Internet Is Replacing TV in Korea

The internet now provides us with the ability to search not only text and image files but also videos. With this service, an increasing number of internet users are expected to watch videos through the internet instead of television.

Empas (www.empas.com), a Korean internet portal service company, announced on August 18 that it launched a “Video search service.”

By entering “Park Ji-sung” or “Soccer match with Saudi,” one can find video contents of Park Ji-sung shooting a goal or news on the recent Korea- Saudi Arabia soccer match.

Empas explained that it gives a small still image of the video and information on the video’s picture size, level of definition, and running time, making it easier for internet users to choose the video content they want.

For this service, Empas has secured over 70,000 clips of video content including movie previews, music videos and sports scenes. Due to copyright issues, most of the contents are short, covering only one to two minutes of the movies or programs.

So far, Google and Yahoo, U.S. internet companies, have been the only ones that offer video search services.

Google provides video search services through searching subtitle information for people with impaired hearing, which is mandatory for all US television programs to have. As the service allows searches for most TV programs, some even predict that the younger population will watch Google instead of TV.

“Google is planning to provide a service that enable internet users to search all TV programs by indexing and saving the programs,” said Google’s vice president Jonathan Rosenberg.

Instead of searching subtitles, Yahoo searches video files randomly on the internet. With Yahoo’s service, one can search for various content but it takes longer to find the appropriate content.

“Internet users want to find short videos. Not the whole soccer game, for example, but only the footage of players shooting goals,” said Empas’s image director, Son Young-hee, who developed the video search service. “More and more internet users are expected to watch the whole match on TV while finding information on the internet.”

Sang Hoon Kim sanhkim@donga.com