Today’s WSJ updates the long developing convergence of TV and the Internet. This is not breaking news, but steady progress toward an eventuality.
One point that is missing in the article is: Once TVs become web enabled, they will also become web video enabled. 90 million web video enabled TVs will drive more viewing time of web video, and will require significant infrastructure for video in the cloud.
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TV Shapes Up as Web Battleground, The Wall Street Journal, page A30
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125366988207032789.html
A few interesting excerpts:
Convergence between the television and the home computer — a holy grail of the digital age — has largely eluded the industry, but the living-room screen is now emerging as a key battleground for software and Internet companies.
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While challenges remain, including technical issues and the reluctance of parts of the entertainment industry, companies are building chips and Web browsers for TVs
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“Five years ago people said they didn’t want email on their phones, now everyone uses data,” said Patrick Barry, a senior executive at Yahoo. “The television environment is going through the same transition.”
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Until recently, standard TV sets lacked the processing power for the Web, but manufacturers like Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Vizio Inc. are installing chips that can run more sophisticated computing tasks.
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Research firm iSuppli forecasts that the total number of Web-enabled sets will grow to between 88 million and 90 million world-wide by 2013, around 40% of the television market. There are around 90 models on the market that are Web-enabled, it says.
I don’t take the leap that Web browsing on TVs will be a direct extension of browsing habits on PCs. Will TV-based browsers be fully enabled and capable of displaying all media types? Will navigation be directed through menus or by entering links via a keyboard-like interface? Just because a TV has a web browser doesn’t mean its ability to view videos will be pleasing given the contrast to the quality of broadcast video. Initially web content will augment broadcast and provide overlays, widgets and less demanding content displays.
Jeff makes some good points, but I tend to think that he underestimates the consumers’ discontent with the current delivery systems (i.e, cable TV). While quality is fun, it’s kind of like having a great stereo system in the 1970s. Those systems costing $1,000s were great for the audiophiles but have given way to the MP3 world. People are now happy to have their music on an iPod because it provides much more choice, more convenience, and is less costly overall. There is a similarity with TV. Cable is viewed as mostly a rip-off ($70-per-month bundles and still so little to watch) but dominates because there is so little choice in the market place. I think people will be happy to sacrifice some level of quality to have a more closely tailored and less expensive diet of video (and escape the clutches of Comcast).