Tag: Digital TV

If I Can Talk To My TV Aren’t TV Apps Dead?

Posted on by tvangelist

The subject of this piece is navigation, search and recommendation on modern day television platforms. The standard way of navigating through the hundreds of channels via the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) is heavily criticised. The EPG is called antiquated; Linear TV channel and programme line-ups are very old-fashioned is all we hear.  Surely we have a better system?  We know we do and it is called Apps!  The future of Television is Apps is it not?  After all we do Apps on the telephone, tablet, so why not on the TV? Let’s have an Apps dashboard approach for the navigation of content.

Simple! Errrm! Nope!

An Apps driven navigation platform expects everyone to have a mental programme/film database for the plethora of coloured tiles (Apps) that hide content within them.  As we split the content into a myriad of ‘coloured tiles’ on an interface, we all start only watching the top ten that we can remember.  There are thousands of programmes that do not get watched, not because the content is bad,  but because it just never appears anywhere.  Then the Apps all need to fight it out for prime position on the 42″ screen. Everyone wants to be the only entertainment theatre in town, so it is a real-estate war (As it is on the EPG).  Just as in Google search if you are not on the 1st page between 1 and 10 you are purportedly toast.  Android TV just added 600 Apps.  This is just the start.  So is there an answer to rid us of all of this fragmented, App, coloured tile, buried content complexity?  Can we offer a better system that makes it easier for the consumer? Well, it seems we can. It is already deployed. It is called voice!

“Hello! Is it ME your looking for?” Yes, we can just talk to the device and ask it for something to watch. Yes, we can just ask the device for a particular film, programme or TV personality and the system will present all the options available to us across the TV eco-system. It is called Universal Search and it is a new way of navigating the millions of programmes available on the system. Simple! As we travel around all the TV business to business seminars, people are raving about this new system and how this system is the saving grace for accessing all TV content.

Wait a minute! Does this not mean the end of the App? Because in the case of Universal Search it quite honestly does not matter behind which brand a particular content features anymore, does it? It’s just stored somewhere, and we ask for it with voice and then it is presented in a selectable list. No need to bother yourself with what sits behind what App; woohoo! Who cares whether it is is Hulu or Netflix, or NowTV or Roku or ESPN or Disney it is the content that we want to watch … So we just ask for the content and it will appear!

Simple.

Wait a minute! As we will never see anything presented in any format in this new buried content paradigm how will we get to know what content is available across all of our services connected to our TV? Perhaps we can go back to the old paper TV Guide and can look up content that is available (Like a Karaoke Catalogue) and then holler to the device so it can do all the work. The TV industry can then stop wasting money on all this Apps malarkey and the need for continual software upgrading, supporting of all their complex individual back-ends et al. The TV world can just fill a big repository with wonderful content and go about promoting it…We as consumers will get what we want when we want where we want, by asking for it…and in any language.

Wait a Minute! How will the content be monetized? Well, as it will be true ‘a la carte’, so you only pay for what you watch, or not, if it is Ad supported.

Simple.

I believe that Amazon has already hatched this plan …

PayTV Thriving – The Threat of OTT is OVERSTATED

Posted on by tvangelist

I have spent the last few days listening to several Analysts and many TV professionals give their opinions on the state  of the TV market both worldwide and in their regions – We as delegates sit and usually suffer death by Powerpoint at these conferences.   Sometimes the speakers are good but in the main they are sales pitches and that is tiring…However TVConnect CEE was not that sort of event.

The quality of the material, intensity of the speakers and the reality delivered by all the speakers was very good.  What was highlighted is that there is too much ‘noise’ concerning the death of traditional PayTV due to the rise of OTT.  This merely shrouds the reality as the following statistics divulge.

  • There is a SATURATION of OTT services; that we know
  • However PayTV is in GROWTH mode everywhere
  • The press needs its daily does of Netflix but Netflix success reality is also somewhat different
  • Netflix will build a BIG subscriber base but many of them will be PayTV Subscribers
  • In the USA OTT revenue is only circa 9% of PayTV revenues
  • The traditional Disc market (DVD & BluRay) annual revenues are higher than OTT
  • The THREAT from OTT is OVERSTATED

For the last 5 years OTT has dominated the conversation however OTT has hardly made any impact on traditional services…PayTV was shaken by the entrance of these pretenders to the throne, however it has adapted and continues to react positively in order to change the business to both retain and grow the PayTV customer base.

