TV – LIVEdigitally

Why It’s a Great Time to Start a TV Startup, part 2: It’s Time For Change

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Jeremy Toeman

2015-03-04_1049 As I asserted in Part 1, I believe we are entering a “fourth generation” of television, one in which the rigid walls that have previously defined the industry are fundamentally disrupted. In the post-1.0 era, not only have consumers lived within “walled gardens” of content, but the industry itself has remained mostly closed to outsiders. When even companies as powerful as Intel and Google have tremendous struggles dealing with Hollywood, gaining access to content, etc, it’s almost comical to think of the startups who tried the same. Aereo’s $96 million in funding became about $1M in auction to TiVo this week.

This is mostly due to the incredible entanglement of contracts and legal issues pertaining to content ownership, distribution rights, release windows, playback, etc. Heck, even TV-related companies trying to change struggle with the mess. For context: We live in a world today that lets me buy NHL Gamecenter (directly from the NHL) yet not watch my hometown team (Montreal Canadiens, FTW) play “blacked out” games that air on, wait for it, the NHL Network.

The way I’ve always tried to describe the complexity to people is to think of taking a few dozen cables, neatly wound up, then throw em in a backpack and go for a quick jog. Then try to extract a single cable – good luck (for off-topic reading, here’s why that happens).

But we, today, are seeing important catalysts of change, and the catalysts are strong enough to make the powers that be look at how they can un-entangle their own mess. Here are the factors that I believe contribute strongest to a looming shift:

Netflix, Hulu, SlingTV, HBOGO, and TVE services break down the barriers to making content available through live and near-real-time streaming options. They also “train” content owners to think differently about distribution options.
iTunes, Google Play, and VOD services enable a la carte alternatives that are truly viable options to many consumers.
Pervasive 4G access, inexpensive smartphones, and tablets train consumers to demand anything/everything on all devices everywhere and all the time.
Bittorrent, Popcorn Time, and other piracy options have made finding and accessing high quality content for free far too easy for far too many people.
YouTube, Vimeo, and the suite of multichannel networks like Fullscreen are providing infinite entertainment alternatives to younger audiences, who may be losing the “attachment” to broadcast-quality television. This should be particularly scary to all sorts of companies – if the zeitgeist of pop culture shifts away from TV, we can expect to see more change, faster, than anyone can predict.
Cord cutting and dropping TV ratings are at the cusp of causing dramatic impact to advertisers, the unquestionable lifeblood of the industry.

As my colleague Adam Flomembaum, Editor at Lost Remote, shared with me yesterday:

“… we have seen in the last year that control of high quality content is being wrested from the hands of cable and satellite providers. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of other great options for accessing their favorite content, and TV startups that make this process more seamless – or at the very least, more consumer friendly – have a great chance to thrive.”

"What do you mean 'Lets get rid of the middlemen' we are the middle men!" Fundamentally the thing that’s made the TV industry “work” is the requirement and dependency on the two-tiered “middlemen” between content production and audiences. But if the audiences are shifting patterns, quickly, and the producers are able to find new methods of profitable content distribution, change will come. I can’t say it’s a “this year” thing or a “10 years from now” thing – but I do believe we’ve entered the phase wherein there’s industry awareness of changing times, and reactiveness is following.

I’d also argue that this was not the case over the past decade, and is directly attributable to why so many TV startups crashed and burned. As Eric Elia, Managing Director of Cainkade, puts it:

“The technology has been here for a while, but we’ve been waiting for 10 years for the TV industry dynamics to shift. The table is now set with [hundreds of millions of] streaming devices worldwide, the unbundling boom (HBO, CBS, Sling TV, etc), and a Netflix clone for every taste and geography. It’s going to be a fun few years for tools companies, programmers, ad tech. But I would not want to be a commodity content owner that can’t flap its wings outside the bundle.”

Now with any change we’ll see some mega-corporations begin their slow road to the deadpool, while others seize opportunities. We’ll see startups rise seemingly out of nowhere and become household names. Even five years ago cable and broadcast execs could easily keep their eyes on the distant horizon fearlessly – today, they’re building survival plans.

