LIVEdigitally

Prediction: Cord Nevers Become Cord Getters

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El Cable Guy es Mucho Loco

As the phenomenon of predicting the death of TV via cord cutters is waning, it’s being replaced by a plausible (at first) sounding theory: cord nevers.  Whereas a cord cutter is one who cancels their Pay-TV service for free/streaming alternatives, a cord never is, roughly, a person under the age of 22 who, upon renting their first apartment after college, never subscribes for TV services in the first place.  My theory at this point is these people may live happily cable-free for a year or few, but sooner or later, they’ll pay.  Here’s a few reasons why:

Cultural Zeitgeist
The single most common binding element pulling modern culture together today is TV, and I can’t see anything replacing that in the short term.  As someone nearing the end of their first year watching entirely “catch up” I’ve noticed, multiple times, the feeling of being left out of some conversations.  By the way, I’d like to keep this post and ensuing discussion free from judgment regarding watching decisions – I don’t care what the show is, everyone’s free to be entertained however they’d like.  But I currently have no idea what exactly a Honey Boo Boo is, nor what the Amish Mafia are after, and I have literally zero friends who just finished Season 4 of The Wire like I just did (btw – awesome).  I believe the natural gravitas of “fitting in” will drive most people toward paying.

Cheapest Entertainment Around
Estimates vary, but for a typical 4+ hours/day home, watching TV with a pay-TV provider works out to about $0.25/hour.  People love to complain about their cable bill, but they really wouldn’t if they did the math. (not that I’m advocating any provider, I’m just not dissing on them either).   Then again, math is hard.

victoryag.org Laziness FTW
While it’s certainly simple enough to browse Netflix on my Apple TV, find a show, then watch it, it’s nowhere near as simple as turning on the TV, then pushing “channel up” enough times until something watchable appears.  As I’ve blogged about elsewhere, I fundamentally believe in the “escapism” nature of TV watching, which makes an all-on-demand lifestyle a lot of work.

More Money, Less Time
It’s easy to talk about “those kids today” and their willingness to watch movies in 10 minute increments on YouTube.  Yeah, I remember college too –  I had loads of free time, no money.  Now I have no time, and while I don’t have loads of money, I can easily do the mental math to figure out the money value of time makes hunting around websites and menus not a good use of time.

TV, now with Free Internets!
As the pay-TV industry has morphed into MVPDs (“multichannel video programming distributor” – worst rename ever!) and offer Internet and voice and home automation and monitoring and security and dishwashing and laundry and other services (mostly for sheer profit – other than the laundry part), the allocation of revenue is less relevant for them.  They can offer quintuple packages and more because it doesn’t really cost them anything, and most have invested so much money into capital expansion that they can continue to lay out new value added services for incremental costs.  So perhaps we’ll eventually pay for TV, with free everything else – or vice versa – it just won’t matter that much.

While I do fundamentally believe we are in the middle of the most transformative era of television behaviors since the advent of the cable industry, I also think we are far from a radical new world.  Looking forward to constructive comments and feedback below.

Why the HBO/Universal deal is VERY important

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HBO and Universal just renewed a distribution deal.  For the next 10 years.

If you are in any ways connected to the TV industry, be it for the past, present, or future of it, this is quite significant.  Why?

Part of the reason TV as an industry is fairly impervious to disruption is the unbelievably tangled knot of deals and relationships.  In TV/Movie-land, deals are (1) worth Billions, and (2) made for the long-term.

victoryag.org

But with all the kerfuffle about TV changing, TV dying, TV this and that,we should take note that two of the biggest players in the industry just renewed a deal that is (1) worth Billions and (2) made for the long term.

The significance is, in a nutshell, that in TV-land, business as usual is still going on.

ps – dont think I’ve ever made a point before in 100 or less words!  ;)

Expectations and Thoughts for CES 2013

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I love the smell of CES in the morning.  Seriously, I *love* CES (here’s my walkthrough the show last year with Robert Scoble – be warned – its 45 minutes long), though I’d love to see them move it back in the year a few weeks.  CES is like SXSW, except people actually get some work done in addition to all the partying.  I love the vaporware demos sandwiched in between the unnecessarily huge screens and the neon. Lots and lots of neon.  LOVE IT – and no, this isn’t a long, drawn out sarcastic rant.  But I’m taking a break from my annual “CES Tips” lists, as there’s nothing substantive to add.  Instead, here’s some thoughts on what I’m expecting next week:

Nothing Revolutionary
That might sound weird, but I’m just not expecting any “big new thing” at this year’s show, instead lots of “mostly better things than last year”.  Bigger screens.  Thinner screens.  Lighter phones.  Longer batteries.  The major keynotes are from Qualcomm, Panasonic, Verizon, and Samsung – not one of these companies has a history of revolutionizing the show.