 

 

Bundles: TV is Merely Changing the Transmission Media Not The Business Model

Posted on by tvangelist

TV Will Never Be Free
TV Will Never Be Free

Telco managed TV services (i.e. IPTV) had a great deal of issues obtaining content and it struggled terribly.  Some thought it would be built on UGC (User Generated Content).  However #YouTube stole that crown.  Many Telcos bundled it with the Broadband offer and then ticked you off as a TV Subscriber; whether you watched it or not.  Unfortunately it offered a lesser experience and needed linear TV to make it palatable to the average consumer.  In the main, people just want to be fed TV programmes and not have to be their own ‘channel-line-up’ producer each time they sit in front of the box.  We are inherently lazy and Millenials are no different – If anything their attention span kills the theory of sitting down and selecting a nights viewing by App scanning; especially after a hard days work on a screen.

This New Yorker (below) story about bundles growing on Internet or Web TV is fascinating as it looks at the TV Subscription angle.  However I felt that the story should have dug much deeper.  The author should have looked at the garnered revenue from subscriptions and investigated where that money relates to content:  i.e. Explore the way content is funded because this is also an important factor in the business model of TV and the bundle, be it over-the-air, over cable or over the Internet.  Here is an article that @TimWu could reference: http://abovethecrowd.com/2010/04/28/affiliate-fees-make-the-world-go-round/ 

Here is the full New Yorker Article:
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-dreaded-bundle-comes-to-internet-tv

Extract:
“But those who predicted that the Internet would kill the bundle may have spoken too soon. Internet TV, in fact, is now growing its own bundle—the so-called “neo-bundle.” This year, Dish television and Sony have begun selling a version of Internet television that centers on a bundle, albeit one that is smaller and cheaper that the original offered by cable companies. Dish’s Sling is the most exciting and enticing: it offers ESPN and twenty other channels for twenty dollars a month. (You add an extra fifteen dollars if you want HBO). Sony’s Vue has fifty or so channels, for fifty dollars a month, but no ESPN or HBO. Apple, meanwhile, is likely to launch its own version in the fall.

In short, instead of the Internet killing the bundle, the bundle is coming to the Internet; it would not be surprising if, in the next year or two, half a dozen more neo-bundlers join the game. This may come as a surprise to those who expected the television of the future to resemble, say, a smartphone screen, where every channel would be roughly like an app that you subscribe to à la carte. But overestimating change in the television industry is a rookie mistake.”

P.S. By the way, RabbitTV already bundles ‘free-content’ for you for a small fee.  Which gives kudos to my theory that we are all lazy when it comes to TV viewing.  “I’ll pay 10 bucks to someone to do it for me instead so I can just watch it instead of wasting all that time searching & selecting.”

CONTENT IS STILL ALL THE YESTERDAYS OF TOMORROW’S TV

Posted on by tvangelist

This Was TV Yesterday-2Once 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?

Open Source for TV – Does Canonical Hold The Key?

Posted on by tvangelist

There has been quite a few initiatives around the Open Source aspect for Software in the Digital TV domain. Open Source is not Standardisation but in effect it is, if it becomes ubiquitous.

The lowest common denominator for the software is a decent OS stack and Engine. Canonical has the foundation upon which to build an Open Source model for the TV industry. Will ‘people’ allow that to happen? That all depends on the age old problem of ‘politics’.

HbbTV Needs to Up Its Game If It Wants To Win!

Posted on by tvangelist

There is many a debate (especially on the TV Forums of LinkedIn) surrounding the Interactive TV Specification of HbbTV.  Many people are already hailing its success due to the fact that it has been selected in a handful of countries with interest and deployment growing elsewhere.  Even the DTG in the UK has added an HbbTV profile to its D-Book Spec.