Next up: defining “TV 4.0”, identifying short-to-long-term opportunities, and other thoughts on why I think it’s a great time to be riding the wave of change in television.

When Will TV Shows Get Surge Pricing?

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Jeremy Toeman

There’s a lot of mixed feelings about Uber’s “Surge Pricing” concept, which described in a nutshell is: if lots of people are trying to get Ubers in a certain region, the price goes up. Economic-minded folks will call it simple supply and demand, whereas others feel the company is attempting to gouge their customers, manipulate pricing, etc. Assuming for this discussion it’s more the former – a simple case of supply and demand – I’ve been wondering about applying a similar model to TV shows.

When Better Call Saul premiered, it launched as the number one series debut in cable history. I was/am very interested in watching it, but without a pay TV subscription, I had no option to see it in/near-real-time. Within hours the episode was available in a variety of Video on Demand (VOD) formats, either for free or a low fee ($2.99 in iTunes at this moment). Older shows in iTunes tend to run at $1.99 per episode.

I’d argue the TV industry, specifically content owners, are missing opportunities right now by having equanimous pricing. The value, to an interested audience, of a piece of content is much, much higher in a short window. Especially for content that has any kind of zeitgeist/cultural value. Being “in” the crowd who sees the premiere matters to some segment of the population. Similarly, older content has less inherent value. Do I really find an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati is “worth” the same as others? WKRP in Itunes

And yes, there is a range – Game of Thrones is $3.99 per episode, for example – but I’d argue there’s a lot being missed out in both directions. Older, library catalogs are worth less, and hot/newer shows are worth more. I’d probably also argue that anything more than 2-ish years old should have free S1E1 viewing to all viewers.

This takes a lot of new-style thinking for an older-style industry. And I see the hazards as well – if content gets priced too high, audiences may well seek out illegitimate sources. But I’d assume there’s a lot of opportunity to be had in a real-time priced marketplace. As content owners seek out new methods of monetizing their huge inventories, I hope to see experimentation in this space. Then again, I’d hate to see a snowstorm make a good show cost 2.8x the normal rate!

Why it’s (almost) 2014 and you still need a set top box

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

I actually had one of these!

I stumbled onto a discussion on Quora entitled “Why do we still have television set top boxes?” and as I often see, it’s full of conjecture and suspicion about the evil empire that is the pay TV industry. While I am not specifically trying to support or vilify anyone from that industry, I thought it worthy a response that has less conspiracy theory than others. So let’s start with some important facts:

1) Set Top Boxes (STB’s) take, on average, from day of deployment 30+ months to “break even” for a cable company2) Any tech support, home maintenance (“truck roll”), etc is costly to a cable company
3) Software updates, QA, etc are slow and costly to a cable company
4) Most north american pay TV providers now enable some form of “TV everywhere” service available by App or Browser
5) Many pay TV providers now offer same apps on Roku, Apple TV, and several smart TVs
6) Smart TV software platform updates happen 1+/year – which could easily result in incompatibility with pay TV services. Only very recently have any of the manufacturers begun to standardize their own platforms.
7) The technology in homes is moving at an *extreme* pace, so even if a pay TV operator is moving “fast” they will still appear, relatively speaking, to be moving slowly.
7a) thinking point – Until about 5 years ago, this just wasn’t the case at at all, the pay TV providers didn’t really even need to innovate whatsoever. So here we are 5 years later and they have APIs, multiple apps, etc – not too many industries one could point to and make a similar statement about incumbents…

I think if you add the above together, the answer should be something like this:

The pay TV industry would be happy to rid itself of STBs, but only *very recently* have viable alternatives hit the market. Pay TV companies are very rapidly adopting these platforms, but your definition of “rapid” is radically out of whack with how an established industry moves. Over the next few years you should expect most North American Pay TV providers to give you as a consumer multiple options for using their services in the platform of your choosing.

