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A question of intelligence
At CES 2012, consumers were inundated with 'smart' products: smart cameras, smart watches, smart washing machines, smart baby scales and a plethora of smart toilets. Indeed, you would have to delve far to find a product category that has not claimed some sort of sentient intelligence, noted ED BORDER, Research Analyst at HIS Screen Digest.
The prefix 'smart' has become synonymous with the notion of internet connectivity. With this is lost the essence of what actually makes a device 'smart'. Certainly internet connectivity is a necessary condition for a 'smart' device, opening up as it does a whole realm of possibilities, but it is not purely a sufficient condition - a truly 'smart' device should leverage connectivity to enhance the device's capabilities while simplifying user experience.
Take smartphones as an example. Here, a relatively simple device, the phone, has been enhanced by two key concepts: optimised websites and downloadable applications designed for smaller screen sizes. Pedants can still argue about the use of the word 'smart' here, this was a clear product upgrade, and one worthy of a superlative prefix to make it stand out.
So, now we move onto smart TVs, one of the products of the moment in the consumer electronics segment. Internet-enabled TVs (lETVs) have been around since 2008, and in their earliest incarnations simply appended specific internet video, typically national catch-up/on-demand services and/or YouTube to existing linear TV.
However, smart TVs are a relatively new creature, with popular use of the term formalising around the turn of 2011, and the specific categorisation is as yet unclear. The IETV industry is currently a hotpot of proprietary platforms, with all major global TV manufacturers, Google and (it's rumoured) Apple entering the fray, leading to an impressive level of different interpretations of the smart TV.
Yet, if we consider the purpose of the TV, we can begin to consider how we might leverage internet connectivity. The mobile phone is essentially a social device; the PC was originally a productivity tool; and the TV is for watching content. And just as the smartphone allowed optimised access to social internet functionality, the smart TV needs to allow optimised access to internet video content.
Simply porting over the notion of downloadable applications or a fixed set of social programs to the TV is futile - internet video and traditional TV need be integrated within the set, and the user's experience should be agnostic between content sources. There may well be a small market for social TV in the future, but this augments, rather than reinforces, the fundamental purpose of the TV.
However, internet video is not uniformly available. Contrary to the social internet, which is largely predicated on sharing information as much as possible, the distribution and viewing rights of premium video on the internet depends on agreements between pay TV operators and channel owners. Whether TV manufacturers (and other third parties) can negotiate similar access to this premium content (either through deals with pay TV operators or aggregators, such as Netflix) will determine the strengths of their platforms.
Should such content become available to the platforms, the next step will be developing user-specific search, within a simple user interface. Targeted recommendation on the TV has struggled thus far, and it may take a technological leap such as voice or recognition software to advance this area.
Ultimately, these exact issues are also being mulled over by pay TV operators, who are launching multiscreen and hybrid services to allow their subscribers to view both premium and free content on a range of connected devices. With the natural advantage of already being in a billing relationship with consumers, we may move towards a future where 'smart TV' is delivered to pay TV customers by the operator (either through a set-top box or via the internet) and to free customers by their IETV platform of choice.
Contact: www.screendigest.com
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On predicting the future
Predicting the future, let alone the future of packaged media, is a perilous exercise, and possibly counter-productive, as the exercise closes doors rather than keep them open, argues JEAN-LUC RENAUD, DVD Intelligence publisher. Consider that: Apple was left nearly for dead 15 years ago. Today, it became the world's most valuable technology company, topping Microsoft.
Le cinéma est une invention sans avenir (the cinema is an invention without any future) famously claimed the Lumière Brothers some 120 years ago. Well. The cinématographe grew into a big business, even bigger in times of economic crisis when people have little money to spend on any other business.
The advent of radio, then television, was to kill the cinema. With a plethora of digital TV channels, a huge DVD market, a wealth of online delivery options, a massive counterfeit underworld and illegal downloading on a large scale, cinema box office last year broke records!
The telephone was said to have no future when it came about. Today, 5 billion handsets are in use worldwide. People prioritize mobile phones over drinking water in many Third World countries.
No-one predicted the arrival of the iPod only one year before it broke loose in an unsuspecting market. Even fewer predicted it was going to revolutionise the economics of music distribution. Likewise, no-one saw the iPhone coming and even fewer forecast the birth of the developers' industry it ignited. And it changed the concept of mobile phone.
Make no mistake, the iPad will have a profound impact on the publishing world. It will bring new players, and smaller, perhaps more creative content creators.
And who predicted the revival of vinyl?
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