Like Docsis versus the DVB-Return Channel specification the industry driven HbbTV spec has beaten a DVB consortium developed product.  Notably the same supporting Companies are in both camps in order to hedge their bets.  Actually  they are merely choosing sides and subversively working against the specification that they do not actually support as a business?  I have, in the past complained about this act to no avail.  I have also highlighted this issue of fragmentation at SDO level, to no avail, especially as the world of TV and Broadband collide!  No organization (i.e EU/EC) has evoked any initiatives around the need to  ‘merge’ these disparitive groups in order to harmonise all the work, thus avoiding, in the main, huge Corporate wastage of effort and manpower.  Millions upon millions of dollars are spent in duplicated tracks of work.  We live with it.   The DVB and OIPF/HbbTV divergence will possibly cause more fragmentation than is necessary despite liaison between the groups.  The DVB must address this issue quickly in order to help the market roll-out of this homogenised interactive system for DVB networks – Perhaps it is too late for that?  Docsis managed to be successful without the DVB, so was CI+ until it was pulled back in to the consortium.  Has a precedence been set?

I was an evangelist for MHP in those heady days, which now bear a striking resemblance to the HbbTV rollout. I am still a firm believer in Interactive Value Added Services for the viewer and therefore it is good that HbbTV appears to be growing in stature. I said it is moving ahead in the same way as MHP did 10+ years ago i.e. a disparitive smattering of Countries, Channels, Broadcasters, Operators – Many, Many Tech suppliers – a further smattering of Content Developers and several all encompassing HbbTV experts such as HTTV in France.

However like the MHP initiative there is no cohesive nation-wide plan in any country despite what others may think; nor any EU mandate (nor will they ever mandate anything in this area now the market has reached such massive digital fragmentation) – the digital Interactive TV horse has truly bolted!  This may cause a problem for HbbTV to become a true nationwide or global standard.

As I have also previously highlighted the very nature of TV software evolution (HTML5, Companion Screen, Second Screen, Zeebox,  SaaS technology etc.) and the margin fueled business of high volume selling at retail i.e. Zappers and alternative solutions (Hulu, Netflix, AppleTV and all the varieties of Connected TV, WebTV and the Toys-R-Us channel type offerings) it may take longer for it to be fully mainstream in Retail…

However for the first time it has a larger ‘Broadcaster’ following than any other previous standard. The EBU is firmly behind it. The markets are the problem. Where there is an incumbent like the lonely MHP in Italy, change will take longer, but there will be change; it is inevitable!  Unification with a forward drive at a higher level is required.  Someone needs to really drive it forward but NOT as a technology; which is the present modus operandi!  One of the biggest problems of HbbTV is that  after tens of years of experience, we know full well that selling Technology Acronyms for the Interactive TV business to Consumers – DOES NOT WORK. Even MHEG5 and OpenTV in Sky were converted to “Red Button” to make it consumer palatable. HbbTV needs to do the same for it to go truly mainstream before it becomes outmoded especially ‘vis-à-vis’ the general public who are used to ‘new services’ each 6 months. If HbbTV wants to win as a mainstream universal technology it has to up its game.

Smart TV’s are sold ‘en masse’ according to analysts however connectivity is weak.

Posted on by tvangelist

We hear on a regular basis that Smart TVs are rolling out of the door of the high street. What I know as a veteran of interactive TV is that few of them get connected or stay connected. It is a fact that only if it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERITIVE for the TV to work will it ever be connected – AppleTV on the other hand is of that category – Pure OTT. Apple is not wrong to think of putting out a TV – We all understand iTunes and we are all carrying an iPhone – an iPAD (well a large portion of the Smart People are! Let’s see what Apple can do in this very fragmented domain!

Are We Overwhelming The TV Viewer

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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!

Thoughts on HbbTV – Not Mine For a Change

Posted on by tvangelist

I must attribute this to a certain Rob Galagher on LinkedIn: There is no need for CE-HTML or HbbTV in the technology stack: zero, nada, none. They are not needed or used on the desktop devices, they are not needed or used on tablet devices, they are not nedded or used on mobile phone devices. So why on TV? Here is the answer to that rhetorical question…

Both CE-HTML and HbbTV are –artificial– means for three companies LG, Sharp and Philips) attempting to stay in business by creating and then imposing a manufacturing cartel that mistakenly believes it will be able to continue to sell over-priced crippled products in an era that is disrupting the TV as a type of digital device the same way progress, engineeering, fierce competition and global markets have disrupted and changed all other types of digital devices.

In conclusion then –if– the TV manufacturers can impose artificial technology embedded in some type of proprietary patented electronic circuitry that requires the use of the artificial technology stack they will not only be able to continue to sell over-priced crippled product they will be able to charge for access to their devices the same way the cable and telephony networks have. That is what they are attempting to do with CE-HTML and HbbTV fellas.