But yet, lots of cool updates
While nothing should blow us away, I’m expecting tons of improvements to other products.  More smart TVs with more smarterness to them.   Lots of UltraHD/4K TVs (sigh). More well-done AirPlay integrated devices.  It’ll be fun.

Especially OLED
Coolest thing at CES 2012 were the 4MM thick OLED TVs that didn’t ship in 2012, despite promises they would.  Coolest thing at CES 2013 will be the 4MM OLED TVs that might actually ship in 2013.

Meme Prediction: Complaints about the lack of stuff
If there’s one thing that follows the theme of “nothing revolutionary” its listening to everyone, their mother, and their mother’s facebook friends complain about nothing being new at the show. You shouldn’t be expecting something big, and whining about how you could’ve stayed home is just annoying.

Potential sleepers: Verizon & Qualcomm
Interestingly, both have keynotes, and both have large booths (and near each other).  If I had to put money on “doing something unexpectedly big” I’d place on either, or both of these companies.

What I’d love to see, but don’t expect
Flexible displays.  I’ll go so far as saying there’ll be *nothing* exciting in consumer electronics and mobile devices between now and when the first generation of devices with flexible/bendable displays arrive.  So I’ve got a secret hope that even prototype stuff will emerge from someone’s labs at this year’s show.

What I’m already bored of: More Tablets
I still haven’t seen a single product from a single company that defines a “tablet market” and I’m not expecting that to change at CES.  But, I am expecting loads of cheap tablets that might do well overseas, which is all fine and good.  Yawn.

I’m Betting On: Smarterer TVs
Every single TV company will announce new Smart TVs.  And every one of them will continue to make TVs that are harder to use than they were before.  Bummer.

Who Will Be Missing?
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple – the four companies that would make the show dramatically more interesting.

That’s about all I can think of.  Shame is I’ve got so many other commitments at the show this year I have no idea if I’ll even get to walk the floor.  C’est La CES, C’est La Vie!

The only thing that could kill TV? TV itself.

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It’s fun to write about the “death of TV” (or flip flop on it, whatever).  Why it’s so fun, I’m not sure, but I have a hunch it’s because…

  1. It’s a HUGE industry ($500+B/year if not more)
  2. It’s been utterly untouched by the Internet (so far – a thing that really rankles a lot of people, mostly tech bloggers)
  3. The newspaper and music industries both got trashed, so why not TV too?
  4. It’s controlled by a very small number of extremely powerful and wealthy companies
  5. The aforementioned companies have a perception of (a) greedy profiteering, (b) being dinosaurs, and (c) restricting people from doing whatever they want with content, which also tends to rankle said tech bloggers

Arguments for the death of TV are equally fun to read and fantasize about.  They tend to fall into these categories:

