Smart TV FAIL. Let's go back to the Idiot Box.

Having observed the whole ‘connected tv’ phenomenon first hand since my early days at YouTube, contributing to XBMC since its inception and being really interested in this space personally, I am very upset with the direction where Smart TV is going.

I think that the future should not include 'Apps on TV', 'Browser on TV', and its also not 'Read Facebook or Check Email on the TV'. They are terrible to use and there are some fundamental reasons why they will never be good:

TV is a consumption device for media (photos, videos and music).
An average TV is a few feet away from the user. This makes it difficult to read any text that is not blown up to the size of subtitles.
It is also a shared device, so anything that is relatively personal (like email) is not practical to use on the TV.
The interface on TV is simple: Big menu items and Big boxes. Anything beyond this gets cluttered up because of its size restrictions.
It is really awesome at what it does: Play media. It sucks at almost everything else.

Now, if you look at the trends that are happening (for TV space):

Facebook / Email / Twitter / Browser on TV
Big fancy keyboards connected to TV
Reading news on TV
Searching for content on TV
Different apps on TV

All these are enabled by connecting the TV to the internet. TVs have become more smarter in the last 5 years than they have ever been, and everyone is itching to get on board with these new capabilities.

However, I think that loading TV with all these features is going to fail.

An ideal TV experience should be:

Use TV as a dumb device to play content from any source - brodcast, internet or somewhere in between.
Give it a minimal interface so its easy to play this content, like play / pause / next.
Use an additional device (Laptop, Phone, Tablet, etc) to control the programming.

This way, next time you want to watch Netflix or listen to Pandora, you can go Netflix.com (or open its app on your smartphone) and select 'Play on TV'. No dealing with confusing interfaces, no app crashes on the TV.

However, this is not happening due to a variety of reasons:

There are no 'standards' around this. I cannot build a TV that supports standard X, which will enable it to play content from different sources directly without writing native apps.
A TV without interface doesn't look 'sexy'. You can't show-off that it has 'no interface'. Except if you are apple :).
The TV will need a companion device which actually has the interface. It can be a tablet, laptop, phone or even the source / website itself.

Imagine if we had to have apps for every channel that we have subscribed to on your Cable or Dish network, all with a different UI. This is where Smart TV is going right now.

Apple is the only company that has done at-least something on these lines, via AirTunes and now AirPlay that is directly integrated in iOS. Its still a bit clunky to use, but definitely a step in the right direction.

In the end, the primary role of a TV is to play content, and trying to make them ‘Smart’ is like putting lipstick on a pig.

Hopefully we will see a TV that has no interface, can be fully controlled via my tablet, and can play just about anything from everywhere.

Comments

None (June 17, 2012):

www.noncamerasmartphones.blogspot.com

Phone Guru (September 01, 2012):

Thanks a lot !!!!

www.noncamerasmartphones.com

None (August 31, 2013):

The Rocket Droid Pc is a device that is aiming to be the most powerful portable mini Android dongle. It will plug directly into the HDMI port of any TV and instantly turn it into kick-butt SMART TV - bringing all the power of an Android Mobile Phone to your previously boring TV! SMART TV

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