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Why Your Gadgets Don't Play Nice With Each Other

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I’m in the business of helping make your devices and gadgets work better and more seamlessly in your home.  But the truth is, if the industry made just a few simple decisions differently along the way, I wouldn’t have a business to be in.  The “remote control overload” problem we all have comes primarily as a result of your devices being digitally ignorant of each other.  Which, from the consumers’ perspective, sucks (industry term).  But the reason this sucks more than it seems is that your devices could be talking already, they just… don’t.  And they don’t in two different ways!

Connection-based compatibility – HDMI
Pretty much every HD product shipped in the past ~5 years has an HDMI connection. And HDMI has this protocol cleverly called Consumer Electronics Control – you can guess what it’s for.  It’s been part of the HDMI specification since the very beginning. And in general, virtually no manufacturers use it to control other brands’ products, though even more egregiously they even use this protocol to control their own products.  So your Samsung TV knows when a Samsung Blu-Ray player starts a movie playback, but ignores a Denon receiver’s request to change inputs. Fail.

"standards".

Network-based compatibility – DLNA

Back in the early aughts, there was this thing called the Digital Home Working Group, formed by several consumer electronics companies with the specific goal of – wait for it – making sure that consumers’ electronics products would work together harmoniously.  The DHWG was renamed into the friendlier Digital Living Network Alliance, and then launched in 2004. I was personally on the original working groups for the (both?) organization(s?).  Even at the time, it was beyond obvious that this open standard by committee approach wasn’t going to give consumers the solutions they were looking for.  7 years later, and I’d assert that consumer awareness of DLNA is negligible, and the standard has yet to provide the industry a reliable solution.  

So there we are, oodles of technology, tens of thousands (if not more) of man-hours developing standards and platforms, and still, consumers have to deal with the “input one” problem (in a nutshell: devices connected to anything but the first/primary input of a TV tend not to get used, with the lone standout exception being video game consoles, which is likely due to a) more explosions and b) children operating the equipment).  Why is this the case? My friend Julie Jacobson ponders a little conspiracy theory over at CEPro.

My sinister plot scenario is actually much simpler.  I think there are specifically two reasons why consumer electronics products don’t do anything “advanced connectivity”-wise together:

  1. It’s hard to make it a priority.
    Testing technology, in general, is challenging.  QA can take as long as actual development time, often more.  Many products get rushed to market even before the testing is complete.  So imagine, if you are the person in charge of shipping the product, and your marketing team probably (a) announced prematurely and (b) likely set expectations too high.  You are likely underresourced, understaffed, and concerned about just shipping at all (or maybe a few weeks too soon?).  How much energy do you think you’d spend on testing other companies’ products?  Right, me too.

    I'm not in charge of line-straightening, that's a different department.

  2. It’s not financially rewarding to make it a priority.
    As illustrated above, just getting the darn product to market is a major chore.  Further, you know that much of your sales and success in the marketplace have to do with product reviews, as well as customer ratings (and worth of mouth and social media, etc – but these all come from the quality of the product itself).  Lastly, you know that virtually no reviewer, either “expert” or “typical consumer” is going to take the time to really do a lot of testing of compatibility, unless of course you claim compatibility.  So if you don’t, and just sit back on the sidelines and phone it in when it comes to cross-brand compatibility, it isn’t going to hurt your product sales or market perception in any meaningful way.

The only meaningful standards to expect in living room are (1) most content should be able to play on most devices, and (b) most devices should use the same cables as most other devices, and (c) most devices will come with arbitrarily confusing directions as to how to connect said cables.  Oh, and don’t forget (d) most devices will not come with the cable you really need at 11:30pm when you finally get to setting it up.

Maybe they'd do better if they stopped asking for my phone number just so I can buy some more AA's?

Thinking about Googling my TV

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Google, Intel, and Sony have apparently teamed up (and Logitech too) to develop an Android-based platform for interactive television. Let me start my post with some important background points and disclosure:

  • I was a cofounder of Mediabolic, a startup who built a platform for connected devices.  While there I designed about a dozen “convergence” products (one won a best-of-CES award), and the company eventually got acquired by Macrovision.
  • I was an early employee at Sling Media, where I was responsible for developing the Slingbox (another best-of-CES award).
  • I once interviewed at Google for a position in a “google TV” role, but didn’t feel it was a really great fit for me personally (not to mention the commute).
  • I am currently involved with Boxee.TV, a startup in a highly-related field. There is some amount of overlap here, though that is in no way related to this blog post.
  • I’ve also worked with VUDU, Clicker.com, DivX, and others on “future of TV” systems, services, and products.
  • I was on the original working group committees for UPnP (AV) as well as DLNA (even before it was called that).

