wait or do some work before viewing your movie streams. The company doing the most to drive it forward currently is Netflix, starting to diversify from its postal DVD service with its new service called ‘Watch Now' which is actually worth watching now. It started a year ago when origionally launched, Watch Now allowed every regular Netflix subscriber the option of watching a choice from around 1000 plus streaming movies via PC, and on demand, with no downloading needed. As the catalogue of available movies grew to 12000 plus movies and availability for Mac users. The time limit that had been set for useage wss eliminated. So for your $9 per month you can get DVD by mail and unlimited streaming movies on PC, wicked huh? So watch as many movies as you want, no worrying that it may be pants. You can just watch a few scenes then move on. The only problem was that you have to sit in front of your PC screen. Not always an audio visual feast. So to counter this Netflix teamed up with Roku and developed a small settop box for $100 that lets Netflix users watch streaming movies straight onto that massive plasma TV rather than your 14 inch PC screen. You still have to choose the movie via PC though before viewing, but hey its getting to be great for watching movies. But then came another development. Netflix starting getting even busier, streaming movies appeared on TiVo's. Xbox 360 joined in, Bluray DVD players and next will be a feature built into the Television sets themselves (coming in spring). Because the software has already been developed in can be pretty much dropped into any hardware device. The only real current downside is that the selection of streaming movies arent exactly bang up to date with Hollywood blockbusters. Due to the stupid Hollywood system of release windows, internet has to wait until the movie has been released on DVD, played on subscription cable and satellite channels before becoming available online. But even with these restrictions, you can see that this service will just get better and better. Whilst everything else is downsizing, the streaming movie market is growing in leaps and bounds.