The BBC iPlayer enables viewers to watch their favourite shows on their computers
One of the founding fathers of the internet has predicted the end of traditional television.

Vint Cerf, who helped to build the internet while working as a researcher in America, said that television was approaching its "iPod moment"

In the same way that people now download their favourite music onto their iPod, he said that viewers would soon be downloading most of favourite programmes onto their computers.

"85 per cent of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time," said Mr Cerf, who is now the vice-president of the Google, the world's largest search engine.

"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."

Although television on demand has not yet become a mainstream activity in the UK, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have all invested vast sums of money in technology which enables viewers to watch their favourite shows on their computers.

But some critics, including some internet service providers, have warned that the internet will collapse under the strain of millions of people downloading programmes at the same time.

Over the next four years, it is thought that the number of videos watched over the internet will quadruple, with people moving from short clips to hour-long programmes.

Broadband companies claim that the service will cause "traffic jams", which will cost millions of pounds to sort out .

But Mr Cerf dismissed the warnings as "scare tactics", saying that critics had predicted 20 years ago that the net would collapse when people all around the world started to use it en masse.

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

Setting out his vision for the future of the internet, he said he wanted it to reach as many people as possible.

"I want more internet," he said. "I want every one of the six billion people on the planet to be able to connect to the internet."

一位“互联网之父”日前预言：传统的电视时代将结束。

温特•瑟夫曾是美国一名研究人员，曾参与过互联网的创建。他说，电视正走向iPod时代。

他说，与现在人们将喜欢的音乐下载到iPod里一样，电视观众们很快就能将他们喜欢的大多数电视节目下载到电脑中去了。

现任全球最大的搜索引擎公司Google副总裁的瑟夫先生说：“我们观看的85%的视频都是预先录制的，所以可以随时下载。”

“尽管人们仍需要新闻、体育比赛和紧急事件等的现场直播，但‘iPod模式’将日益兴起，人们可以把节目下载到里面供以后观看。”

尽管电视在线点播在英国仍未成为一种主流模式，但BBC、ITV和Channel 4已投入大量资金研发能让观众在电脑上看他们喜爱的电视节目的技术。

但包括一些互联网服务提供商在内的一些批评人士警告说，如果几百万人在同一时间下载节目，互联网会因无法承受压力而崩溃。

据预测，在未来四年中，互联网上的视频数量将翻两番，人们所能观看的视频也将从现在的短片“升级”为长达一小时的节目。

宽带公司称，这一服务会导致“网络交通堵塞”，而“疏通”成本则会达到几百万英镑。

瑟夫对这一“恐吓战术”的说法进行了反驳，他说，批评人士20年前预测，如果全世界的人同时上网，互联网会崩溃。

他说：“在过去三十年中，互联网的容量增加了一百万倍，我们远没用尽这些容量。看到大量的信息游荡于互联网而产生这样的担忧是可以理解的。”

瑟夫先生对互联网的未来进行了展望，他说他希望更多的人能用上互联网。

他说：“我希望互联网越来越发达。希望地球上60亿人都能用上互联网。”