  • “Those Kids Today”:
    Theory – Kids today like to watch the YouTubes and the Torrents!  Kids today don’t like to pay for content. Therefore when kids get older, they will continue to watch YouTube and not pay for content.
    Reality – To debunk comically: kids today like Play-Doh, Lego’s, Justin Bieber, and eating Mac & Cheese at every meal – none of which hold true when kids become grownups (well, maybe the mac & cheese bit).  To debunk more seriously: kids have loads and loads of time on their hands and very little money, so they can spend the time and energy hunting and pecking for free content – something most adults (30+, with kids) just don’t have.  Or, it’d be like assuming that because kids like Justin Bieber when they are teenagers they will like equally crappy music in their fifties.  Well, that might just happen I guess.
  • “Cord-Cutting/Shaving/Trimming/Slicing/Thinning/Balding/Receding”:
    Theory – everybody’s quitting cable! EVERYBODY!
    Reality – I’m not even going to bother finding the links, but bottom line is this – for every article that shows XX thousand customers quit Cable, if they don’t ALSO INCLUDE the part where XX thousand customers signed up for IPTV, FIOS, Telco’s, or Satellite, you need to utterly ignore the article.  After that, there’s not much evidence left.  This may change, but that’s just a theory, and one that’s yet to be really substantiated.
  • “The Great Unbundling/A La Carte/Go Direct to Consumers”:
    Theory – In the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to set exactly the lineup you want, and not pay for channels you don’t watch.  Or you’ll watch *everything* a la carte, paying as you go.  Or channels like HBO will start selling direct to consumers.
    Reality - This is in utter conflict with how the TV industry actually works and makes money. And since they, you know, like making money, and since shows are, you know, expensive to make, they need to keep making the money.  So if channels were to unbundle, they’d instantly get so expensive people wouldn’t be paying for them.  Here’s some of my previous thoughts on this same topic.
  • “Newspapers/Music died!”:
    Theory – Because of the deaths of other industries, TV will die too, as it’s antiquated, etc.
    Reality – This is like arguing that because the coal and steel industries in the US shrank, so will the TV industry. Other than being ad-supported, TV and Newspapers are utterly dissimilar (and BTW, the way the ads work for both are exceptionally different).  Other than being, well, media, TV and Music are utterly dissimilar.  We might as well say the Internet will die soon because it’s just like newspapers.
  • “Startups! Technology!”:
    Theory – Some startup will come along and just utterly kill TV in every way.
    Reality – Yeah, no.

OK, Jeremy, Mr Big Talk Guy, so what could actually happen?  Here’s my theory on what could “kill” the TV industry as we know it – it’s “catch up TV”. For those unfamiliar with the term, “catch up TV” (also called “binge viewing” sometimes) is when you watch a show long after it aired, by days/weeks/months/even years.  Whether it’s via Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Video On Demand, or any other service, it’s the rapidly increasing trend on TV consumption.  And it’s the one thing the TV industry is massively enabling, and could massively come back to haunt them.

In a nutshell, the TV ecosystem is like a big food chain, with advertising dollars acting at the bottom of it all (yes, TV ads are the kelp of the TV world).  Should advertising falter in a notable way (which, by the way, it isn’t at present), it could bring down the whole system.  There are several exceptions to the system, such as HBO, but the numbers there ($1.2B) are literally paltry when compared to TV ads ($90B).  And catch-up TV represents a problem, as it’s not monetized the same way as live TV.  See the Live TV part is where almost all of the $90B of TV ad revenue comes from – hence why ratings declines cause shows to get cancelled, as they don’t generate the cash flow to sustain themselves.

So as we all get further and further accustomed to being able to watch shows whenever we want, we (collectively) are reinforcing the habit of “why bother watch live?”  For example, my friends all tell me to watch Homeland, but I don’t really have the time for a new show right now, so I’ve bookmarked it for later (ahem, NextGuide), and will just start watching it on Netflix.  Along with Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and lots of other shows I know are great, but just haven’t watched – yet.

What, then, happens to highly anticipated shows that launch, combined with audiences who increasingly choose to wait to view them?  They get cancelled (great thoughts on this by Andrew Wallenstein here).   Sure a startup like mine can benefit from this, and even become a fabled Billion Dollar Company (FTW!), but success beyond our wildest dreams will, in no way, replace the lost revenue the entire ecosystem would suffer.  And just as environmentalists are concerned about loss at the bottom of our food chain, if the TV ad system begins to crumble, then so do budgets for new shows, etc.  It ain’t pretty.

Now I’m not predicting the above will all happen – but at the current pace of things, it wouldn’t shock me to see much of it play out.  The TV industry is giving its content away way too cheaply to all the providers to sustain itself without the advertising, and they are effectively disincenting viewers from the live experience (not that it’s not cool to get a sticker or a badge or something, but let’s face it, people are smarter than that – hence the general “meh” of most of the social TV offerings – sorry guys, but #come #on), other than for appointment TV programming.  Further, it has a certain prisoner’s dilemma aspect to it all, as no single network can make the bold move to pull recent content from the variety of catch-up/streaming services – oftentimes their own apps! From the discussions I’ve had with TV execs, there’s a lot of awareness and a growing concern, but no solutions in sight yet.   But, at least it’s the enemy we know…

