One of the problems with working in the audiovisual industry is that we all inhabit a technological bubble. Gadgets that we see at conferences and expos are always on the verge of ‘changing consumers behavior forever.’ Reports about Japanese or Korean innovations are always filled with overblown forecasts about revenues and growth.

Fortunately for me, the stuff I’m exposed to through my work is counterbalanced by my late-adopter lifestyle. With no money, very little free time, a techno-resistant wife and a resolutely rural lifestyle, there are lots of built-in safeguards against me buying shares in emerging media or cluttering up my attic with soon-to-be-obsolete hardware.

Straddling these extremes means I’m definitely not the guy to cheerlead your IT division’s venture capital raising activities. But it has given me a fairly balanced perspective on what technological developments are genuinely capable of mass-market application. PVRs and on-demand, for example, are a no-brainer because they make life so much more convenient. However, HD strikes me as a moderately interesting product enhancement – somewhere below electric toothbrushes and SATNAV in my list of life-changing experiences. iPods I get, but mobile TV I don’t. I’ve never met anyone outside an artificially lit auditorium who watches video on a phone. Where I live, decent unbroken reception and comprehensible tariffs are what we all crave.

Of course, it’s possible that there is a group of hormonal teenagers down the road from me who are file-sharing videos and Facebooking strangers as I tap this out on my typewriter (that was a joke). But that doesn’t strike me as a genuine indicator of commercial potential. Here’s why…

I, along with many of my peers, tend to talk up the fact that my children are more comfortable with technology than I am. It’s a neat, ice-breaking one-liner. But my children also cry more than me and fall over a lot. I’d expect them to grow out of the latter, and I’d also expect their sixth sense regarding new tech to disappear as they atrophy with age.

The real point about being older (I have found) is that there is less time to engage in the highly repetitive process of techno-familiarisation. Like my son, I have opposable thumbs which can be used to operate an Xbox console. But, unlike my son, I am time-poor.

For me, technology mainly has meaning when: a) it aids my business; or b) it adds value to my preferred forms of passive entertainment. This is why PVR works so well, because it’s just a clever VCR. Clearly, I expect my kids to carry some of their current digitally informed behavior with them into adulthood. But I’d also expect them to start favoring more passive forms of media.

If this analysis is right, then it suggests a couple of things. Firstly, it explains why entertainment hardware revenues seem to be disproportionately strong when compared to digital content revenues (recession notwithstanding). The point about being young is that you are fashion-conscious in the extreme (which is why my daughter would rather have her own slim pink Sony digicam than borrow my chunky grey one). This desire to own and show off new devices is a personal and social need – fed by the parental gift market.

Linked to this is the secondary market in games, DVDs, CDs/download, accessories and chargers. But there seems to me to be limited scope in ongoing subscription-based services because they are an extra expense and not event purchases. That is why, in my house, Club Penguin has been dropped (but eBay still extracts cash from my kids).

Among older groups, the fashion-compulsion might switch to cars and clothes but often becomes buried beneath the mountain of monthly bills. For many, hardware upgrades become less significant while the desire for simple and transparent payment scenarios becomes more compelling (because life is busier).

Which leads to my second point…

Much is made of the fact that consumers now expect to get online content for free, as though they are IP freeloaders who are threatening to derail the democratic media. But this doesn’t seem to me to tell the entire story. If, for example, I think like a punter rather than a media professional, then I might apply the following logic: I pay DTH platform Sky a monthly subscription and then get access to hundreds of television channels for free. So doesn’t it follow intuitively that I should pay a telco for access to broadband on a monthly basis and then get access to free online content?

In other words, I’m used to paying a single direct debit and getting an all-I-can-eat menu of screen-based content. I might go back to my pay-TV platform and acquire premium content, but I’ll hardly ever pay a third-party content owner directly (premium-rate telephony services and adult entertainment being possible exceptions). Why should I behave any differently when I shift the screen I’m sitting at?

None of this is intended to sound like new media denial. But I suspect there are serious question marks over the commercial viability of many emerging content-based services – as opposed to retail-transactional services which often do make good sense. Content services that are viable may take a lot longer to accrue revenue than rights owners suppose, and some may never add financial value. It’s possible that the newly converged media industry may find itself having to absorb the cost of digital production and passing it off in the accounts as marketing expenditure.

And I didn’t even get on to the subject of IP piracy…