Television Next In Line For Industry-Wide Shakeup? 381
New submitter pjlehtim writes "In a recent interview. Samsung's AV product manager, Chris Moseley, said, 'TVs are ultimately about picture quality. ... and there is no way that anyone, new or old, can come along this year or next year and beat us on picture quality.' Sounds familiar? There must be a change in the perceived role of television in the entertainment ecosystem before the general public starts to care about the smart TVs manufacturers are trying to push. That change is likely to come from outside the traditional home entertainment industry. It's not about technology; it is about user experience, again."
"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
User Experience? (Score:5, Insightful)
There ain't much on TV I care about except sports, weather and the occasional movie. The rest is crap.
Smart TV? for what? It's just more stuff that can break. I don't want some smart TV or cable box wigging out on me while the damn game is on.
Television, depending upon your needs (Score:5, Insightful)
Picture quality? Maybe if you're into seeing the pancake makeup and ridiculous quantity of hair gel necessary to make your Sitcom/Soap stars look the way they do. Not going to really help animation at all, a little blur helps hide the sharp contrast of lines. Great for sports, so you can rest assured you're right when you call the ref an idiot for getting the call wrong, while you smugly watch the replays in High Def.
More likely going to find the user experience is more a la carte, as people leave the traditional broadcast, cable, and satellite networks for what they pick and choose over the internet (assuming ISPs don't kill the fledgling market with opressive fees for bandwidth, as IF my piddly 6 Mb/s connection should be considered taxing of their infrastructure. where's 100Mb/s?!?) I'd rather see my shows when it suits me, without even bothering with recording them on a DVR.
The TV itself could have the bits built in, but at the present rate of change I'd prefer an external box which I can upgrade as needed while the big investment, the display, is only bought every 5 or 10 years (or longer apart -- my only TV is really getting on in years, but still works.)
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is right about a couple things: TV UIs suck and remotes suck even more.
My mom can't operate a modern TV. I mean like not AT ALL. If it's anything more challenging than volume up or down, it's too much. She doesn't get it.
There's a bunch of stuff we plug in and want to use now - DLNA clients, DVRs, Home Theater receivers, cable boxes, game machines - and it all works differently and needs some stupid or weird different control, both on-screen and in terms of the control device. The revolution will be the people who make some kind of master overlay and master remote (I love my Harmony but it doesn't go far enough) that handles everything.
Maybe that means a mic or a kinect that lets us talk or gesture. Maybe it means having a little display on a tablet. I don't know. I just know that what we have now is a huge mess.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
PCs are smart and work for you.
TVs will become smart and work against you.
I just want a dumb monitor. (Score:4, Insightful)
Smart TVs are nice for things like streaming for a secondary TV, in a bedroom or basement, where you dont want a bunch of boxes and cables, but for my living room... i have a cable box, i have a game console, i have a networked dvd player. The TV is ONLY a display. This is one place where with some technologies moving as fast as they are, convergence is a bad thing. If some new streaming service comes out, i can reasonably assume theyll have a PS3 app. Depending on how proprietary things are they may not have an app for a smart TV even a few years old. Heck, i dont even need the main TV in the home theater to have speakers, i just want a big dumb good quality monitor with a digital video input. Let my receiver handle all the AV stuff and one or two boxes handle TV and recorded media.
Convergence has its place, its nice having a camera in my phone in my pocket all the time, but i dont want a cheap, prone to mechanical failure, blu-ray player or cheap PC that no one will make software for in 9 months stuck on the side of my nice high end tv.
Hardware is less an issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. I have a modern highend Panasonic plasma. The UI for simple tasks is tolerable, complex tasks are atrocious. I was using a recent high end Sony TV with some XMB UI, even simple tasks were slow and unintuitive. How the average user enjoys these is beyond me.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, if you are happy with a lame smart TV and all the DRM that will inevitably come with it, more power to you. I want my content exactly how I've always got it, and I'm willing to pay for it. EXCEPT nobody has got it right yet, and they never will, so I'll just take it for free.
Re:The problem is resolution (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time we get 4k televisions in production. Screw 3d, screw smart tv, just increase the resolution already. My monitor has higher resolution than my hdtv.
Don't forget about color dept. 1677216 just isn't enough.
Absolutel no reason we shouldn't be at full on 16-bits per channel right now.
My 19", 4:3 monitor from 2002 had higher resolution than my HDTV does today.
