Cable is indeed losing subscribers, but it's happening very slowly. According to the latest data from Nielsen, the number of U.S. homes with cable subscriptions has declined 4.1% in the last year. Meanwhile, TV service provided by telephone companies like Verizon increased 21.1%.

Nielsen reports considerable growth in the sector of consumers who watch a combination of Web-based and non-cable broadcast television. This is the crowd that Boxee hopes to target with its live TV antennae dongle. They watch half as much TV and stream twice as much online video as the general population.

It's a group that has grown quickly, but still makes up only 5% of consumers. By comparison, nearly 71% of households subscribe to both broadband and cable television. Cable's penetration rate alone is more than 90%. In short, it's not going away anytime soon.

The cable industry faces real, longer-term threats from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and increasingly, Amazon Prime, as well as from set-top boxes and connected TVs. Trends in technology, coupled with the high prices of cable subscriptions, are slowly making cable less attractive to consumers Realizing this, the cable companies have put a renewed focused on innovating for a hyper-connected, multi-screened future.

TV content - wherever it may originate - still takes up an extraordinary amount of our lives. On average, Americans watch 33 hours of television per week. Television has long dominated the media diets of consumers, but what's changing is when and how they access it.

In total, Amazon Prime will have over 15,000 videos available for streaming, including some very popular television shows. Amazon launched its video streaming service about a year ago with 5,000 videos. With today's announcement, that number is now tripled.

Wired's Tim Carmody argued recently that Amazon is particularly well-positioned to emerge as a such a competitor, not only to Netflix but to cable television as well.

Amazon Prime still has some growing to do, and for now the service is tied to Amazon's free shipping service of the same name. GigaOm's Ryan Lawler argues that unbundling the two and launching a stand-alone streaming service could make the service an even stronger contender for Netflix's throne as king of this space.

It's worth keeping in mind that Amazon Prime Instant Video only launched in February of last year. Netflix has been around since 1997 and launched its Watch Instantly streaming feature in 2007. Amazon is rising fast, and its clear that digital content is a growing priority for the company, especially now that its also sells its own media tablet.

Rather than being broadcast on HBO, a standard cable channel or even network TV, "Lilyhammer" is going straight to audiences via the Web. Netflix hopes that by making some content available exclusively through its service, it will attract new users and potentially even gain some additional leverage with other content providers.

2011: A Rough Year For Netflix

Netflix's own new initiative comes after what can hardly be described as a good year for the company. Between its subscription rate increase, loss of a key content deal, botched plans to spin off its DVD business and loss of 800,000 subscribers, the latter half of 2011 alone was a bit of a nightmare for the once-beloved company.

It also comes a time of heightened tensions between Netflix and some of its content providers, who have more traditional relationships and revenue streams to worry about. First, the company lost a key contract with Starz Entertainment. Now DVDs of Warner Bros. movies are subject to a 56-day waiting period before users can rent them, and a 28-day window before they can be added to one's queue. Netflix hasn't exactly pushed back against such efforts from Hollywood, so perhaps it deserves part of the blame. Regardless, it's clear that big content providers are nervous about the potential impact streaming services could have on traditional models.

Original Content: A Savior?

This being the case, the move toward original content is a wise, indeed necessary, one. Will it be enough to turn things around? It's hard to say what kind of impact "Lilyhammer" alone will have, all the show is apparently already very popular in Norway. What's perhaps more important is the milestone that this represents.

One of Netflix's next forays into exclusive content will be interesting to watch. "Arrested Development," the discontinued Fox comedy with a major cult following, will return for a new season, but will only be available on Netflix.

This will be the year that online streaming services try to position themselves as an even more attractive alternative to cable by offering their own content. Even if the new trend doesn't destroy any legacy models, it could bolster the leverage of streaming services when it comes time to negotiate with legacy players over content deals.

When my colleague David Strom pointed it out to us here at ReadWriteWeb, I made one of my artificially erudite remarks: I wonder how many RWW readers, I said, would consider CNBC passé?

