Bill Gates chooses not to waste time burnishing words. “I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had,” he spluttered, barely coherently, during a speech he gave at an international conference earlier this year. “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!”

As well as furnishing us with a slightly scary insight into Gates’s world, his comments reflect a growing impatience that smoulders in the hearts of all technophiles. Internet TV has been touted as the next big thing for years, yet for a long time the only content on offer was thin YouTube fare: dull amateur videos, illegal rip-offs, or glorified adverts.

But at last things are starting to happen – yesterday the BBC launched its online catchup service, iPlayer, making all its programmes available to watch again for seven days after transmission. Channel 4’s on-demand service is already well established, and even pottery old ITV is gearing up to follow suit.

There’s talk, too, of a joint venture, known as Project Kangaroo, which would operate as a single access point for all TV channels on the web, and bring some much-needed clarity to a process that involves spending lots of time registering your details and downloading bespoke software for each provider.

So what’s taken so long? Well, for some time the internet has been batting its eyelashes at the TV industry, it’s just that TV couldn’t decide whether to be seduced or repulsed. On the one hand, there was the threat of being left behind as a younger generation stomped up to its bedroom to commune with its virtual friends. On the other, there was an instinctive desire to hold on to the shreds of power. TV was not going to give up its golden goose – its expensively made programmes and ruthlessly negotiated rights deals – without being convinced that it was getting something pretty snazzy out of the deal.

Now that broadband is coming of age, TV seems to have cracked its mindset problem: makers will loosen their grip on their programmes in return for more intimacy with their viewers. For commercial channels, this will translate into rich rewards in the form of highly targeted advertising, while the BBC will be able to maintain its all-important audience share. So, in future we will be invited to “lean back” (it’s media jargon, bear with it) to watch, say, a downloaded episode of Doctor Who, then “lean forward” (do you see?) to take part in the latest I-love-David-Tennant discussion online.

Of course, some of us may find this prospect highly resistible, opting, after a hard day’s work, to slump happily into a cushioned torpor, preferably with our feet up and a packet of chocolate digestives to hand. But even this demographic may be tempted to interact if the process is made simple enough, say believers. This is why the holy grail of internet TV is the convergence of all media into a single box of tricks.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of new media and technology, calls this “the missing ten yards of railway track”, and has done a deal with Virgin to pipe internet TV into cable set-top boxes as soon as possible; it can’t be long before all TVs have broadband built in. The idea is that once we realise we can boss our TVs about without reading a 250-page manual first, we’ll wonder what possessed us ever to sit through Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares just because it was on.

The truth is, the more technology seeps into our lives, the more people are getting used to being in control and even starting to preen themselves over their ability to customise an electronic persona, to choose favourites, give feedback or be offered personal recommendations. Traditional TV already feels a bit clunky, like using a rotary phone and being amazed at how long it takes to dial a zero. Unfortunately, much of the web TV that’s out there at the moment has barely got past the Trim-Phone stage, but they’re working on it. Poor Bill Gates is still waiting, incoherent with rage, for the guy to talk about the thing. But at least more of us are now starting to feel his pain.

BBC iPlayer (www.bbc.co.uk )

Like BBC radio’s hugely popular “listen again” service, this promises to be a hit as long as it proves easy enough to use and watch. What’s happening this week is known as a “beta launch” – in other words, you register your interest and then users are gradually activated, building the numbers over time so as not to crash the system. It’s a chance to iron out any problems before a full launch in the autumn. The idea is simple – with the exception of sport and some imports, the whole of BBC TV’s output will be available free to “watch again” for a week after transmission. Ashley Highfield, head of the BBC’s new media department, hopes the service will eventually be available not just on your PC but on cable, mobiles, Macs and smart hand-held devices.

4OD (www.4od.com )

The first off the blocks with on-demand content, Channel 4’s service launched last December, though it’s also operating as a trial. Quite a chunk of its programmes are available online. There are rights problems – the channel relies more on US imports than the BBC – but these contract problems are expected to disappear once online TV is mainstream. You have 30 days to watch each download; if you start watching and have to switch off halfway, you have only two days to view the rest before it expires. The biggest gripe so far is that it’s still available only to Windows users, leading to howls from the Mac pack – Channel 4 is working on this. On the plus-side the site is easy to use, and classic programmes such as Spaced are offered.

Joost (www.joost.com )

Like iPlayer and 4OD, Joost is at the “beta-testing” stage, and in this case you have to be “invited” by a current user to access the content. In practice, this isn’t too difficult – the site has links to blogs full of people happy to oblige, and currently 900,000 users have signed up.

Joost is owned by the Dutch entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who co-founded the internet phone service Skype before flogging it to eBay for $2.6 billion. With investment from CBS and Viacom, they have secured some big-ticket shows such as CSI for their US service. They’re still in the process of signing deals for the UK site, though it already boasts programmes from Aardman Animations and MTV, and is very slick and easy to use.

Babelgum (www.babelgum.com )

This Italian-owned site is similar to Joost, but with a slightly different emphasis. Its name encapsulates the idea of bringing a “Babel” of global audiences together via the gluey “gum” of internet TV, and its slogan, “Every audience has got a niche”, sums up its vision of providing special-interest programming that might never find a big audience in a single country but which has enough appeal around the world to make it commercially interesting.

Unlike Joost, its entire content is available worldwide, and though it’s all in English for now, the idea is to branch out into Spanish, Mandarin and other languages. It’s at the “open testing” stage, so you don’t need an invite to join up, but you will need a PC rather than a Mac at the moment.

BT Vision

The telecommunications giant is attacking the web TV conundrum from a different angle, packaging a high-quality freeview receiver with a broadband connection so that viewers can watch, pause and record their regular TV shows as well as downloading extra programmes from the internet. These include movies, kids’ shows, music and, from August, a sports service.

You watch via a normal television set rather than your computer screen, which BT hopes will make the process of transition easier for the technologically reluctant. The downside is cost – a hefty installation fee of £60, plus regular payments for a broadband contract with BT. The set-top box, for the moment, is free, and you don’t need a computer if you really don’t want one.

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