My New Year's Tech Resolution: Quitting Real-Time

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Let’s take a long trip back in time.  Let’s remember a world where you were running a little late for a dinner date with friends, and you just showed up a bit late, no texts.  You got to the restaurant and didn’t check-in on Facebook, Yelp, or FourSquare (oh, and you didn’t even use Yelp to find the restaurant, or double-check that it has 4 stars, you just heard about it from a friend).  When the menu arrived, you read it, picked the item(s) that looked good, and placed your order, and if you wanted to know what was the most popular, you asked the waiter.  While waiting for the food, you drank wine and chatted with your friends.  When the meal arrived, you didn’t take a picture of it (or apply a filter) and shared with others.  If the service was lousy, you told the manager, not your Followers or Friends.  When you finished up the meal, you drove home, without using crowd-sourced GPS to get there.  And as a final note, at no point in the meal did you get interrupted by others sharing equally unimportant minutia with you, but if they really *really* needed to track you down, maybe you got a call.

If you are under 25 and reading this, the above probably sounds like a nightmare, but trust me, it wasn’t.

I think it’s time to admit that living in “real-time” is a bit of a disaster, and there’s tons of studies arising that lend evidence to social media (among other things) as problematic to society (here’s a funny take, but full of facts on the topic).  But you really don’t need the studies, just some common sense.  We’ve evolved over millions of years (or, as they teach in several US States – a few thousand plus some fairy dust) and until the last half a decade, the only thing that was really crucial to do in real-time was running from sabre-tooth tigers, which we were actually pretty good at.

Since I started writing this a few minutes ago I’ve received two texts and one IM – every one of which disrupted my writing and thinking.  Thankfully I had already closed my email client (something I plan to do much more frequently), and I have push notifications OFF for Facebook and Email on my phone.  But that’s a core to it: we’ve somehow made ourselves constantly interruptible, and I can’t see how anything good comes of it.  How do you think deeply on anything if your pocket is buzzing, the corner of your screen is flashing, and other little whooshing and tweeting sound effects keep rolling by.

If you are reading this and thinking “that guy’s just an old-fuddy-duddy” (which, to be fair, no young person today would ever actually say), and you are also patting yourself on the back because YOU are a great multitasker, go take a break from this piece, google “multitasking myths” (or just read this) and then come on back.  Bummer, eh?

And it’s not just about getting stuff done, as that too is just massively overrated.  It’s about a lack of peace and calmness. When do we take time anymore just to do nothing.  Even standing in line for a coffee (which is, of course a take out coffee, since there’s no time to just sit in a cafe and enjoy a hot cup of coffee in a real cup) everyone’s on their phones, doing stuff.  The human brain actually needs time, every day, just to do nothing and process all of the events that are transpiring (great article here on “doing nothing”).

So what am I doing?  Focusing on purposeful activity, single-tasking, and shutting down virtually anything that expects me to deal with it imminently, as there are truly very few events which can transpire that I must reply to in real-time.  Somehow I doubt this will negatively impact either my professional or personal life in any way.   This doesn’t mean I won’t use services like Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, IM, and the like – it just means I’m getting a lot more comfortable turning them off for long stretches.

My focus in 2013: Enjoying the moments, and having them for myself – not others.  Enjoying the view, not the retweets of the photos. Enjoying the funny/cute/silly kids, not worrying about grabbing the camera, nor counting the likes or comments.  Enjoying walking into an unknown restaurant, ordering anything I like, getting delighted by it, and telling a friend about it some other time.  Sorry real-time, I’m pushing pause.

The Dijit Remote Refresh, Now With NextGuide Social TV Profiles!

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The Dijit team’s been really hard at work all year building NextGuide, which was quite the task and accomplishment. A few months ago we recognized it was time to give the Dijit Remote another round of enhancements as well, so we got to work on giving it a good refresh.  Most importantly, of course, was updating it to support everything new in iOS-land since last winter, which includes Retina iPads, the iPhone 5, and iOS 6 support too.

Additionally, we incorporated the NextGuide social TV profiles into the Dijit Remote, so users of either app can discover and share content back and forth.  We are building the most robust personalized TV discovery platform out there, and this is the first step to bring it to iPhones as well.  Between our two apps we now have a lot of people finding new shows and movies to watch on live TV, as well as streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and more (note: the Dijit Remote app only supports Netflix search at present).  We also added the extremely popular “record to DVR” button for DirecTV subscribers, allowing anyone to program their home DVR the moment they find a great show or move to watch on live TV.