Two of the larger factors that inspired me to seek the profession I'm in now are, curiously and perhaps ironically, television and conferences. I grew up admiring - and trying to emulate - a man named David Brinkley, who during the 1960s read the news during the dinner hour for NBC, at a time when TV news was electronic news. My interest in computer technology derived partly because I wanted to make my own games, but also from my sincere belief that interactive journalism would supplant broadcast journalism. For that reason, I became attracted to, and a frequent attendee of, computer and electronics conferences, CES among them. (Though my wife used to be my editor, I met her in person at COMDEX.)

There is a plausible argument that, at a time when most viewers have already heard about each story, a broadcast news program has become somewhat antiquated. And there is an equally plausible argument that an annual electronics conference at any one city, at a time when most retailers and suppliers and manufacturers do business with one another electronically on a daily basis, has become quaint, old-fashioned, and maybe even a waste of money.

But I'm not certain the Internet has actually replaced either one as a venue. There is no "Huntley-Brinkley Report" for the Web, no single authority for reliable news. And while that does not bother everyone, it bothers me because it means most folks' view of the world is hodgepodge, aggregated, assembled from multiple accounts, with varying levels of accuracy and dependability. When I read "Michael Jackson is Dead," I did not believe it; and when I read "Jon Bon Jovi is Dead," I questioned myself as to why I should not believe it.

And there is no CES for the Web, although I know the CEA has tried. The Web cannot replicate the directness, the urgency, and yes, the excitement of bringing every major player together into the same square mile.

So I'm curious to learn your thoughts, and here is where I'll point out the handy little comments section at the end: If history truly is outmoding all sense of authority, regality, pomposity, and prominence from these two once-dominant sources of information, then which one leaves our midst first?

There are a number of trends toward the future of television that are already well underway, some of which will be built upon in 2012. Web connectivity is increasingly standard on new TV sets, time-shifting content is becoming the norm and viewers are supplementing the TV experience using the "second screens" of smartphones and tablets. Nobody knows what Apple has in mind for the TV hardware industry, but consumers and industry incumbents alike have been conditioned to expect it to make a big impact.

Goodbye Remote Control, Hello Voice, Touch and Gesture Control

One of the biggest emerging trends in TV has nothing to do with content or hardware specs, but rather how we interact with it. In particularly, those interactions are set to become much more natural than pointing a remote at the screen and pressing buttons. Instead, our television sets, which will recognize our faces, will be controlled by our voices and hand gestures. Think Kinect and Siri, but built directly into smart TVs built by companies other than Microsoft and Apple.

One of those manufacturers is Samsung, whose new line of smart TV sets feature voice and gesture control, as well as facial recognition. In a video demo, the user asks the television to open a Web browser and then moves his hand to control the mouse cursor to navigate. The "click" paradigm of the desktop is replaced by the squeezing of one's hand.

Ubuntu TV, the new offering from the makers of the popular Linux-based OS, also launched this week and uses gesture and touch controls for navigation through content. It will also pair with smartphones to allow touch based control and an enhanced screen screen experience.

The remote control isn't as good as dead just yet. It will be quite some time before a majority of consumers adopt these state-of-the-art new devices, and by then we'll probably be talking about even more mind-blowingly futuristic features that TV manufacturers will be working on.

Even with solutions as impressive as Samsung's gesture control, there's still good reason to keep a keyboard handy. Moving your hand to every individual letter on an on-screen keyboard and virtually squeezing it isn't exactly as efficient as traditional typing. The remote that comes with the Boxee Box does a good job of packing a full QWERTY keyboard onto the back of a simple remote control.

TV: The Next Frontier For Application Developers

Another big trend coming out of CES this year has been the convergence of television with mobile platforms, as our own Dan Rowinksi detailed earlier this week. Ubuntu TV will further tie the smartphone to the TV and MobiTV announced an initiatve to bring its "TV Everywhere" initiative to even more screens.

