(chinadaily.com.cn/Agencies)
Updated: 2007-08-28 11:01

Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet, is now the vice-president of the world's leading search engine Google.com. [file photo]

Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet, has predicted the end of traditional television, saying that television was approaching its "iPod moment".

Viewers would soon be downloading most of favourite TV programmes onto their computers in the same way that they now download music onto their iPod,  the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.

"85% of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time," Cerf was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as saying.

"You're still going to need live television for certain things - like news, sporting events and emergencies - but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later."

Cerf, who helped build the internet while working as a researcher at Stanford University in California in 1970s, is now the vice-president of the world's leading search engine Google.com.

Talking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, he told the audience that the developments of internet TV would continue, and that people would soon be watching the majority of our television through the internet.

However, some critics, including a number of internet service providers, have warned that the increasing number of people downloading video would lead to the collapse of the internet. 

Cerf rejected the warning as "scare tactics".  Some pundits had predicted 20 years ago that the net would collapse when people started using it en masse, he said.

"It's an understandable worry when they see huge amounts of information being moved around online," he said. "In the intervening 30 years it's increased a million times over ... We're far from exhausting the capacity."