Oh, and better picture quality and response times, too.
Not the largest problem (Score:2, Insightful)
By far the largest problem standing between us and mass smart TV adoption is the user interface.
No. By far the biggest problem is that there's no reason for a "smart" TV (whatever that is) when all you can do with it is watch the same junk that's on a dumb TV.
Pretty much any new TV can do that (Score:4, Insightful)
I am interested in a seamless way to use the TV to display what would be on my Laptop otherwise
Pretty much any new TV can do that. Many PCs have HDMI or DVI-D video outputs that plug right into an HDTV's HDMI input. Those that don't can use a VGA cable, as most HDTVs have a VGA input (except, I'm told, in Europe where TVs tend to have a SCART input instead of a VGA input). And until you replace your TV, you can go to SewellDirect.com and buy a PC to TV adapter that converts a VGA signal to an S-Video or composite signal.
Join the HTPC crowd. Indie filmmakers and indie video game developers will thank you.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
But why does that have to be *in* the TV? If all it does is display a video signal at as high of quality as possible, it can last for many years. If you stick a bunch of apps in it, inevitably the CPU or RAM become inadequate, it doesn't have the latest codec support, manufacturers stop supporting the software, whatever. If you keep it separate the display from the "computer" you can replace the latter every year or two and it's no big deal. (note the AppleTV is $100 and an iPad is $500+)
I have gone through at least 3 computers over the lifespan of my 21" LCD monitor (which I still have and love). If I had to pay for a new display every time I upgraded to something that ran the latest games, apps, etc, I'd be really annoyed. Same thing for the 60" plasma I bought last year.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Maybe that means a mic or a kinect that lets us talk or gesture. Maybe it means having a little display on a tablet. I don't know. I just know that what we have now is a huge mess.
I work for a company that is working on the next-gen UI for TVs.
There is a reason that mic's or gestures will never become popular.
They are _invisible_ interfaces.
How is a user supposed to know what the different gestures are? Or what the _available_ voice commands are?
Mic's will never work because they fail on this usage case: If you have an accent the software is fucked.
WIMP (Windows, Image, Mouse/Menu, Pointer) and Keyboards work because you get immediate feedback plus you can directly see the effects of pushing a button, dragging, clicking a menu item, etc.
Tablets? Now I could see that as a possibility.
5 remotes (Score:4, Insightful)
You're spot on. At a friends place 5 remotes to operate a modern TV system. The screen, the dvd, the pvr, the dolby and there was something else but I have no idea what the hell it was.
WTF?
All so I can watch complete crap interrupted every 5 minutes for god damned adverts? Why would I bother to do that? I personally no longer have a TV.
Re:The picture is the least important part (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't so long ago we were playing games using machines which didn't have soundcards (ie business desktops)...
TV on the other hand is largely an evolution from radio.
Fix the remote (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a Tivo, Wii and LG Blu-Ray all plugged into a Yamaha AV amp, which is connected to a Metz TV.
As a result i need:
Two remotes to watch TV (tivo for channel and amp volume, and the TV remote to turn it on/change the AV channel)
two or three remotes to watch a DVD -
Blu-ray + Amp remote + TV remote
trying to explain this to my mother-in-law is painful to say the least.
It's 2012 and all these devices still can't talk to each other, unless they're all from the same manufacturer. They all have their own, incompatible remote control technologies.
Please, TV and home entertainment equipment manufacturers, thrash out a common control communications standard and go with it - eg XML/SOAP over bluetooth or zigBee, or even HDMI, so I can control ALL my AV gear from one remote interface. I don't really care if it's a logitech-style remote or an android app; just give us something that works across manufacturers so i can have one remote to control them all.
The computing power is readily available and cheap, the frameworks all exist to do it - just choose a standard and implement it.
1080p 100Hz TV is good enough, I don't need or want craptastic 3D or a smart TV interface i'll never use. Just focus on the user experience. Make it easy for normal humans to use AV gear.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
But why does that have to be *in* the TV? If all it does is display a video signal at as high of quality as possible, it can last for many years. If you stick a bunch of apps in it, inevitably the CPU or RAM become inadequate, it doesn't have the latest codec support, manufacturers stop supporting the software, whatever.
I suspect this is why they will be joined: Planned obsolescence.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:5, Insightful)
But why does that have to be *in* the TV? If all it does is display a video signal at as high of quality as possible, it can last for many years.
