IPTV divides the house

As carriers roll out IPTV, much attention is paid to homes passed and subscribers.

But as IPTV service evolves, service providers will need to appreciate the distinctions between the human beings living inside those homes that we count collectively as one subscriber. Carriers can't personalize IPTV services until they understand who the users are.

Verizon's video service includes a digital video recorder that can play different programs in different rooms, acknowledging the simple truth that people with different tastes might want to watch TV at the same time. But it will go much further. Service providers will want to learn each user's tastes. Parents will want to set policies regarding what their kids can watch and when, forcing service providers to discern who's doing the watching.

Netflix recommends DVDs to its users based on profiles it creates from how users rate the movies they've seen. These profiles are much more accurate than the ones on Amazon.com — unless they're based on the conflated ratings of two or more users. That's why my wife and I rate movies on Netflix as two separate entities; I don't want Netflix thinking I liked “Stepmom,” and she doesn't want it thinking she liked, “The Chronicles of Riddick.”

In the future, each unique user in the home will likely have his or her own IP address, an equipment vendor marketing director told me. Those addresses will be the basis for profiles managed by service providers and used to effect policy. With multiple devices in the home, some shared and some not, it might often be up to the users themselves to maintain those separate identities faithfully. Some might require password logins, so parents can dictate their kids' service, for example. Personally, I will never let my wife know that my Netflix password is Riddick.