As a bonus:
8) CableCards *could have been* a good solution, but were way too soon to market to make the industry comfortable with them. Ask yourself this question: if you were the person in charge of P&L on the hardware deployment business, and you knew full well that consumers will call you with any problems whatsoever, would you support some “standard” by which *other company’s hardware* was causing YOU customer service issues? Me neither.

The only thing that could kill TV? TV itself.

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

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…

It’s a HUGE industry ($500+B/year if not more)
It’s been utterly untouched by the Internet (so far – a thing that really rankles a lot of people, mostly tech bloggers)
The newspaper and music industries both got trashed, so why not TV too?
It’s controlled by a very small number of extremely powerful and wealthy companies
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…

Is there a market for Ultra High Definition TV?

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Jeremy Toeman

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!

The Only Two Ways People Watch TV

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Jeremy Toeman

Over the past 30 years we’ve evolved the television experience from something where everybody watched the same shows on the same channels on the same devices in the same rooms at the same time to a world where that’s almost never the case. Today, with the exception of appointment TV, it’s such a fragmented landscape that it’s almost a challenge to find other people watching the same stuff you do. But with all the variance in content, services, devices, location, price, etc, there’s still really only two ways people choose to watch TV. This is a subtle, but extremely important concept to anyone in the business of changing television.

Deliberate viewing: you go to the TV with a specific piece of content in mind. This includes live TV (“let’s watch Idol at 8pm tonight”), your DVR (“I need to watch last night’s 30 Rock”), and any VOD/OTT platform such as Comcast OnDemand, Netflix, Hulu, etc (“I’m going to watch the first season of Breaking Bad”). We could also include a deliberate type of content in this category (“I’m going to watch a comedy” – not necessarily something you’d say out loud, but if you are in the mood for something funny, that’s a pretty deliberate concept). I also refer to deliberate viewing as “search mode” for TV, since you will specifically search for the piece of content you want, whether by changing the channel, navigating your OnDemand menu, or going to your DVR library.

Random viewing: you go to the TV with no idea what you want to watch. This includes simple channel surfing (“nope, next!”) as well as direct channel changing (“I wonder if anything good is on TNT now. Maybe Shawshank or Blues Brothers??”). It also includes browsing the OnDemand options (“I wonder if there’s anything new on Netflix?”) and even your DVR (“Maybe we recorded something we haven’t watched yet?”). I also refer to random viewing as “browse mode” for TV, since you are just perusing lists of stuff until you find something you are content to watch. Note the last phrasing here, as random viewing is less about the “excitement” factor of watching something deliberately, and more about the “good enough to pass the time” factor, with the potential for excitement.

Now for the cold, hard fact: any “future TV” service or product which doesn’t account for both types of TV viewing, will fail. This includes OTT services, smart TV apps, second screen apps, third screen apps, eighth screen apps, widgets, websites, gadgets, platforms, and everything else under the hood. Again, if you cannot service both primary needs of a viewing audience, your system is a goner – unless, that is, you are specifically aiming to replace an existing component of those services (in other words – if your live TV service is designed to replace another live TV service, that’s viable, since the consumer’s ecosystem will still include whatever else it had before).

How do I back this up without cold, hard facts? Because people don’t really change much, and TV, specifically, is not merely “another” activity up there with Angry Birds, Facebook, Pinterest, reading books, etc. Watching TV is a very specific type of activity, one about entertainment and more importantly, escape. Life is hard, TV lets you escape for a period of your day – why on earth would Americans spend 4-8 HOURS per day in front of it otherwise?

So if people don’t change, and people need escape (especially as they age – I’m not talking about 13 year olds here, for the most part), they need some version of deliberate and random lean back TV watching. Could this include YouTube videos? Sure. How about an all-on demand lineup? Doubtful. How about a “TV is just an app” concept? Doubtful. It’s why most cord-cutting theories aren’t holding water. It’s why #SocialTV is still mostly just a fad. It’s why most “second screen” apps are just barely gaining traction. It’s why Google TV is such a mess right now. It’s why Apple TV is still a hobby. Sure, these things work absolutely great for some, but absolutely don’t for most.