Let me tell you something.... many MANY people can't hook up a TV input to save their lives (or would be glad to avoid having to do that). For every one of you and me who could do this in their sleep, there are probably 3-5 people who either can't or would be very anxious if asked to do so. The vast proliferation of inputs (HDMI, Component, Composite, Coax) and ambiguous and tough setup conspire to make this uncomfortable even to me.
What does this mean in terms of market? It is possible (though not certain) that TV installation and setup could go mainstream and bypass the "knowledgeable enthusiast" and address the lager market of technically incompetent/insecure
Like the iPhone (which at first seemed a bit dumbed down to me, coming from a Treo), if Apple can completely avoid the need for inputs (think plug in power and internet signal (likely wireless), and if you're really pushing it, buy and position auto-connecting bluetooth speakers), these folks could "safely" buy and use a TV without us.
Apple would make a killing - and Siri would be icing on that cake.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno. I have an HTPC and it's kinda a pain in the ass. If Apple can come out with a TV that has a built-in HD, a decent OS, and Siri, that could very well be the sweet spot for a lot of people, including me. "Siri, I'd like to watch the latest episode of Venture Brothers." Boom. Off ya go.
Alternately:
I really don't want to see Apple taking over another market that integrates content and devices. Frankly, I'd rather nobody did. I'll take standards that allow devices to interoperate over an integrated, controlled system any day.
Re:5 remotes (Score:5, Insightful)
Your friend could buy a $10 universal remote and spend the 5 minutes it takes to set it up instead of needing 5 remotes...
And then have the programming go away as soon as the batteries die. I swear universal remotes are great, but why the hell haven't they added 75 cents worth of flash memory to the things to hold the codes permanently? The only ones that seem to do that are the more expensive ones like the Logitech Harmony varieties (which though they are coming down in price, are still a lot more than $10).
Here is what we really want.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Access to good content, all the time, ala-cart, WITHOUT having to pay an arm-and-a-leg for it!
Picture quality is a great thing to have, but content is king. Without access to that, the TV is pointless (ever watch saturday mid-morning TV, when nothing but infomericals is on?).
We should have full access to all channels (broadcast, news, premium, "cable only") via all mediums. Right now, the big cable companies (and a few satellite companies) have everything locked up, when the Internet could easily stream most of the live, broadcast content. I don't want ONE company owning my cable, Internet and TV pipe, so they can collect $150-$200 per month from me. I want a choice!
Apple, Google, whomever: SHAKE THINGS UP
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me tell you something.... many MANY people can't hook up a TV input to save their lives (or would be glad to avoid having to do that)
Eh, I don't think that's really enough of a reason... almost anyone with cable or satellite (which is like 90% or more by now?) now has to hook up a TV input anyway.
With an Apple television they'd also have to hook it up to their home networking (they are unlikely to get 100% of their content from the Internet these days, since content providers have made sure individual TV shows are insanely expensive ($2-3 *per* 23 minute sitcom??) and live events like sports are still not really an option - and yes, mainstream America still likes their live sports ;).
I think you overestimate the complexity of plugging in one HDMI port from a STB to a TV... it's most definitely not at "knowledgeable enthusiast". Not to mention an integrated Apple television this now implies signing up for iTunes, adding a credit card for purchases, etc. Someone resistant to technology is going to balk there far more often than plugging in one cable.
Re:"Smart" TVs? (Score:4, Insightful)
But why does that have to be *in* the TV?
Because, to date, solutions where that stuff is 'outside' the TV have not been wife-friendly.
It has to be *in* the TVs (Score:1, Insightful)
It has to be *in* the TVs because this way you'll buy a new one every year when something shinier comes out. Same as with cell phones.
Every year they'll add some small new feature, then carefully design an ad campaign that will make you feel like a loser because you don't have the latest-greatest. You'll be glad to open your wallet just to feel popular again.
It Is All About Content Control (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not usability, it's all about DRM. The content providers are desperate to keep people from copying or modifying content. It everything is in one box, then you have no where to connect a recording device. Your cable box will be implemented in software instead of a separate piece of hardware that has to be maintained. Providers can change their encryption any time they want by pushing out a new patch, and keeping the "hackers" at bay. You want to record and watch later? There's an extra charge for that, and only on their terms.
Re:User Experience? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sports are crap too. It's just crap you happen to like.
Not all sports are US based.