Lastly – accessibility.  We’ve heard story after story from people who use accessibility enhancements on their iOS devices, and how the Dijit Remote is integrated into their personal needs.  I was shared images of a young girl in a hospital room with extremely limited mobility, but just enough to control the TV using her iPad and the Dijit Remote app.  Unfortunately she couldn’t access all of the features, so we set about fixing that, and now we’re very proud to bring accessibility enhancements across virtually every feature in the app to help anyone who might need it.  It’s not often we get to be in a position to just help people, so it’s something that we all feel pretty good about.

It’s been a long while, but we’re happy to bring this update to the legions of loyal Dijit Remote users, hope you love it! Check out the new and improved Dijit Remote here!

NextGuide, now with Amazon and more awesomeness

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NextGuide, my personal favorite TV Guide app (that I built at the company I run), is now updated to include Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video alongside live TV, Hulu Plus, iTunes, and Netflix.  It’s really a great experience to browse all providers simultaneously and to search for shows and actually know where they are watchable. You can get the update here on the App Store.

That’s the “big” news (yes, adding a streaming provider with tens of thousands of hours of streamable shows and movies is a big deal IMHO), but we also took the time for a lot of across the board improvements to the app.  Here are some of the highlights:

>> New Gestures – two-finger swipe within showcards, pinch to hide, fullscreen media gallery, and more!

One of my favorite things about a great iPad experience is gestures. One of my favorite favorite things about any app is hidden features. While it’d be fun to document them everywhere, we’ve loaded up the NextGuide experience with many new gestures.  Explore around, let us know what you find and think of them!

>> Enhanced Cast & Crew with 1-click saved searches and Wikipedia biography lookups.

File this under “finally!”  When we shipped the 1.0 version, the cast and crew view just wasn’t that useful.  Now, go to the cast and crew tab for any movie or show, and tap on a person you are interested in.  Want to find more stuff from them?  Tap “add to interests.”

>> New Category Editor with easy drag & drop category setup

While we made removing/hiding categories really easy in the app, it’s always been a pain to add them. Now, push and hold on anywhere in the “Category Bar” to get a slick interface to add genres, custom genres, and trending topics.

>> Channel Setup now part of Initial Setup Wizard

The customer is always right, and lots of ours told us they didn’t like the fact they couldn’t customize their channel lineups until after launching the app.  Now you can.

>> Improved “Your Picks” algorithms

Let’s face it, recommending content is a very hard thing to get right. Our focus is to get beyond the baseline concept of “if you like this then you’ll like that.”  We’re constantly working to improve it, and I think our users will see a lot of progress in this department.

>> Lots of other little new features for you to explore throughout the app

Thanks again to every one of our users, even the 1-star reviews in the App Store – its the best way to learn, and learning is what we’re doing!

ps – sorry about not blogging much, just been working on, you know, everything you just read about.

Introducing NextGuide

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It’s my pleasure to unveil my newest product, NextGuide.  NextGuide is a hyper-personalized TV listings guide designed specifically for the iPad™.  It’s been a six month labor of lots and lots of love, and I’m extremely excited to tell you about it.  In a nutshell?  We went to the drawing board and utterly reinvented the concept of the TV program guide.

If you think about the concept of a “guide” it’s something that’s evolved over 60 years from supporting 3 to 13 to 80 to 500+ channels.  But that’s really all it does, and let’s face it, we no longer live in a 500-channel world.  We live in a 500 channel, plus tens of thousands of hours of streaming content on services like Netflix, huge libraries of video on demand from our cable and satellite companies, as well as iTunes itself.  It’s effectively an infinite content landscape, and having so much content has crippled the formerly easy process of discovering shows to watch.

As an example, in my house at night, we start by browsing our DVR library, don’t see anything we’re in the mood for, then switch over to live TV.  After browsing (painfully) the grid for a while, we give up, turn on the Apple TV, and head to Netflix.  Netflix is great, but I have a tendency to see stuff I already know about – Mad Men, Dexter, Weeds, Breaking Bad, etc – all great shows, but not really anything new that I’m ready to consume.  Part of the problem here is catch-up TV: if I’ve never watched Mad Men before then I’m a good 80+ hours away from catching up to live, and that sounds painful.  Anyhow, after an unsuccessful attempt to find something to stream, I generally end up watching whatever’s on (either Cops, the Shawshank Redemption, or an infomercial), then go to sleep.  Sound familiar at all?