The future of TV involves a lot of change. And the more things change, the more they stay the same. Long live TV.

Can Social TV Survive Without Appointment TV?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Jeremy Toeman

This is the image you get if you do a google image search for "world record".

So the Grammy’s unsurprisingly (I will explain why I say it that way in a moment) set all sorts of records for social TV. Just like the Superbowl did a few weeks ago. Just like the ___ did a few weeks before that. I call this a big yawner, but first, some definitions:

Appointment TV: a TV show where the majority of the audience is watching live. The 5 primary examples are Reality Shows (American Idol, Amazing Race, etc), News (CNN, uh… CNN Headline News? I don’t know, televised news is just propaganda in my opinion anyway – but I digress), Sports (mostly hockey, particularly the Canadiens), Events (Oscars, Royal Weddings, etc), and “big episodes” of scripted television (Lost Series Finale, Game Of Thrones Season 2 Premiere, etc).
Catch-up TV: everything that doesn’t fit into Appointment TV above. Literally. Every “typical” episode of every “typical” show is in the catch-up category, which means there is no particular driver for someone to watch it anywhere near to real-time. This is why I’m still on Weeds season 5, Entourage season 6, etc, and will catch up on things like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and others whenever I find the desire.
Social TV: let’s do this SAT-style. Social TV : TV :: Social Media : Web. In other words, it’s a nebulous mess of “stuff you use things like Facebook and Twitter to do while watching TV”. It includes hashtags, check-ins, second screen, likes, and is a big jumbly undefined thing. And I have no problem with that.

So why do I say things like “unsurprisingly” and “yawner”? Because this is a burgeoning activity. We are at the very earliest stage of people using second screens whilst (yup, whilst) watching TV. I myself tweeted a couple of times during the Superbowl (really during the ads):

This is an infinite increase over last year’s SuperBowl. I didn’t watch the Grammy’s, but had I, I likely would’ve tweeted. And this isn’t just about me, it’s a pretty universal trend. Why? Because Twitter, the platform we are using to measure Social TV as a concept, is still growing. So anything measuring a growing service with growing use and calling the outcome “record-setting” is really just fulfilling an exercise in redundancy. Every new instance of appointment TV tweeting will outpace all previous instances, until Twitter stops growing.

But really, that’s all just a sidepoint. My issue, concern, and question, is whether or not there’s any value whatsoever in any of this for catch-up TV. Do I care about tweets someone sent during an episode of House from last year? Or last week? Or even 10 minutes ago? I don’t, and I don’t understand why someone else would either. Nor do I care about what someone is watching right now unless I too can (and should) watch the same thing, at the same time. Heck, I hate seeing the promos to text in my vote (to Top Chef, my guilty pleasure show) when I’m seeing an episode 4 months after it aired.

I don’t see a solution to this conundrum. To be clear, I’m not questioning will social media impact TV behaviors – that will certainly happen. Further, as evidence is mounting that catch-up TV is growing steadily and will inevitably outpace real-time/appointment TV, I see the window somewhat shrinking for what’s currently called “Social TV.” But that shouldn’t really surprise anyone, as it’s such an early stage in the evolution of TV. And if you think about it in evolutionary terms, TV is just learning about making fire now, and the wheel is probably a few years away…

So when might Apple announce a television?

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Jeremy Toeman

Seems like Apple has news coming later this month. Regardless of your feelings about Apple, it’s safe to say they have mastered the art of the product launch like none other. Even when virtually every detail of a new product gets leaked due to it being stolen lost at a bar, they still master the news cycle and generally enchant and entertain. Some might argue they simply do things whenever they want, others would surmise they do it entirely calculated on a spreadsheet based on maximizing sales. My guess is they do it “when they can” – the moment they are done with the first production line and have the shipments queued up, the media invites go out, a few semi-leaks pop up here and there, then off to the races.

This works great when you can fit a few hundred phones into every crate and airdrop ’em over the US at the same day/time with ease. Sure it’s costly, but in the grand scheme of things, no big deal. The boat’s left the harbor at the same time, and within 3 weeks the full distribution cycle is up and running.

