Illustration: Liu Rui

By Zhang Yizhong 
 
Last week, in a high profile launch event, China's national network television (CNTV), an Internet venture owned by China Central Television (CCTV), began to operate online.
 
Within days servers of the website were overloaded by the huge waves of visitors coming in for free access to on-demand TV programs and high definition movies.
 
As a result of the overwhelming traffic, CNTV's video services became semi-paralyzed in parts of the country.
 
On the first day of its official operation, I visited the CNTV site to check out for myself the "national team" of Internet video. After hopping back and forth between the channels and playing with Bugu (literally meaning cuckoo), a P2P powered live streaming client, for hours, I got a mixed impression of the nascent multi-media portal.
 
The Web design appeared unimpressive, the organization of its interface was inconvenient, quite a few subchannels and functions were still under construction, and the uncontrollably volatile progress bar of its video playback drove me nuts.
 
Nonetheless, backed by finance and content resources from CCTV, CNTV set sail with advantages unmatched by its private competitors. Video images are high in resolution, sharp in contrast and crisp in color.
 
Even better, they start playing right away, without buffering, and the content collection is huge. There are 1,000 hours from national and provincial satellite channels live streamed and added to the library every day. Over 400,000 hours of archives from CCTV depository will be added. Even better, all of this doesn't cost a dime.
 
In fact, CNTV is a unique behemoth that has its tentacles in Internet TV service, on-demand video streaming and user-generated video sharing, each of them enough by themselves to fl oat a NASDAQ listed company. With its grand framework outlined in the baby version, CNTV seems poised to take over the nation's online video industry. However, things aren't that simple!
 
Bugu, the site's IPTV service, delivers high quality, real-time TV channels over the Internet onto computer screens for free in an attempt to attract netizens. The recent outage due to the massive hits to the P2P network exemplifi es its popularity, but it's far too early to say CNTV is winning back the generation of Web surfers.

Netizens, who, like me, have thrown away their remotes, don't just cling to computers for the clicking sound that mice make, but for things that TV failed to provide. 

Tired of being passively indoctrinated with news reports on government's work meetings or the mayor's recent visit to a factory, we use the liberty of the Internet to arrange our own program schedule, read what we take interest in and watch what we like whenever we feel convenient.
 
Unfortunately when Bugu distributes exactly the same programming with a delay of dozen seconds as the cable grid does, it will only convert cable subscribers to viewers of IPTV and effectively save us from buying a TV.
 
An obvious inspiration for CNTV's VOD service is hulu.com, a website that streams shows, sports events and other programs previously aired on its owners: NBC, Fox and ABC.
 
CNTV does the same with contents produced by CCTV, allowing us the control of when it's screened.
 
Still the hulu-like division fails to supply the freedom of what, as CCTV's productions are monotonously orthodox and the shows are strictly aligned with its selection criterion.
 
What failed to interest us won't suddenly become appealing when it's recorded in a giant Internet DVR. Young netizens love to watch US series hours after a new episode is broadcast. Some find high art unapproachable and so enjoy not-so-elegant or even "vulgar" music.
 
Certain TV drama series which are banned from re-airing on CCTV because they don't fi t into the TV station's criterion can't even be found on cntv.cn. This upsets the audience who wish to enjoy the series again.
 
Apparently architects of CNTV do not want their work to be merely a distribution channel for videos also available through cable, over the air and via satellites, and so Xiyou (literally meaning grapefruit) comes into play.
 
Like Youtube and Youku, this part of the site lets users upload and share their own clips with the rest of the world.
 
Even so Xiyou is not going to be a game changer. While Youku, Tudou and 6.CN, domestic competitors to Xiyou, can symbolically review and let pass all those copyrighted and coarse videos, which drive a signifi cant chunk of traffic to the sites, the State-owned Xiyou is not likely to enjoy such luck.
 
A stale industry needs more to revitalize itself than just a new delivery method. 
 
The author is a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong. He can be reached at yizhong@hku.hk