So we invented NextGuide, designed to actually help me discover things I *want* to watch. We do that by tilting the concept of Channels, Times, and Genres on its head a little, and instead focus on Shows, People, and Interests.

Shows – we believe people care more about the show they watch than the channel number or time it airs.  So NextGuide uses beautiful show cover art to make it easy to find things and “escape” the grid view of numbers and times.

People – we believe TV remains a central zeitgeist component to modern society. When was the last time you chatted with any friend about a show you like (or love)?  Probably in the past day or so.  NextGuide makes it ridiculously easy to turn conversations, not to mention Facebook Likes, into easily discoverable shows.

Interests – we believe people care about finding things of interest to them, personally.  We all have interests, from bands to sports, from cities to hobbies, and these interests define so much of our lives. NextGuide connects you to your interests, and finds them all on TV and streaming services, in a seamless, organic way.  Examples of what NextGuide’s found for me over the past few weeks: Bill Murray’s guest appearance on Letterman (seriously, how would I even have known that unless I watch every night??), a live Coldplay concert on Palladium (I didn’t even know the channel was in my lineup), and Bizarre Foods goes to San Francisco (not a show I normally care for, but had to see what Andrew found in my city).

That’s enough writing already, this is one of those apps you just have to experience to get a sense of what we’ve done. It’s a complete paradigm shift for TV viewing, and I’m happy to share it with you.  You can download it from the App Store, or watch our quick intro video below.

Introducing NextGuide from Dijit Media on Vimeo.

I can’t wait for your feedback, thanks so much for trying out the app.  Thanks to Apple for inventing the iPad so we could have such a cool platform to bring something like this to life. Extra special thanks to my family, friends, coworkers and investors who have made the process of inventing something disruptive more fun than I think I really deserve.

We are getting some amazing press so far today, here are some great pieces:

Oh, and here’s the actual announcement on our newly revised site!

Redefining TV in a Mobile World

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I had the honor to present on a “disruptive” topic at the Grow2012 conference last month in Vancouver, and, big surprise, I opted to talk about TV.  I decided to take a bit of a departure from many of my typical presentations and focus on the myths and truths (or at least truthiness) about disruption in the TV industry, with a focus on how our mobile lifestyles are changing the way we think about television.  Here’s the video (and slides):

Slides:

5 New Reasons Why Apple Might Not Build a TV, Yet.

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So my last time around, I was pretty “pro” on the debate of Apple building a television set device product thing. I actually was following the topic fairly heavily, and bullishly, through CES last year, when the topic just kinda sorta disappeared.  For a bit I had a hunch they had intended to launch one in the Winter of 2012, then something fell apart with it, as the rumor mill simply hasn’t been the same since.

The two reasons I surmise why they may have planned, then pulled, a set are: (1) they weren’t happy with the physical product, possibly as a direct result of LG/Samsung demoing OLED TVs at CES this year, or (2) couldn’t pull together the content/partnerships they needed to make it the success they demand.  Then again, maybe they never had a plan to do one and finally the tech media moved on to another topic.

But here I am just shy of a year since my last post, and with some new thoughts.  In no particular order…

1) Apple makes “small” stuff. Every current product they make can be easily carried out of a store.  In fact, you can almost sense it by comparing sales rates of iPhones/iPads to iMacs.  TVs are even bigger, and while Apple has magic, you just can’t shrink the physical requirements of shipping around 55″ flat panels. While they could certainly have a white glove level of service, it doesn’t “feel” Apple to me if I can’t get it in the store, and bring it home – now. Apple is amazing at satisfying the on-demand lifestyle, and a big bulky box shipped to your door isn’t quite the same.

2) Apple makes “frequently replaced” stuff. Every current consumer product Apple makes has replacement cycles under 4 years, some 1-2. TV is 7+ and I don’t see that changing.  There’s a certain point at which the inconvenience and hassle of mounting (and unmounting) big things to walls trumps the sexiness of any product.  It’s one thing to decide on a whim you’ll replace your phone or laptop, it’s another to deal with TVs and inputs.  And even if there’s a magical solution for wall-mounting and a magical solution for cable management and a magical solution for set-top boxes, game consoles, and other equipment, consumers are used to this cycle, and that’s a much much harder thing to change.