But now we’re not talking about a gadget that fits in your pocket, it’s an Apple Television (right? right?). And despite what self-aggrandizing promoters some analysts say, it’d be my guess that they ship them in more sizes than just 32″ and 37″ (seriously, how did anyone actually believe that?). Unless they’re about to pour forth with statements about how those are actually the ideal sizes for a display, I don’t think they’re about to exist in a market where size really does matter and play on the small front. I’d guess we see one at ~32″, ~40″, ~50″, and ~60″ – those are the main categories of TVs sold today.

Jeremy Toeman on a truck with a Samsung TV

Yeah, I'm on a truck. Life's just that good. I have a keg back here too.

And now is where we face our hurdle: these TVs are big. The box for my Samsung 63″ plasma barely fit into a pickup truck! You can’t exactly airdrop hundreds of each model to Apple stores. In fact, every aspect of the logistics to pull off Apple’s typical surprise & delight maneuvers is quite tricky here. So that’s problem number one – in my guess they solve this via the “and you’ll all be able to receive your units 30 days from today” type of solution. But there’s no way you’ll hear “and you can go get them in Apple stores nationwide this afternoon.”

Second, unlike phones and iPads, and even computers, TV buying has a lot more seasonality to it. And other than a core set of fanatics (nope, I’m not at that level yet), most people aren’t about to pick up new expensive living room gear for any given reason. This is actually one of the trickiest nuances of the TV world (on the hardware front) – it’s really hard to get someone out of their buying cycles. Sure, if someone was already planning to get a new set next holiday season they’ll consider getting one in June or August or whenever. But if not, (question mark).

So, they can’t announce too soon. Or too late. They can’t announce in the first half of the year. But if they wait til too late, they’ll impact supply chain in a painful way and potentially affect sales.

My money’s on a late Spring announcement, shipping in the Summer. Even though it’s traditionally a terrible time to introduce a TV set to the market, it’ll give them more time to get the logistic down, the stores reformatted, and everything else into full swing in advance of the Q4 buying season.

But then again, it’s Apple, so “the rules” just don’t apply.

Decoding "I Cracked It"

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

As Nick Bilton wrote:

“I’ve finally cracked it!” Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple, told his biographer, Walter Isaacson.

This topic seems to come up time and time again in the “future of TV” discussions, and was revived today over at AllThingsD: “Though it’s currently only embedded in the new iPhone 4S, Siri could eventually change the face of the TV industry.” I’ve seen a few other stabs at what “cracking it” could possibly refer to, but none seem quite right.

First, regarding voice-controlled TVs. Is this part of the future? Absolutely, unquestionably, undeniably. Siri hacking is already a hobby, and the idea of “TV, channel 702 please” or “TV, Watch The Office” or “TV, Record New Episodes of Arrested Development” all sound great. But how much of an improvement is this really?

I’d call it a minor enhancement – specifically in context to all the action happening in the second screen. If you can pick up your smart phone or iPad and perform roughly the same query in one of dozens of apps, then “talking” this command doesn’t really sound like a HUGELY big deal. It sounds incremental. And “cracking it” doesn’t seem like it’s about incremental. As I’ve written about previously, I don’t think it’s about physical gestures either, and as I’ll write about more in the future, it’s unlikely “apps” nor about some “new” 10-foot user interface (those are terrible, and are dead, thankfully).

What if the interview wasn’t about some futurey thing we’ll see one day? What if it’s not some mystical innovation that we can’t possibly fathom? See, I talk to virtually everybody in the future of TV industry, and not a single person seems to be able to imagine what this could be. That’s a whole lot of smart, industry-relevant, savvy people to be so in the dark.

So I’m going to take a giant leap backwards on the statement “I cracked it” and instead of looking at what might come, I’m looking at what’s already there. See, from my eyes, the single biggest improvement to the TV experience I’ve ever seen happened last year. I think “I Cracked It”exists, and it’s called AirPlay.

