Technology: Internet Based TV and Video Over IP Services

The new AT&T company (Ticker: T), that has been established through the merger between the two american telecom giants AT&T and SBC, decided to focus on TV, Cellular and computer technologies that are based on the Internet. The merged company is going to offer (based on WSJ) a TV service with more than 1000 channels within 18 months.
In a previous post I mentioned Cisco's acquisition of Scientific Atlanta to have better technologies for TV distribution over IP. This by integrating with SA's set-top-box.
So the food-chain in the TV/Cables market starting to be clear. A big provider using infrastructure from a big manufacturer will provide new services to an hungry audience.
Seems like the market for TV/Cables service is going to be wild in the following years. 1000 channels over the internet raises a challenge to the hardawre and software companies to build better PVRs. The possibilities might lead the open market to enlarge the current sharing internet services in a way that we could not have before, new ways for data and video consumption may be raised, now that we have the vehicle for such enormous capacity of information.