3) Apple makes “clean” stuff. Of all my Apple products, my iMac has the most potential cables to connect, most of which aren’t used, and comes with wireless peripherals. My iPad has but one.  Clean, simple, elegant – Apple.  TVs, on the other hand, must be connected to other stuff.  Unless they can actually solve A/V Receivers, Set-Top Boxes, Game Consoles, and DVD/Blu-Ray Players in a single product, this mess continues to exist.  The living room TV world is practically defined by gozintas, so unless this is a TV set just for my bedroom, or Apple can convince consumers to replace a whole lot of other boxes, it’s putting an Apple product inside a big mess.  Doesn’t feel like their style as I see it.

4) Apple makes “transformative” stuff. Smartphones before Apple, with the exception of Palm products (early days) and a few other rarities, were ugly clunky awful things that came with plastic pens. Then the iPhone came, and most smartphones are better as a result.  The iPad too, transformed the entire concept of a tablet, one so good nobody else is even realistically in the market right now (and probably won’t be for a while).  They did it before with the original iMacs.  In each case, there was an experience to transform.  But TV isn’t broken in nearly the same way – yes, there are issues, but for the most part, most consumers utterly love the way TV works today. Further, in order to transform a TV experience, Apple would need to go leaps and bounds beyond current offerings.  I’ll never count the company out on anything, but the entrenched TV ecosystem is a bigger badder monster than anyone’s taken on before.  I have a very, very hard time seeing a transformation happening here.

5) Apple makes “well-distributed” stuff.  Every Apple product is available anywhere in the US, as well as Canada and oodles of other countries.  Even when the iPhone was only on AT&T you could buy it – you might have to switch carriers, but you could buy it.  Many rumors put Apple partnering with cable companies (eg buy an Apple Television from Comcast with a 2-year contract, at a steep discount), but this limits distribution regionally in a major way.  This would force them to deal only with satellite companies, but that brings an entirely different set of hurdles.  This effectively rules out distribution partners as a deployment vehicle, which then in turn limits the product to being a “dumb set” – something that seems even less likely for the company.

I may be wrong.  Heck, it’s Apple, they know how to solve problems others can’t even begin to figure out.  Let’s also be real and notice that their little “hobby” is already the #1 Internet streamer on the market, in a single year! But something about the magic needed to make a TV might be out of reach for a little while longer here.  Seems like until OLEDs become affordable (or some other equivalent step up) and until there’s a viable MVPD with full Internet distribution, we are going to have to wait a little longer for a glowing bezel to show up in our houses.

Is there a market for Ultra High Definition TV?

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Quick history lesson. From the birth of TV through the invention of cable TV and the VCR, picture quality was effectively the same. Along came DVD, which doubled the screen resolution to 480p, ooh ahh. Then along came HDTV with 720p. Then 1080i, and now we’ve “settled” on 1080p. Only we haven’t – the next two resolutions are already picked, they’ve been called 4K and 8K by the industry for a while, and just got fancy labels with “Ultra High Definition Television.” And much as I’ve always considered Blu-Ray a loser format, I believe the same fate is in store for UHDTV.

First, the picture quality is virtually imperceptible. I’m pausing for a second as rabid video engineers attempt to tar and feather me, but on a 50″ screen from about 10′ away, 4K looks roughly the same as 1080p – which, while I’m at it, looks roughly the same as 720p.  Unless you really really really know what you are doing, and really set up your room properly, and really have the right size TV for the distance from your couch, and really watch the right source material, and really really really – you get it.  But for most regular humans watching most regular TV (which, I might add, isn’t even being broadcast in 1080p – what? yes, it’s true – if you are watching TV, you are not watching 1080p. deal with it), your existing HDTV setup probably looks beautiful enough as it is.

Second, even if you can tell the difference, it’s not impressive enough. I distinctly recall watching my first DVD, and I distinctly recall my upgrade to HDTV.  Each were monumental shifts in resolution and display quality. It’s reminiscent of upgrading to a retina display iPhone/iPad. But then what? If the next shift upwards doesn’t bring the same “ooh, ahh” moment, it’s a resounding “meh” – and “meh” doesn’t sell new TVs.

Third, it’ll be perfectly timed for “higher quality format fatigue” to set in.  As I’ve described above, consumers already finished going to stores to upgrade to get to the promise of “FullHD” – which, again, generally isn’t even being broadcast in FullHD. Going from FullHD to UltraHD is just going to make folks wary, if not pissed.  Nobody likes to think their recent investment as worthless, regardless of the plummeting prices of flatscreens.  It’s too little, too soon.