AirPlay takes a fundamental mindshift from thinking about whats happening ON the screen, where you have to use a remote (or gesture or voice or whatever) to control some awkward, ill-performing, frustrating, fundamentally LOUSY user interface. AirPlay shifts the interface to your favorite location, the device you hold, and carry with you all the time. AirPlay enables you to have the most organic, natural, helpful user experience you can, then just shift that experience to the device you want, easily and flawlessly. It’s an awesome experience.

For the record, I don’t mean this to be a gush about Apple TV / AirPlay – merely the experience the two together provide, one I anticipate will be replicated by others, and soon. The future of TV interfaces will be controlled by your second screen, and you’ll have one simple way to get it to the screen of your choosing. Today that’s done by AirPlay, but by the end of 2012 you’ll see this type of offering from a variety of manufacturers and app providers.

The first “moment of change” for TV user interfaces happened in the late 1990s by TiVo. The next one happened in 2010, by Steve Jobs & Apple. And yes, he cracked it.

Do I Want a Gesture-Controlled TV?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

With the latest updates, the XBOX 360 is able to show live TV via Verizon’s FIOS service. For Kinect owners, this enables a vision of a fully gesture controlled TV. Swipe your hand left/right to change channels, up/down to change volume, and do a backflip to return to the channel you were previously watching. Wonderful.

Well, wonderful in theory, that is. But in reality, I’m not so sure. First, I’ll get past the concern of my TV randomly changing channels when I gesticulate wildly during a hockey game (Go Habs!) and just assume it only does it when I want it to. I’m going to move to the part of the conversation of “how much does this help me as a TV watcher?”

How does it help?
If I don’t need a remote control, at all, I’d say it’s a nice improvement (though as you’ll read below, this is pretty close to impossible). With a caveat: it needs to work in such a way that every “command” is completely memorable. If there’s a risk that I’ll forget how to Pause, Record, or access my DVR menu, and I’ll ever need to reach for that remote, it’s a done deal. From my experience ranging from Siri on the iPhone to early gesture technology (my first ever was the original Black & White game), the moment the technology becomes semi-reliable it is functionally equivalent to unreliable. And, dropped calls not withstanding, people for the most part do not regularly use unreliable technology.

How doesn’t it help?
Well, since there’s no way the gestures can replace on-screen menus (the dreaded 10′ UI), ultimately all the gesture does is replace a physical remote (in other words – there’s no gesture for “I want to watch The Office from my DVR” or “change to channel 704”). So the user still has to deal with their sluggish, painful to use EPG (electronic program guide), navigate the tedious DVR menus, etc etc etc. Which begs the question – is waving your hand “up” really a “Great” improvement to pushing “up” on a remote? I’d file this under the “not-so-much” category.

There’s a lot to be said for the transformation of TV. There’s a lot of new functionality coming. There’s a lot of new services coming. This is about the most exciting time for innovation and change in the television industry that I’ve ever seen. This also directly implies we’re going to see a lot of gimmickry, under which gesture controls firmly sits in my opinion (though ZDNet thinks it’s the bomb – but hey, to each their own).

But then again, if it lets people put down their poop-laden remotes, I guess that does make the world a better place.

Smart TV: Not Dead Yet!

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

I'm Not Dead Yet!

There’s a post on Wired entitled “Smart-TV Space May Never Take Off as Predicted” in which the author quotes a comment from ViewSonic:

“’Smart TV’ has not achieved the consumer acceptance or market expectation… that was forecasted over the last couple years. In addition, consumer spending for Smart TV’s in general has experienced a significant slow down as the economy has slowed. Our current strategy is to stay involved with the various technology developments and consider them in the future as they become available.”

Now with all due respect to ViewSonic, the last time I checked they didn’t rank in the top 5 TV manufacturers, and based on looking at prior years reports, my hunch is they represent somewhere between 0-3% of TVs sold (they do well in monitors, not as much in TVs). So when they predict Smart TV to have a problem, perhaps they aren’t the voice we should be using, as compared to companies such as Samsung, who has over 2 million Smart TVs in homes already.

