UBER BE SCARED – It appears that you have a new competitor – The wonderful world of HBBTV has delivered its latest ‘App’ and it may rock the Taxi App World of the Smart-Phone … I cannot imagine when you might be watching TV and suddenly think – I will order a Taxi ! … Well the Czech Republic thinks so. Good luck with that!
Once upon a time we switched on the TV and watched a programme or two, in the evening after we had tea, when the kids were in bed and it was time to settle down to relax. TV Time was limited as the TV signal would shut down at night and eight-year-old Carole Hersee would appear (in the UK at least). We had a choice amongst Light Entertainment and Drama, Documentaries, News and Sport all chosen for us and delivered when somebody else thought best.
Life is a little different now because:
Today we want TV at Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere and we want to watch What We Want, When We Want, Where We Want. We want to watch Live TV, with the use of Pause and Rewind Live TV. And if we miss missed the beginning of something we need Start Over TV so that we can go back to the beginning of the programme that we have joined late. We need Catch-Up TV for shows we have missed. We need to Store Live TV programmes for later viewing on a Hard Drive (Personal Video Recorder) or a Removable Storage device with the possibility of using Series Recording for Binge Watching. We also want to be able to Side Load content onto a Companion Device to consume later when in the garden, or perhaps travelling on a bus or train. We want a Whole Home PVR system or Network PVR so that we can have Follow Me TV that allows us to start watching in one room and then take the content into another room and join it from where we left off in the other room. We want Companion Screen driven TV Everywhere so we can Throw and Fetch programmes from those devices to different screens in the home. We want Over The Top TV so we can have non-Linear content and not be restricted to a Schedule. We want Interactive TV with Applications that allow us access to Weather, or Horoscope or Games and a lot of other stuff all delivered over the Cloud and Home Network. We want to be able to Search for, and Recommend content to other people on Social Media. We don’t want this on a STB or CPE we want all of this on a Smart or Connected TV, in 3D or Ultra HD 4K or perhaps Super Ultra HD 8K. We need it in High Dynamic Range, so that we get the best quality on a Curved OLED, millimetre thick, Flatscreen TV: 24 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week, 365 Days of the Year completely uninterrupted.
TV Content has however NOT broken the boundaries that technology has. Geo-Blocking, Distribution Rights, Landing Rights, Syndication, Franchising and all that shenanigans is hindering and hampering not helping, other than to further slow the transformation of TV – Perhaps that is a good thing?
Throw out your TV – TV as we know it is dead! There is a flourish of articles on the demise of PayTV with headlines such as ‘The Future of Television – Can Cable Survive?’ which I saw in Forbes online. All you youngsters who claim you dont need a TV subscription because its available cheaper elsewhere will have a shock coming when the money runs out and all you are left with is re-runs of old Films, Programmes and Documentaries….All of you out there that want ‘a la carte’ – That is: ‘what-you-want-when-you-want-where-you-want’, need to know what that will mean in terms of revenue and the financing of the content arm of the media industry. Despite the age of this post it is still relevant today and it is a subject also well covered by Mark Cuban a more famous blogger than I.
39 Billion Dollars in 2010 and probably higher around 50 Billion Dollars today feeds the Content Creation industry. If you talk about the demise of traditional PayTV you should also, in the same breath, talk about the demise of the Content industry. Please check out this very good discussion on the subject: How TV Content is Funded
When you don’t go to a Trade Show that you have been regularly visiting for the past 8-10 years it is a slightly uncomfortable feeling. It sort of feels like you are missing out on something…but are you really? CES is after all a gadget show and do we need to go if we are not Retailers of Consumer Electronics? What a lot of people do not know is that there is a lot going on behind the scenes in more of a Business-2-Business nature; especially in the Television world that I move in. A lot of networking takes place, and a lot of ‘private suites’ allow for plenty of businessmen to gather, show of their wares in private, discuss and potentially deal-make!
However as a ‘tech journalist’ you might think that things have a different allure. Certainly the BBC’s writer David Pogue has just publishd a very poignant article from his perspective. It can be found in full here: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130104-does-ces-have-a-future
His outlook is that there is mostly years of repetition of technology along with what I call ‘catch-up’ Companies there ‘en-masse’ with cheaper but the same gadgets from the year before and therefore swamping the floors, the industry and the news with old stuff in effect. There is also a decline in the Big Companies with Microsoft having pulled out! Apple is not there either and if Apple is not there how can it truly be called THE Consumer Electronic Show? Qualcomm even did the keynote speech this year – Qualcomm?
Another journalist from our immediate industry Leslie Ellis pointed out that the the trending products were waterpoofing gadgets for your smartphones and tablets. I suspect the Hunting Knife Company and the Mini Flying Helicopters will still be there in the South Hall and that Spearmint Rhino will still get its CES clientele. Ummm, so what is it I miss?
Well in all honestly I do miss it as it kicks off the business year with a hectic, manic traipse around Vegas! Therefore life without an early dose of CES certainly makes for a less-tired more calculated start to 2013.
People in the UK have recently claimed in a survey there was too much choice and they are overwhelmed. The ordinary person in the street has trouble fitting a plug or changing a light-bulb and we completely over estimate the intelligence of the ‘average joe’ (as they are called in the USA) with respect to Television mechanics. Clearly we have a new generation, we advance, we learn…but do we offer anything other than the swamping of the masses with TV Everywhere? Youngsters who consume “more” today mostly on their laptops will develop different viewing habits to us oldies (like try to avoid paying like they do for music) that is sure but they eventually turn into ‘hard-working’ adults where viewing takes place from 8pm to midnight and on weekends only! – They will have families to visit, friends, play sports, go out, go on holiday, get married, have children and their lives will fill up. They will regress to tired TV watching like we all do in the main.
The very exercise that you all talk of (cord cutting, TV everywhere, Search for what you want etc). I have asked ordinary folk (i.e. non TV execs) to do – they give up searching after 15 minutes, they get tired, bored and fed-up very quickly or frustrated and then go to look for now and next (linear TV) and they are not content after a long day in the office to sit down and search for what they want when they want where they want. That is the premise nay the mantra that we live by in the TV industry today but it is far from the truth or reality. The majority of Cable in Europe is still heavily analogue. Satellite cannot go OTT readily. Even AppleTV functions well but requires effort to find something even if it is simple to use, it requires conscious effort. The PVR gives huge additional viewing. OTT costs money in time, equipment and will eventually in subscription fees all round. We are a long way from the final landscape of TV it is becoming very much overwhelming what we can do with the same set of TV programmes that are in the main repeats (back-catalogue). Linear TV still makes it easy for the viewer, taking the strain out of selecting something to clear the mind, entertain after a long day in the office or playing with the kids in the park. We are even overwhelmed by the amount of news there is about new TV technologies…I wish to be here in 50 years to see what it turns into…I wont!
I just realised my Fax has and continues to serve me well. I hope I can still get the Ribbon for it…Long live Great and Useful Technology….that has a huge ROI.
Tvangelist 