We've heard this all before -- the 'death of the TV' is coming, mostly due to the internet. While the physical television set is not going anywhere for a long, long time, the distribution of content and the way we use that television screen -- err, HDTV screen -- is probably changing beneath our feet. Current Microsoft Corp.(NASDAQ:MSFT) executive Bill Gates agreedwith this position at the Davos World Economic forum last week in Switzerland.

The Download Squad posted a piece on what Bill Gates had to say last week, and the detail was interesting. When Gates said "Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it," I had to chuckle.

That scenario is already changing due to digital video recorders like TiVo. Content producers are slowly losing control over when the content is watched, how advertisements are watched (or not) and where consumers are watching content (think Slingbox). So, while Bill thinks that the TV is dead within five years, I say that the material coming into those TVs is what's changing -- not the TV itself.