Samsung's new line of smart TVs will not only have futuristic user controls, but the platform that runs on it has a growing selection of applications thanks in large part to the open APIs and SDK that Samsung makes available to developers.

After a somewhat disappointing start, Google TV tried rebooting its efforts this week with the launch of new devices made by Sony, LG, Vizio and Lenovo. The platform brings various flavors of Android and many of its apps to bigger screens, with Lenovo's new K91 TV sporting Ice Cream Sandwich.

The user interface of our television set is going to feel more and more like a mobile platform, complete with content and media apps, games and whatever else developers can dream up for larger screens. This is increasingly the case now thanks to Android, Google TV and platforms like Samsung's, and the trend isn't expected to stop once Apple launches a TV set that very well may offer a scaled up version of iOS.

They may not like to publicly admit it, but cable company executives realize that this looming threat is real, even if it's not overwhelming just yet. That's why they've taken a series of defensive measures to ensure they they don't get left in the dust. Lately, it's the iPad and tablets in general that are serving as big cable's next battleground for the attention of consumers.

This week, Showtime joined its premium cable channel competitor in this space by launching its Showtime Anytime app for the iPad. The application offers access to the channel's library of original content but, again, you need to be signed up for Verizon FiOS or AT&T's U-Verse to access it.

Cable behemoth Comcast has wasted no time expanding its online and mobile offerings under its XFinity brand (formerly Fancast). Most recently, the company launched a pilot program for something called AnyPlay, which will let subscribers stream live TV to their iPad or Motorola Xoom tablet. This enables people to tune in from anywhere in their home, even if somebody else in the household is currently watching a different program on the bigger screen. This is something the company started testing out last year in an effort to one-up online streaming sites like Hulu and Netflix.

Offerings like this make a cable subscription much more convenient and worthwhile to certain consumers, despite its rising prices and the existence of a host of Web-only content alternatives. For now cable companies retain the upper hand, with millions of subscribers and increasingly aggressive innovation designed to help it avoid the fate of other pre-Web media industries. Whether these efforts succeed in the long run remains to be seen. If not, there's always money to be made in selling access to the Internet itself.

A new infographic from G+/Gerson Lehrman Group shows these and a few other interesting trends too. For example, Dell was able to cut service calls by posting video how-tos on its support site. This and other TV oddities can be found below.

Well, that's what exactly two hackers were envisioning when they came up with MobileX, a modification that jailbreaks the Apple TV via the Seas0nPass hack and lets users run full-screen iOS apps on the set-top box. The hack involves rewriting the Springboard iOS app launcher.

While the MobileX hack may not be something every Apple TV owner is going to have the stomach to tinker with, it may provide at least a partial glimpse into what Apple plans to do on television sets. Very little is confirmed, but rumors that began circulating a few years ago about an Apple-branded HDTV were all but verified by Steve Jobs himself in the late cofounder's recent biography.

Apple's TV initiative is expected to go from hobby to big deal in 2012, with two different sizes rumored to be launching. In terms of its physical design, a sleek, clean form factor is a sure bet. But what about what appears on the screen? Apple is rumored to be working out content partnerships and the device will almost certainly hook into traditional cable subscriptions as well.

How Would iOS and Apps Work on a TV Screen?

In terms of its software and operating system, a big-screen version of iOS and its App Store may well be in the works, which will enable viewers to run media apps from everyone from Netflix and Hulu Plus to NBC and HBO Go, not to mention social networks and possibly even games.

Of course, porting apps from iPhone and iPad to iTV will be even more of a dramatic shift than it was porting apps from iPhone to iPad. Since the device won't be portable, that eliminates a whole breed of potential apps for it. For example, it's conceivable that Apple's TV will come with a built-in Web cam, but don't expect it to be very useful for Instagramming. Games and other apps that use the accelerometer will also need to be re-imagined or scrapped all together.

If a television-focused app marketplace is indeed part of the new offering, it won't be the only feature worth touting. Recent rumors have included a built-in DVR, iCloud support and Siri-style voice control.

