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Television Next In Line For Industry-Wide Shakeup?
New submitter pjlehtim writes "In a recent interview. Samsung's AV product manager, Chris Moseley, said, 'TVs are ultimately about picture quality. ... and there is no way that anyone, new or old, can come along this year or next year and beat us on picture quality.' Sounds familiar? There must be a change in the perceived role of television in the entertainment ecosystem before the general public starts to care about the smart TVs manufacturers are trying to push. That change is likely to come from outside the traditional home entertainment industry. It's not about technology; it is about user experience, again."
..yeah, no thanks. All I want or need is something that displays a 1080p signal well, and isn't going to break down and need to be replaced in a couple years. You can keep your so-called "smart", your "3D", and all your other silly bells and whistles. I'll stick to something that is quality, and if I need some "smarts" beyond what TiVo can do for me, I'll add an HTPC.
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There ain't much on TV I care about except sports, weather and the occasional movie. The rest is crap.
Smart TV? for what? It's just more stuff that can break. I don't want some smart TV or cable box wigging out on me while the damn game is on.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Picture quality? Maybe if you're into seeing the pancake makeup and ridiculous quantity of hair gel necessary to make your Sitcom/Soap stars look the way they do. Not going to really help animation at all, a little blur helps hide the sharp contrast of lines. Great for sports, so you can rest assured you're right when you call the ref an idiot for getting the call wrong, while you smugly watch the replays in High Def.
More likely going to find the user experience is more a la carte, as people leave the traditional broadcast, cable, and satellite networks for what they pick and choose over the internet (assuming ISPs don't kill the fledgling market with opressive fees for bandwidth, as IF my piddly 6 Mb/s connection should be considered taxing of their infrastructure. where's 100Mb/s?!?) I'd rather see my shows when it suits me, without even bothering with recording them on a DVR.
The TV itself could have the bits built in, but at the present rate of change I'd prefer an external box which I can upgrade as needed while the big investment, the display, is only bought every 5 or 10 years (or longer apart -- my only TV is really getting on in years, but still works.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Smart TVs are nice for things like streaming for a secondary TV, in a bedroom or basement, where you dont want a bunch of boxes and cables, but for my living room... i have a cable box, i have a game console, i have a networked dvd player. The TV is ONLY a display. This is one place where with some technologies moving as fast as they are, convergence is a bad thing. If some new streaming service comes out, i can reasonably assume theyll have a PS3 app. Depending on how proprietary things are they may not have an app for a smart TV even a few years old. Heck, i dont even need the main TV in the home theater to have speakers, i just want a big dumb good quality monitor with a digital video input. Let my receiver handle all the AV stuff and one or two boxes handle TV and recorded media.
Convergence has its place, its nice having a camera in my phone in my pocket all the time, but i dont want a cheap, prone to mechanical failure, blu-ray player or cheap PC that no one will make software for in 9 months stuck on the side of my nice high end tv.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
... than being charged for 200+ channels I will never watch.
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It's about time we get 4k televisions in production. Screw 3d, screw smart tv, just increase the resolution already. My monitor has higher resolution than my hdtv.
Don't forget about color dept. 1677216 just isn't enough.
Absolutel no reason we shouldn't be at full on 16-bits per channel right now.
My 19", 4:3 monitor from 2002 had higher resolution than my HDTV does today.
Oh, and better picture quality and response times, too.
By far the largest problem standing between us and mass smart TV adoption is the user interface.
No. By far the biggest problem is that there's no reason for a "smart" TV (whatever that is) when all you can do with it is watch the same junk that's on a dumb TV.
I am interested in a seamless way to use the TV to display what would be on my Laptop otherwise
Pretty much any new TV can do that. Many PCs have HDMI or DVI-D video outputs that plug right into an HDTV's HDMI input. Those that don't can use a VGA cable, as most HDTVs have a VGA input (except, I'm told, in Europe where TVs tend to have a SCART input instead of a VGA input). And until you replace your TV, you can go to SewellDirect.com and buy a PC to TV adapter that converts a VGA signal to an S-Video or composite signal.
Join the HTPC crowd. Indie filmmakers and indie video game developers will thank you.
You're spot on. At a friends place 5 remotes to operate a modern TV system. The screen, the dvd, the pvr, the dolby and there was something else but I have no idea what the hell it was.
WTF?
All so I can watch complete crap interrupted every 5 minutes for god damned adverts? Why would I bother to do that? I personally no longer have a TV.
Deleted
Wasn't so long ago we were playing games using machines which didn't have soundcards (ie business desktops)...
TV on the other hand is largely an evolution from radio.
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We have a Tivo, Wii and LG Blu-Ray all plugged into a Yamaha AV amp, which is connected to a Metz TV.
As a result i need:
Two remotes to watch TV (tivo for channel and amp volume, and the TV remote to turn it on/change the AV channel)
two or three remotes to watch a DVD -
Blu-ray + Amp remote + TV remote
trying to explain this to my mother-in-law is painful to say the least.
It's 2012 and all these devices still can't talk to each other, unless they're all from the same manufacturer. They all have their own, incompatible remote control technologies.
Please, TV and home entertainment equipment manufacturers, thrash out a common control communications standard and go with it - eg XML/SOAP over bluetooth or zigBee, or even HDMI, so I can control ALL my AV gear from one remote interface. I don't really care if it's a logitech-style remote or an android app; just give us something that works across manufacturers so i can have one remote to control them all.
The computing power is readily available and cheap, the frameworks all exist to do it - just choose a standard and implement it.
1080p 100Hz TV is good enough, I don't need or want craptastic 3D or a smart TV interface i'll never use. Just focus on the user experience. Make it easy for normal humans to use AV gear.
Access to good content, all the time, ala-cart, WITHOUT having to pay an arm-and-a-leg for it!
Picture quality is a great thing to have, but content is king. Without access to that, the TV is pointless (ever watch saturday mid-morning TV, when nothing but infomericals is on?).
We should have full access to all channels (broadcast, news, premium, "cable only") via all mediums. Right now, the big cable companies (and a few satellite companies) have everything locked up, when the Internet could easily stream most of the live, broadcast content. I don't want ONE company owning my cable, Internet and TV pipe, so they can collect $150-$200 per month from me. I want a choice!
Apple, Google, whomever: SHAKE THINGS UP
It has to be *in* the TVs because this way you'll buy a new one every year when something shinier comes out. Same as with cell phones.
Every year they'll add some small new feature, then carefully design an ad campaign that will make you feel like a loser because you don't have the latest-greatest. You'll be glad to open your wallet just to feel popular again.
It's not usability, it's all about DRM. The content providers are desperate to keep people from copying or modifying content. It everything is in one box, then you have no where to connect a recording device. Your cable box will be implemented in software instead of a separate piece of hardware that has to be maintained. Providers can change their encryption any time they want by pushing out a new patch, and keeping the "hackers" at bay. You want to record and watch later? There's an extra charge for that, and only on their terms.
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