Through the above experiences, I have seen a lot of failure and some success in the “connected TV” space.  But mostly failure.

It’s a space where techies dream, entrepreneurs try, and companies fail. The list of failed convergence companies is notably longer than the list of successes. It’s a field where even Apple, the current king of the world when it comes to entertainment technology, can’t get a reasonable foothold in the home.

Most of the failure is due to deeply entrenched systems heavily controlled by huge corporations with little interest or need to innovate.  While we can yell and scream about how bad a job the Cable/Satellite companies are doing at future planning, the blunt reality is it’s hard to argue that it’s necessitated.  These megacorporations can drag their feet, and deploy mediocre DVRs and HD services, and consumers (for the most part) are satisfied with their experiences.  Further, due to their current business structures, the concept of opening up the market to third-party devices, content, services, or applications is not just daunting, but likely unprofitable.

When I consider the opportunity in the digital home, I am convinced it cannot come about by directly competing with traditional broadcast models. Broadcast TV, and all the services with it, are generally easy to use, convenient to pay for, and effectively “good enough” for most people – making “better than current TV” offerings a significant challenge to bring to market.  Historically, the only thing to attract the attention of consumers beyond their existing entertainment solutions are:

  • Transformative content playback experiences. From VCR to DVD was one example, and from standard definition to HDTV is another.  The key word here is transformative – it can’t just be “better quality”, as evidenced by virtually all other introduced formats and technologies based around content.
  • Notably difference content offerings. Again, moving up to HDTV-enabled set-top boxes was a natural flow, game consoles are the other shining example of a successful category.  Boxes that simply deliver “more of the same” or “stuff you can get elsewhere, now get it here (e.g. digital pictures)” are typically not big hits.  Consumers have to see some kind of service that’s worth the extra money.

Everything else has failed to make a dent.  Most “Internet Set Top Boxes” have been, and will be failures.  The typical logic that brings these products to market goes something like “consumers are about to cut the cables for their Internet content, and really hate watching it on their computers.”  The evidence behind this claim?  It’s in the same folder with the WMD evidence the government started a war for (zing!).

I’m very curious as to the potential from Google, Intel, and Sony.  Intel has wanted in on the “connected TV” for a long time (disclosure: they were an investor in Mediabolic), and has never really executed very well.  It’s not to say they can’t, but it’s safe to say the space is far far away from their core DNA.  Sony too has stumbled frequently in this space (here’s their version of a convergence device). Logitech? See Sony. And then there’s Google.

Part of me thinks Google believes that all devices are effectively the same, and their (limited) success in the phone market implies opportunity in the TV market.  Another part of me thinks Google is just so big they take on any sector they see opportunity in.  But most of me thinks Google wants to get firmly entrenched in the biggest advertising market there is – television.  And as hard as doing phones might be, doing TV boxes is much much harder.  Here’s why:

  • Phones play highly restricted media types.  Converged TV devices are expected to play all media types.  This topic alone is probably worthy of a blog post, but trust me when I say – it’s hard.
  • Consumers buy new phones on a recurring basis (multiple times a year in some countries). Consumers replace TVs infrequently, and buy TV “accessory” devices only a couple of times per decade. While the market is huge, it’s hard to get new devices into the home.
  • Carriers are motivated to push new devices and services into the hands of their customers, it’s part of their business model.  TV service providers are not motivated to do so (as discussed above).
  • As much as phones are “closed systems”, a manufacturer is able to purchase equipment and get a device certified and get it on the network without too much involvement by a carrier.  While the path is actually similar (CableCard Tru2Way certification), the realities for both the manufacturer and, more importantly, consumer are much much worse.
  • Again, as stated above, consumers are generally dissatisfied with their phones (a problem unlikely to go away) and are excited about new ones.  Consumers literally dread changing equipment in their living room – even us geeky dads with cool quadrophonic sound.

Now with all that said, I’m truly excited about the future of converged entertainment in (and out) of the home. I remain mostly cynical about seeing any real change anytime soon.  I think there are a few companies who have built the right foundation to make some inroads, but I’m hoping everyone involved is prepared to win their “realist” and “slow and steady wins the race”  badges over the next few years-to-decade (or longer).  Can Google be the catalyst of change, or will they just be the next in the long list of companies who tried and missed the mark?