At this point, there's little more than speculation and rumors to go on. It's more or less certain that Apple will be launching some kind of TV-related offering later this year, but exactly how they'll tackle it - how they "cracked it," as Jobs put it - remains to be seen.

Last year, chatter on Twitter helped the MTV Video Music Awards boost its audience to the biggest it had been in eight years. In 2011, services like Twitter and Facebook served as the virtual water cooler for just about every major news story and broadcast media event. It may not have been invented this year, but 2011 was pivotal for social TV.

Revolution in Egypt. The death of Osama bin Laden. The launches of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Amy Winehouse's death. The royal wedding. Losing Steve Jobs. A lot happened in 2011, but very little of it didn't unfold, at least in part, on the social Web.

Twitter continued to be a driving force in the convergence of social media and television this year. With or without the encouragement of Twitter's management or TV networks, people would naturally be inclined to talk about shows in real-time on the Internet.

This fact has even helped the company start to carve out one viable idea for monetizing its service. Its social advertising products can let media companies tap into a passionate, pre-existing audience, gain more viewers and then get a rich and detailed amount of data back about how people responded to their campaign. Promoted tweets and topics aren't available exclusively for television shows, but the volume of TV-related chatter on Twitter, combined with the marketing budgets of TV studios and networks, make it a win for both sides.

Twitter has further embraced its social role in TV, for example by teaming up with the creators of X Factor USA to implement live social voting mechanism for viewers to use during the program. To help encourage TV producers to get involved, Twitter published a best practices guide for integrating social media with television.

These social media-fueled discussions are more than just meaningless chatter. For those in the business of producing television shows, the phenomenon can be hugely valuable, with or without paying for social ads. This year, we saw more evidence of a positive correlation between Twitter buzz about a show and actual ratings.

Trends like this are not lost on digital marketers, who banded together this year to form the first trade group for advertisers and marketers looking to tap into future opportunities Internet-connected TVs.

Second Screen Apps, Content-Shifting and Tablet TV

The growth of tablets and smartphones is having a huge impact on television. About 86% of those who own such devices use it while they're watching TV, according to a study released by Yahoo in the beginning of the year. Many of them are tweeting and posting updates to Facebook about shows, while others are looking up pertinent information about programs they're watching.

The proliferation of these devices has given rise to the growth of so-called second screen apps. This includes social check-in apps for entertainment such as GetGlue, which by September had seen an 800% increase in check-ins from the beginning of the year. Mind you, that was just before the Fall television season started.

Yahoo got in on the second screen app game this year by launching Yap.tv, digital TV guide of sorts with Twitter integration and live chats and polls about television shows.

We're also beginning to see the early evolution of content-shifting for video and TV. Just as you can hit the "Read It Later" button for Instapaper, videos you come across during the day can be saved for later viewing as well. The "Later" button on all Vimeo players lets you save videos to a queue, while Boxee has its own bookmarklet for saving nearly any Web video to your Boxee account for later. It can be viewed from the desktop, of course, but perhaps more conveniently, the video will also appear immediately on Boxee's set-top box or its new iPad app. The app allows you to view saved videos, as well as browse a selection of videos shared by your Facebook and Twitter contacts, not unlike what Flipboard does for text-based content.

Watching TV content directly on tablets also grew more common this year. Apps like Hulu Plus and Netflix have been on the iPad since last year, but networks themselves are warming up to the idea of letting viewers catch up on their favorite shows on smaller screens. NBC released an iPad app that offers limited access to recent episodes, while HBO Go expanded its reach, although it's still only available to cable subscribers. Comcast subscribers can stream some content from the Xfinity iPad app, and the cable giant is even testing out live TV broadcasts over the Internet.

The future of TV is still very much emerging, but we fully expect 2012 to be another crucial year in its evolution. From Apple-branded TV sets to new (and quite possibly cheaper) tablets hitting the market in 2012, it will be interesting to see where things end up by this time next year.

