Nice idea, but I can't see this happening for a long time to come, for the fundamental reason that we simply don't get the required bandwidth to the premises.

Nice idea, but I can't see this happening for a long time to come, for the fundamental reason that we simply don't get the required bandwidth to the premises. I live in a reasonable sized city in Scotland, and can't watch iPlayer streaming because we don't get the bandwidth (5km from the exchange...). FTTC will help, but its never going to have the reach of the wireless transmissions of broadcast TV (Highlands and Islands for example). Even worse is that with a massive number of new houses going up in this area, they aren't putting any "next generation" communications infrastructure in - meaning to get FTTP or even FTTC they will need to dig the pavements up in future, which is horribly expensive, and thus happens very slowly (if at all). Until we have a method of delivering high speed broadband over the current twisted pair, or power lines (or any other existing infrastructure), this simply won't happen.