Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the Over-The-Top TV Conference and wanted to quickly share some of my experiences at OTTCON.
Overall, it was an enjoyable experience with many knowledgeable industry experts in attendance. My talk on how the Connected TV space has changed in the last 6 months went well and was written up by Ken Pyle at the Viodi View. His article is worth a read, and discusses many trends in the Smart TV space, including the rise of the second screen. Quoting from his piece:
There are kinks with two-screen interactions that need to be ironed out, as pointed out by Jeremy Toeman of Stage Two. He cited the example of the use-case where multiple people are watching television and the one, whose smart phone is controlling the program, goes to the bathroom, effectively taking the remote control with him. Similarly, who is the master, when multiple people are trying to control the second screen from their respective personal media devices? This could portend a new generation of “remote control wars”.
Jeremy Toeman also gave designers some good tips, including:
* Lean back means “passive experience”.
* 2nd screen should have all the text heavy comments.
* People don’t want to log-in or have passwords on their televisions.Toeman’s updated his predictions for losers and winners in his session. He cited the big service providers, TV manufacturers and content owners as being among the winners. He suggested that the biggest winner would be the consumer, provided the new features that the over-the-top approach unleashes are not overwhelming.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks to everyone who attended the Over-The-Top TV Conference and shared their passion for the next generation of TV.