Customers of Time Warner Cable and Cablevision will soon join most other cable subscribers in being able to view HBO's massive library of original content from their smartphones and tablets. So far, the response among those subscribers to the year-old HBO Go app has been rather positive. For many of those who don't pay for a cable subscription, the response has been, "Hey, can I get your HBO Go login info?"

Historically, the only way to get access to HBO has been to pile it on top of one's existing cable bill. The cost of those subscriptions have been going up and turning off more and more consumers, who are increasingly able to turn to online sources like Hulu and Netflix for video content. The so-called cord-cutting phenomenon was dismissed by Kessler, who said it would cease to be a significant force once the economy turns back around.

That may sound like a risky bet to some, akin to print publishers crossing their fingers for an economic revival to somehow bring their old revenue streams back. Yet HBO has important, deeply-rooted relationships with cable providers to preserve, so this stance isn't shocking.

Unlike many of the other channels available on cable, HBO is known for a wide selection of premium, sought-after content. Because of the way cable billing typically works, consumers don't have the option of picking and choosing channels they want and leaving out the rest. It's all or nothing, and if you want the really good stuff (like HBO), you've got to pay extra.

The Web would seem to open up the possibility of a new approach, allowing people to pay a monthly fee for only the premium content they want, and many have indicated that they would do so for HBO Go.

So far, the business relationships of the legacy players have proven too entrenched to budge, even in the face of growing demand. Although it's on the rise, cord-cutting is not yet a big enough trend to pose a serious threat to cable, to which millions of customers still happily subscribe. If people don't stop ditching their cable bill, perhaps HBO will reconsider its position.

The update also brings improved voice search capabilities to the platform, which allows viewers to simply ask for a given TV show, movie or video game and have it pop up on the screen. It's not unlike what many people think Steve Jobs was dreaming up for the upcoming Apple HDTV, and indeed it's something a few developers have already started to cobble together by hacking Siri.

The XBox 360 adds this feature on top of an already revolutionary user interface control mechanism in the Kinect. Users can swipe through Netflix movies by reaching out and waving their hand right to left, for example. From browsing content to playing complex video games without a handheld controller, the Kinect has already begun to change the way people interact with machines. Like Siri, it was also hacked by users, leading to a wide range of new uses and applications, some of which Microsoft is even willing to pay developers to create.

Kinect, Siri and the Future of Human-Machine Interaction

The iPhone 4S has only been available for a matter of weeks, but already users are growing accustomed to verbally asking their phones for information. Aside from a few gaffes and the occasional abortion controversy, people seem to be pretty enamored with Siri, which is already being hacked to do things Apple never intended. If the company follows Microsoft's lead and embraces the fact that users are creatively tinkering with its product, we could see voice control built into apps and controlling everyday appliances and objects. Then again, this is Apple we're talking about.

Voice search. Wireless motion-based control. Multitouch screens. In just the last few years, we've seen several viable glimpses of what the future of human-computer interaction will look like. It's not just one big tech company pushing the envelope. Several companies big and small are doing their part. It's worth recalling that each of these innovations is very much in its early days. Imagine what things will look like a decade from now.

The Live TV stick, as they're calling it, is simply a way to build a bridge between your Boxee Box and an HD antenna (sold separately), which of course can pick up all the basic local channels in HD for free. This allows viewers to enjoy their Web-based streaming content and jump over to live TV broadcasts without fiddling with different inputs on their TV sets.

Boxee is very deliberately marketing this move by framing it as a call-to-arms against cable companies and their high-priced subscriptions. As Boxee CEO Avner Ronen points out, nearly 90% of the most-watched shows from last year were broadcast on networks like NBC, Fox, CBS and ABC. For the few popular shows that are only available on cable, Ronen argues, consumers are paying way too much.

Is the Live TV stick enough to make the Boxee Box palatable for mainstream consumers? It certainly makes it a more attractive option, but it probably won't kill the cable subscription anytime soon. Sports fanatics, for instance, will probably stick with the myriad viewing options cable offers them.