Fourth, there won’t be enough content. Whenever 4K sets are available, and I predict it’s coming within 18 months, odds are really low that a corresponding broadcast source or streaming medium will offer 4K videos. Unless a huge back catalog of content is released at the same time, most of which doesn’t even exist at 4K resolution I might add, consumers won’t see a compelling reason to upgrade.

Fifth, streaming won’t support 4K into homes anytime soon, and physical media is dead, which means there’s not going to be 4K content anytime soon. Per above, no content equals dead format, and since we don’t really have the infrastructure in North America to support a wealth of content…

Sixth, and it’s a minor point, but how can you have two different standards with the same name?!?!? Consumers hate that stuff. Quit it!

Much as the MP3 killed high definition audio long before its time, I believe streaming video and a lack of perceptible difference will kill ultra high definition video long before its time.  My advice to the industry: slow down, you move too fast. I know you are losing money on just about every TV you sell, and I know that’s not changing anytime soon, but 4K in 2012/2013 is not your answer.

My advice to the industry at large:

  • Don’t launch without a huge content library.
  • Don’t launch without multi-brand support.
  • Don’t launch without an all-streaming solution.
  • Don’t launch too expensively.
  • Don’t launch with a negative campaign against existing HDTV installations.
  • Don’t launch til you have it all perfect.  You aren’t there yet.  Stay quiet until you do.

ps – sorry for the gross picture.  :)

pps – to videophiles who want to nitpick with some detail I’m sure I got wrong – please do so constructively!

Why Apple Will Make a MacBook Touch (eventually)

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A few weeks ago someone mocked up a concept MacBook touch, and in a nutshell, they way-y-y-y-y overthought it.  After a week(ish) using my iPad with an external keyboard, I can see how the worlds could and should collide.  And I think it’s exactly what Apple plans to do – one day. The concept is already as much as there in their products anyway: ship Mountain Lion with the ability to “launch” iOS.  That’s it.

In the current OS X, Lion, we already have LaunchPad, a feature clearly designed for a touch-screen interface, mainly because it’s the exact UI for iOS apps.  This would/should be touch-enabled.

Next, OS X already has an App Store, the inventory of which could easily expand to include iOS apps.

The LaunchPad would become the primary “desktop”, and Finder would move to be an app instead of the primary navigation metaphor.

Apps could then be written as OS X, or OS X with touch, or iOS.  Standard OS X apps would function like they do today, expecting a mouse + keyboard interface.  That’s the easy part.

iOS apps would go into full-screen, thought likely not include the ability to rotate – but maybe they wouldn’t have to.  The next-gen MacBooks are already rumored to go retina anyway, which provides enough pixels for a portrait-mode app to run on the screen size of a 13″ laptop.  Granted, a ton of apps would work poorly – things that require lots of motion sensitive or heavy gesture inputs.  But maybe that’s okay.  Maybe this isn’t about a laptop with great Infinity Blade capabilities, it’s a bit more focused on productivity.  More on this in a bit.

OS X with touch apps would be able to support mouse + keyboard + touch interfaces.  This is the tricky part.  There are times when touch works great, other times when the mouse is ideal.  For example, a pull-down menu is going to be too tiny to easily work with a finger, but the mouse is perfect.  Similarly, mouse-overs are useful for many applications, and the pixel-level work in design apps could never be done without a mouse.  But moving files, selecting apps to run, and creating free-form quick designs are all radically better with a touch input.  Gestures are awesome methods of navigating through computing interfaces.  There’s a right balance, and as long as Apple can clearly delineate best practices, I think some great new experiences would emerge.

Combining the full power of OS X and iOS brings great power, and accordingly, great… You know.  But in all seriousness, this isn’t meant as a “make a MacBook all fun like the iPad” nor is it “turn the iPad into a productivity center”.  It’s both.  The computing era has evolved to the point where touch is a key part of things.  Further, Apple is uniquely positioned to create a product like this, where the touch features augment the overall platform, as opposed to just being gimmicky.  Lastly, they’ll create yet another leap forward that their competition will have to spend eons catching up to.

ps – for those wondering, I’m using the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard for iPad. I love it.  I started with the Apple Wireless Keyboard (with great sleeve by SF Bags) but ultimately preferred Logitech’s solution.  Amazingly.