This week sees the yearly Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s a cacophony of tablets, car speaker systems, iPhone cases, washing machines, corpulent analysts in blazers and network infrastructure, but because the mainstream media has only so many column inches to spare, this vast show typically becomes a reductionist competition where hacks attempt to boil it down into as few sweeping trends as possible.
Two years ago, it was 3D TV. Last year, it was still 3D TV. This year, it’s all about smart TVs, hooked up to the internet for on-demand content.
Typically, what’s shown at CES eventually trickles into shops at some point in the summer, but this year it’s different. We’re being shown what we already have. Many of us have smart TV technology in our living rooms already, and we don’t even realise it: case in point, Netflix.
Biannually, at CES in January and IFA in September, we’re lambasted with outlandish ideas for TVs. Big screens, thin screens, console screens, transparent screens, mind-reading screens. Mostly at the moment though, we’re pummeled with smart TVs. Maybe they’ve got Google TV, maybe they’ve got some proprietary crap which no one will bother to make any apps for. Point is, they’ve got an internet connection, and don’t require you to stick to TV channels’ broadcasting schedules.
Even without Apple’s unicorn flatscreen, we can generally expect these services to trickle down into even the cheapest tellies over time. But there’s an elephant in the room, chillaxing in an armchair and smoking a pipe because that’s just how he rolls. We already have the technology.
Games consoles have been sitting under our TVs for years, and in quantities that may surprise you. The PS3 and Xbox 360 have by far and away the most sophisticated media services of any TV or set top box on the planet. Sony’s sold three million PS3s in the UK alone, and as of 2011, Microsoft has sold 66 million 360s worldwide).
But don’t forget the Wii.
How many households in the UK do you think have a Nintendo Wii? One in ten, maybe? There’s a lot of old people, after all, probably pushing down the average. Nope. One in seven?
Try one in four.
They’re a benevolent botnet, lying dormant for years just waiting to be activated. And this week, they were. Netflix went live in the UK, bringing movie streaming to all the devices Lovefilm could not, including iPhone and Android phones, and the Wii.
About time. But does this mean anyone is using smart TV tech? No. BBC iPlayer, the one service that’s more widely available than Netflix, still gets most of its traffic from people hunched over laptops. As of September 2011, 65 percent of programme requests were from desktop computers. Fifteen percent were from Virgin Media boxes, and six percent from other smart TVs and set top boxes. Games consoles – available in a quarter of all homes – were just five percent.
More depressingly, those percentages have barely changed in a year: games console and mobile percentages hover at exactly the same points they did in 2010.
People don’t realise they can use these services, and certainly, some manufacturers aren’t helping this. Nintendo doesn’t give a crap about media services on its console.
“You’re talking about things that are entertainment oriented, and [we] just don’t have their head around that. I just don’t think its useful trying to have conversations with us, you’ll waste your time,” one Nintendo executive admitted to Joe Costello, the CEO of a media server company, Orb Networks, when he proposed having Orb as a readily accessible channel on the Wii dashboard.
If you can’t see them, how in God’s name is the average person who still struggles with the DVD player going to know they’re there? And so they fall back to whatever’s on.
The problem isn’t getting smart TV technology into our living rooms. It’s convincing the people who’ll settle for a marathon of Don’t Tell The Bride on Really because there’s nothing on that they might find something better on-demand instead.
Microsoft is doing its hardest. Sony, too. But it’s time everyone else who’s ended up competing in this arena, by intention or not, does too, including Nintendo. A smart TV standard is a start: now companies like Panasonic and all the other zaibatsu need to stop throwing apps and specs and tiny bezels at the problem, and show everyone why they need these new TVs on show this week.
Be bold. Use TV ads to show people why the show they’re in the middle of watching is tripe. We know you have a sense of humour. Just do it, now.
(Image via Cinefil)