Plus, there's still a bunch of content that isn't readily available outside the cable box. Take HBO. The premium channel offers a way to watch online, and it even works on set top boxes like Boxee's. But in order to use HBO Go, one needs to subscribe to a cable or satellite provider.

It's worth noting that Google TV set-top boxes support live TV viewing as well, and the first generation of those devices haven't exactly flown off the shelves.

Consumers Are Moving Away From Cable, But Slowly

Still, the number of U.S. cable subscribers has begun to slowly erode, and that trend is expected to continue. Part of the reason may be a tight economy, but as Ronen points out, it's also because viewer's habits and expectations have changed significantly, thanks in large part to services like Hulu, Netflix, Vudu and YouTube. No longer can many consumers justify paying as much as $100 per month for a selection of content in which they're mostly disinterested.

So, things are certainly moving toward a world in which bloated cable packages are less of a must-have for consumers, and the Web offers an increasingly viable alternative, perhaps coupled with broadcast content and maybe even basic cable. We'll see what Apple has to offer in this space, probably next year. If their track record with tablets, smartphones and MP3 players is any indication, Apple could turn television on its head, depending on how they disruptive they are in designing and marketing the product.

For a certain segment of consumers, solutions like Boxee are a great fit, and upgrades like this only make them more attractive. It may not wreck the cable business overnight, but we suspect that as long as the set-top box and smart TV manufacturers keep innovating and making the cord easier to cut, the cable TV business as we know it won't be around forever.

By 2016, the number of households that do not subscribe to a traditional pay TV service will triple from what it is today. All told, 9 million households won't have cable, Magnaglobal predicts. Of those, about 4 million are what we'd call cord cutters; people who once subscribed to cable but canceled it in favor of accessing television content via the Internet using a set top box or computer hooked up to their TV sets.

The number of people who never signed up for cable is expected to double - to 5 million, from 2.5 million today - by 2016, according to the report. Meanwhile, growth of DVR ownership is expected to slow down, as the devices become less necessary in light of stream-anytime Web content sitting waiting in people's video queues.

The cable industry, having seen this coming, is preparing its own preemptive strikes. Comcast and Verizon are rumored to be bringing cable subcriptions to Microsoft's XBox 360, a gaming console that effectively doubles as a set-top box. Comcast has rolled out its own Web TV initiative called "TV Anywhere" that lets paying subscribers watch content from a variety of devices. They also bought a giant content company, just in case.

Photo by Windell Oskay

For something that may seem like a relatively minor detail in the course of one's day, this Ad Swap (formerly Ad Selector) functionality is Hulu's bold, experimental bet on the future of television advertising. The idea is simple: by giving viewers some say in what ads are displayed, you can show them more relevant messages. For advertisers, the value in more effectively targeting ads toward the people most likely be interested in the company's product. Everybody wins.

In fact, every major metric measured saw a substantial increase. Brand favorability, purchase intent and stated relevancy, all measurements highly sought after by advertisers, improved significantly when ads were selected by viewers rather than played randomly.

Granted, it's not all viewers who are participating in the Ad Swap program. Hulu said they only expect about 3% of users to opt in to the initiative. Still, the study demonstrates the effectiveness of a generally more innovative and user-centric way of displaying advertising in a digital age, something from which media companies old and new can likely draw a few lessons.

By layering their data about iOS and Apple data usage on top of a chart from Ad Age showing TV and Web usage, Flurry was able to demonstrate something most us already had a sneaking suspicion of: That mobile app usage peaks in the evening hours, right around the time that TV-watching has historically peaked.

"Mobile consumers are using apps either instead of, or along-side prime-time television and the Internet," concludes Flurry. "In fact, the percent of relative mobile app usage is greater than that of relative Internet usage every hour of every day."

Flurry's analysis is intended to make a point about the new opportunities that exist for advertisers, who can "daypart" their mobile campaigns just as they can with television and radio advertising. But it also demonstrates just what a major force our mobile devices are becoming in our day-to-day lives. This isn't breaking news, but it's always interesting to see data points that demonstrate just how quickly that force is growing.