In Consumer Electronics vis a vis the General Public all the ‘Tech Specialists’ of the world assume that everyone understands technology the way they do. The world is naturally more sophisticated, people are more tech savvy and there is definitely a trend towards a better understanding of a very complex TV world but fundamentally we must not believe all the hype. Most people do not understand television technology (80%)! Even High Definition is confusing to people. In fact a recent report in the Telegraph regarding real transmission quality amongst the UK HD broadcasters only highlighted that the average consumer is being duped…by the very industry that is selling the new technology dream.
Most people (80%) do not use but a minuscule part of their ‘smart device’ no matter what the technologists believe. Forbid that it goes wrong and an error message pops up…then what? We do not automatically all understand and fix the problem and then carry on … we often see that the device loses that functionality and we have a reduced service or usage. Due to the complexity there will be an increase in the need to support devices, people and the whole convergence issue brings many, many of those requirements which have been left un-budgeted.
The demise of Internet TV (the 1st time around) was due to the fact that it cost too much to support (After Sales) that it was financially a burden to those that tried to deploy it (Microsoft at the time). The complexity of device, software updates and driver updates cannot be underestimated. An iPhone on average requests over 150MegaBytes of data each week to keep Apps ‘up to date’…Something that the TV has been able to avoid so far.
Putting all devices in one is also a cyclic affair…HiFi went as a unit and then back to separates and back to single device, Fax-Scanner-Printer same story – Lose one piece and you lose it all.
Smart TV is only another story in the long history of consumer electronics and its need to Converge, Diverge, Converge … 20 % of us really understand.
Tvangelist 