Source: DisplaySearch Quarterly Advanced Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report

As Michael Wolf, of GigaOM, tweeted: “Folks, Viewsonic is not the bellweather company by which to judge success of embryonic sector on #smarttv.” Now that said, I completely agree with James McQuivey (Forrester analyst who is hitting Smart TV issues squarely on the head):

“What’s happening in the connected TV space is it’s not really about what consumers want, it’s about what manufacturers are making,” Forrester principal analyst James McQuivey says. “Simply having a connected TV doesn’t mean you’ll actually use it.”

According to all the analysts and manufacturers I’ve spoken with personally, and that’s virtually all of them, the industry is pretty well agreed that somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of all Smart TVs actually get connected. Further, the vast majority of them are just using them for Netflix, and just about everything else is getting pretty well ignored (stats show the #1 Smart TV app is Netflix, #2 is YouTube, and #3 is “other”).

The Wired author goes on to cite failures of the Google TV Revue box as more evidence to why the market is stuttering. The truth is, the Revue box is failing because it’s a lousy product with a poor customer value proposition, and Kevin Bacon commercials aren’t enough to pull the wool over it. But this would be like saying there’s no SmartPhone market because the BlackBerry Storm wasn’t so hot.

Wait a sec, that's not a touch screen!

Last January I wrote a piece for Mashable called “5 Reasons Connected TV Could Flop in 2011” and in my opinion, all 5 of those problems are happening. And I don’t see anybody really emerging out of the pack to do it any better – yet. In fact, I’d wager we’re going to go a full calendar year from now before seeing signs of change. And here’s why:

The TV UI (aka “ten foot user interface” aka “lean back UI” aka “onscreen display”) is simply unable to scale to meet the demands of convergence. I’ll write more on this topic in the next couple of weeks, but mark my words: we have utterly reached the apex of functionality of all forms of TV-based user interfaces/experiences.

I believe TiVo pushed the concept to the breaking point with their original UX back in 1999, and I’ve seen nothing push it further since. Yes, there are some prettier looking things out there, with beautiful icons/etc, but from a UX standpoint, we’re well past the zenith of what you can do with a remote. And no, I don’t believe gestures are going to cut it either, and I’ll go into depth on that topic in an upcoming post as well.

I'd change the channel, but honestly my arms are just too tired.

The last point on Smart TV I have is this – the biggest “thing” that’s going to slow down all forms of growth is replacement cycle consideration. If you buy a device once every 7-8 years, yet know intrinsically that the technology inside that device will be outdated long before that, you are less likely to buy it. The only way manufacturers can solve this problem, as far as I can see it, is through a modular component that will enable future-proofing of the set. Hm, yup, time for a blog post on that.

So is the Smart TV world fragmented? Yes. Confounded? Yes. Faced with turbulence? Yes. Full of shoddy products that are causing backlash and poor word of mouth due to radically complicated living room experiences when all we want to do is kick back, turn on Bear Grylls, and have a beer? Absolutely. Dying? Nope, not even a tiny bit.

List of SmartTV Events for Fall 2011

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

Budapest Parliament Hall. This would be an awesome place for a smart TV conference!

Just like my Future of TV Newsletter (thanks to all the subscribers – wow!), I thought it would be helpful for all my peers to create a list of all the events I’m tracking this Fall that have anything to do with Smart, Social, or Connected TV. That said, I’m sure I’m missing some (please email, tweet, or comment if you know of any!). The list below also includes some of the speakers that are presenting, though is incomplete (I only had so much room on the page, sorry to anyone I cut – it wasn’t personal. Well, mostly.).

The Future of #SocialTV – Sept 14 – New York City

Speakers include:

Brian Stelter, TV & Digital Media Reporter at The New York Times ( @BrianStelter)
Mark Ghuneim, CEO of Wiredset/Trendrr, @MarkGhuneim
Valerie Streit, Strategist at YouTube/NextNew, @ValStreit
Ryan Osborn, Director of Social Media at NBC News, @Rozzy
Alex Iskold, Founder & CEO of Get Glue, @AlexIskold