AP

Mark Cuban just told me advances in cable technology are more exciting than what's happening on the Internet right now.

I caught up with the Internet billionaire who is currently walking around the floor of the National Cable show. Cuban isn't here to speak on a panel or to talk business for HDNet, his high-def cable channel, he told me he's here just to check out all the cool advances happening in the cable space.

The future is all about Interactive TV, a technology called "Tru2Way" that sends messages to and from your cable box.

Cable is already set up to handle massive quantities of information, while broadband will increasingly battle new technologies that take up larger and larger amounts of bandwidth. Cuban asks if there are new technologies to deliver medical information over the web, how will that compete with web video?

Additional bandwidth will help, but Cuban's point is that there's too much uncertainty in the ability to deliver video over the web (let alone high def video). He's guessing that applications will continually advance ahead of bandwidth dollars. In contrast cable is designed for huge amounts of information; and with the new 2-way technology cable will be able to be interactive.

Cuban pointed out that while this cable show is packed, Internet conferences are shut down every week.

He's right to notice: in this economy cable is still thriving.

Cuban is optimistic and confident about the much buzzed about idea to deliver cable content over the web. He's not worried about piracy or people sharing their passwords. It's great to hear such optimism.

And who knows, maybe Cuban will leave here and come up with another startup.

Check out:

• Cable TV companies mull impact of online video
• Piracy Puts X-Men Movie Online A Month Before Open
• Watch: King Of Cable

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