Your Next TV Interface Will Be a Tablet 210
waderoush writes "You can forget all the talk about 'smart' and 'connected' TVs: nobody, not even Apple, has come up with an interface that's easy to use from 10 feet away. And you can drastically curtail your hopes that Roku, Boxee, Netflix, and other providers of free or cheap 'over the top' Internet TV service will take over the world: the cable and satellite companies and the content owners have mounted savvy and effective counterstrikes. But there's another technology that really will disrupt the TV industry: tablet computing. The iPad, in particular, is the first 'second screen' device that's good enough to be the first screen. This Xconomy column argues that in the near future, the big-screen TV will turn into a dumb terminal, and your tablet — with its easy-to-use touch interface and its 'appified' approach to organizing content — will literally be running the show in your living room." Using a tablet as a giant remote seems like a good idea, and a natural extension of iPhone and Android apps that already provide media-center control. Maybe I'm too easily satisfied, but the 10-foot interface doesn't seem as hopeless as presented here; TiVo, Apple, and others been doing a pretty good job of that for the past decade.
My big screen already is a dumb terminal (Score:5, Insightful)
Has been for decades, without external network access it does nothing, I have to plug it in to cable, radio or computers for it to be useful.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, but it won't be an iPad (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll probably see a generation of remotes that look more like a e-reader, with a nonvolatile display. Most tablet devices require charging daily, if not more often. TV remotes today only need batteries once every few years.
Re:That's pretty presumpyuous. (Score:4, Insightful)
Two hands (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what I need. A two-handed remote.
Please pass the chips.
Re:So you need a remote for everyone in the househ (Score:5, Insightful)
Within that timeframe, everyone will already have one; a smart phone.
Think of the "smart TV" as having a web api: you see a second screen icon on your 'phone, drag a video onto it, the TV (in reality a computer) starts displaying that: pulling content directly not necessarily "X forwarded"
(it would be insane wasting wireless bandwidth in the house supplying a heavy bandwidth SuperHD device that-sits-in-one-place. Control it by wifi, but its main content over a wire.
Re:Buttons required (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of TV is to veg out and channel surf. It's called an "idiot box" for reason.
I disagree. One way of using a TV is to channel surf through lots of crap. Another way is to pull up a queue of shows you're interested in and watch one of the ones on top. Another way is to pull up a specific show or movie via search o by inserting a disc. Yet another way is to watch a genre specific channel of shows.
You're making the mistake of thinking one use case (maybe one you prefer) is and will remain the dominant use case. Current TV remotes are optimized for that use case and they really, really, really suck for most of the others. Navigating a list of shows for on demand TV, for example, is painfully bad.
Anything that takes your eyes off the screen ruins the experience.
For channel surfing one could have a modal interface with two huge buttons to prevent one having to take their eyes off the screen, but it is not clear this will remain a common use case when televisions are networked and more capable. For things like selecting a Netflix show (for example), I'd rather have a handy tablet to select from a list where I can type in search terms and touch the titles directly. trying to use a keyboard or remote where I need to type letters, while looking up at a big screen is no fun at all.
Kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do any of the people advocating using a $500 tablet as a remote to my $800 TV have any kids? The remote has been dropped more times than I can count (and that's just from me, not including the kids). It's regularly coated with chocolate, popcorn butter, and other food residue, and has survived more than one bath in coke.
When my wife wants the remote, I just toss it to her across the room, something I'm not likely to do when it's a heavy tablet (even if I wasn't worried about her missing it and having it crash to the floor).
I don't want a tablet to control my TV, I want a rugged remote and I don't want to add 50% (or even 10%) to the cost of the TV by having to purchase a tablet to control it.
Re:So you need a remote for everyone in the househ (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the contention is that if you chose not to have a tablet, you will be made by marketing types to feel increasingly marginalized, just as if you chose not to have a Pet Rock, Chia Pet, Billy the Big Mouth Bass, computer, a cell phone, or some form of transportation. If you will be a luddite or intelligent enough not to buy into the hype, that is your right, but it comes with some costs and many benefits.
Increasingly in other areas such as automobiles, useless features are appearing that are only accessible to those with iPhones or iPads, they are really cool the first three times you use them, they cost almost nothing to the manufacturer, but add to both the purchase price and maintenance costs of the product and they will only be supported for a few years. It's like not having a PC in the 1990s: sure, you don't have to have one, but there is a bunch of stuff that you shouldn't care about and won't be able to do as a result. It's your choice how to make that tradeoff. Stay in the past, if you'd prefer, but don't bitch about the things you can't do as society moves on, or you can keep up with the Joneses / modern life, which is increasingly mobile-centric, and that's only going to accelerate paralleling the decline of modern society / education / freedom over the next decade.
FTFY