Anyway, ITV.com is a support site for all of its linear channels with some catch-up streaming content. That, in essence, is what it is. I'm just not wild about bundling all of this stuff together - it seems messy. Channel 4's 4oD and BBC's iPlayer are standalone and that's the model that works. You know what you get and where to get it and it's much cleaner.

The navigation of the streamed content offering is in essence good, well-structured and offers some choices. But, let's be boring for a moment and talk technology. The site obviously uses Windows as it asked me to download the Silverlight plugin. You're offered a choice of four channels to stream in "near real time". These seem to work happily in Windows, complete with clickable ads. But try as I might, the live streaming doesn't seem Mac-compatible at present, which is obviously as useful as a Disprin canoe being that we're a Mac-only company. ITV.com says it's only running beta for Mac and asks for problems to be reported so: "Dear ITV, this is broken".

The VoD assets play okay, with limited stutters and stops, although the motion in the British Touring Car racing was more than it felt able to deal with. The quality is also pretty palatable for picture-in-picture but blow it up full-screen and as with all low-res streaming, it's like watching it through a swimming pool.

This is the fundamental problem with one-size-fits-all-streaming speeds. It's fine for 'catch up in your lunch hour at work viewing' but plug your computer into your LCD/plasma at home and you just can't use it to replace TV.

So while we wait for media boxes to converge and broadband speeds to increase, web TV remains the home for mass niche, passion content to be consumed on the PC (or Mac). In the short-term successful web TV offerings will be areas underserved by linear TV that consumers demand more of. Whether this be a sport (scuba), pastime (wine), search for information (parenting/ travel), or something more mainstream like comedy; your audience is online, hunting and engaging with their interests in an on-demand way.

ITV.com has content, that's for sure. But there's not much there that's a truly cross-platform experience, certainly nothing that's jumping out at me. So if a support channel for their linear channel is what they want with listings of their schedules and a bit of catch up, it's perfect. But for me, it's not.

I'm a total hypocrite because I'd come back to this site on pure nostalgia value every day. The playalong Blockbusters game is the most fun I've had in ages. It's well constructed, addictive and what online entertainment is all about.