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That sound you hear may be the death knell for the set-top box/dust magnet in your home entertainment center. Sony and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association have announced an agreement that will place the cable companies’ technologies inside future Sony TV models. This will allow consumers to dial up ALL their cable channels, access video-on-demand and use interactive services without having to find a place for a steaming-hot cable box near the TV.

The nation’s largest cable companies - Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House - are on board, and the pressure is now on Samsung, LG and other big-screen makers to follow Sony’s lead. The NCTA says they’re welcome to do so.

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What The Future Holds, a column written by Adam Berger, that introduces tomorrow’s technology and trends today, is published on Thursdays.

All you hear about the second you turn on your TV is why you should either switch to cable and your local cable provider’s video on demand (VOD) content offering. These PSA commercials also tend to mention 3-in-1 services - phone, internet, and TV - as well as HD channels, and digital DVR set-top boxes. What they neglect to talk about is the one thing that most providers don’t...provide HD content on demand.

Holding things back are the usual problems: capacity and content. Everyone has the ability to receive HD channels but the total number of channels is still very limited. Until MPEG-4 and switched-digital roll out most providers simply don’t have the bandwidth to deliver all their regular programming and more than a few HD VOD offerings (and on Cablevision those are all nature programs). Just image how much less you would go to the movies if you could watch top rated movies in HD from the comfort of your own home. Oh wait, you can? It’s called Blu-ray and HD-DVD? Right I forgot…

The studio’s don’t want to offer their content for VOD HD options because they are investing a ton of money into the next generation disc formats. Once you have the ability to just stream down the HD content from your provider whenever and wherever you want there will be no reason to purchase the HD capable discs or their players (especially because who wants to drop over $1000 on a format that may become obsolete.

However as the bandwidth issues get sorted out, media research company Diffusion Group sees progress made the same way it has for regular HDTV, sports & broadcast networks first just like primetime television and ESPN-HD have led the charge so far. So alas this column is titled What The Future Hold’s so I should finish up with a future oriented statement. I expect that over the next 12 months we will see more and more HD VOD offerings but nowhere near the point of current standard-def on-demand offerings.

Read [HD Beat]

Excited that the World Cup began earlier today, we certainly are, as well as the other billion people who have already started tuning in. The content here in the US will be carried via newspapers, radio, internet, and your TV. Your listening only options include both Spanish and English but unfortunately for you non-satellite subscribers, will only be available on XM radio. Game will be broadcast on TV on ABC, ESPN, and mostly ESPN2. Here on the east coast we have Optimum/Cablevision and wish that ESPN2 was already offered in HD at least we have ABC and ESPN. No matter where you are you should certainly get ABC-HD as well as ESPN-HD (some companies charge), less providers have ESPN2-HD.

Here is the listing of games with the broadcast time and channel.