Convergence Culture:In the web world it is not enough just to provide programming. Viewers will be able to make their own programmes and review those of others, writes Haydn Shaughnessy.

There is television and then there is TV on the web. For a long time the purveyors of web TV have failed to convince audiences that programmes transmitted through the web are worth the trip from the couch to the computer. For anybody with half an eye on what's happening in the TV world, now is the time to sit up, however. Things are about to change, thanks to the Venice Project and, outside Ireland, IPTV.

Back in the mid-1990s the web's first soap opera, The Spot, launched with the dream of challenging mainstream television and capturing the lucrative soap opera audience. It lasted for one whole year.

Since then TV and the web have had a symbiotic relationship. When the American TV channels launch their autumn schedules in October of each year, internet portals such as Yahoo enjoy a spike in traffic. People go to the web for programme information and clips. And that seemed to be how TV and the web were meant to get on.

The web as a destination that millions of viewers go to specifically to watch TV programmes has been slow in building, if you take 1996 and The Spotas the start point. Recently we've endured the YouTube interlude - clip mania that convinces a fair proportion of the over-40s that web TV will bring nothing but junk. Fear not though. Quality really is on the way.

The Venice Project will change perceptions of how television and the web can work together because of who is behind the project. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are two Scandinavians who went from running a legally challenged music and video-sharing service called Kazaa in the dotcom years to setting up SKYPE, the site that lets us make phone calls around the world for no cost. Their fame and fortune is drawing attention to web TV as they arrive at the cusp of launching a new service, code-named the Venice Project.

Their entrepreneurial clout allows them to negotiate with top-class TV stations, directors and producers for content, and the word is they have a quality line-up of programmes ready to roll soon.

SKYPE, meanwhile, is owned by the global auction giant eBay, and Zennstrom and Friis are still under contract there. A second line of thinking is that the Venice Project will create an online market for TV programmes so that you and I - the viewers - will buy or bid on content for our TV set in an eBay-type of exchange. Your TV screen could in fact become an auction room for programmes. Regardless of how the detail plays out, these are big players who can move markets and the market they are moving into is the stuff you and I watch.

Even so, their new venture may turn out to be less important than the fact that there are many other projects out there, all of which will gain from the Venice Project's imminent launch. It comes at the same time that IPTV - Internet Protocol Television - is also set to launch, though it seems the majority of people in Ireland will have to wait another year or so for IPTV.

IPTV promises to put considerable power into the hands of viewers. Because channel capacity is almost limitless with IPTV, it means, for example, the US company Comcast can allow its viewers to record and show local football games. It's a GAA dream. Comcast pretty much hand over to the communities they serve the ability and right to video and broadcast to themselves. It's coming to Europe this year.

In the web world it is not enough just to provide programming. You have to provide facilities for viewers to make and distribute their own programmes, review programmes, and make friends through the screen. IPTV facilitates that, and the Venice Project will embrace this bold new future, too. Venice Project programmes have space for viewers to "chat" while viewing and to rate and review programmes. Either way it seems likely we will soon be enjoying higher quality alternative programming on the web and, some of us, maybe, web-style networking through the TV screen.

• Haydn Shaughnessy edits the online magazine wripe.net. Next week: artists in virtual residence.

Words in Your Ear

• UGC or user-generated content: Content created by viewers.

• SKYPE: An internet service that makes it possible to phone anywhere for free.

• IPTV: Internet Protocol Television or TV programmes distributed on the network of a telecoms company such as Eircom. It's likely to be higher quality than internet television because it is confined to one network.

• Web TV and internet television: Television distributed across the globe using the internet.

• Venice Project: A new television project launching early in 2007.