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Your Next TV Interface Will Be a Tablet
waderoush writes "You can forget all the talk about 'smart' and 'connected' TVs: nobody, not even Apple, has come up with an interface that's easy to use from 10 feet away. And you can drastically curtail your hopes that Roku, Boxee, Netflix, and other providers of free or cheap 'over the top' Internet TV service will take over the world: the cable and satellite companies and the content owners have mounted savvy and effective counterstrikes. But there's another technology that really will disrupt the TV industry: tablet computing. The iPad, in particular, is the first 'second screen' device that's good enough to be the first screen. This Xconomy column argues that in the near future, the big-screen TV will turn into a dumb terminal, and your tablet — with its easy-to-use touch interface and its 'appified' approach to organizing content — will literally be running the show in your living room." Using a tablet as a giant remote seems like a good idea, and a natural extension of iPhone and Android apps that already provide media-center control. Maybe I'm too easily satisfied, but the 10-foot interface doesn't seem as hopeless as presented here; TiVo, Apple, and others been doing a pretty good job of that for the past decade.
Has been for decades, without external network access it does nothing, I have to plug it in to cable, radio or computers for it to be useful.
I think the author of the article summarises the state of the industry quite nicely. We're in the middle of a massively muddled migration from broadcasting toward video on demand (or whatever you want to call it) and delivered over IP. The "connected TV" apps in development in agency labs everywhere are going to fail spectacularly unless they are looking to make apps for iOS, Amazon (not "generic" Android) and perhaps Windows that stream video content.
I already use my iPhone and iPad as remotes with AirPlay it's absurdly simple to flip video onto any screen in my house or office.
But will broadcasters like Sky and Comcast go for this? And will this fly in non-American/European countries where state and local satellite broadcasters will fight like hell not to be disintermediated?
What do we think?
I already control my media with my phone. I have a DLNA/UPNP server and a DLNA/UPNP BluRay player. My phone can watch the movies or send them from the server to the player.
I bought the HDD with the server off of woot.com over a year ago, and I've found that XBMC makes my dedicated drive look crappy (but the dedicated drive takes less power and space).
I started this back in my iProduct days with iTunes. I just wanted something a little less iWalledGarden so I went with UPNP as much as possible (due to it being totally open) with DLNA as a sort of "make it work smoother with products that don't like open" patch.
To top it all off my Bluray player has a remote control application for my phone that doesn't say anything about being DLNA.
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The whole point of TV is to veg out and channel surf. It's called an "idiot box" for reason. Anything that takes your eyes off the screen ruins the experience. This is why a pad remote will never work in a million years on the market. You simply must have physical tactile buttons on a remote. Some virtual interface on a sheet of glass will not do.
This idea is an epic fail!
Life is not for the lazy.
We'll probably see a generation of remotes that look more like a e-reader, with a nonvolatile display. Most tablet devices require charging daily, if not more often. TV remotes today only need batteries once every few years.
I've not seen a 10 foot interface done well. Most are too much like the giant accessibility font versions of GUIs. They all look like I have a 420i display on a 19" TV that's 10' away. If I have a big screen with 1080p, please put more stuff on it! Paging down through a channel guide five lines at a time when I could easily be viewing 20 or more at a time is frustrating.
And navigating with a 4-way button isn't the greatest, either. I'm thinking that using the iPhone as a Wacom pad-like device operating as a remote mouse would be a lot easier than click-up-up-up-over-over-oops-too-far-back-OK.
IR remotes aren't the greatest, either. Without feedback, they have no way of ensuring the button pressed by the user makes it to the device.
Kinect has an interesting concept: reach to the widget and hold steady until it activates. Not sure I like it, but at least they're trying something new. Of course, it's not nearly "ready enough" to be a general purpose remote, at least not yet. It can't identify the average couch potato if they're not standing up.
The Sonos application on the iPhone is probably the kind of interface that works best. Use the local pad to browse and navigate, then once the selection is made, command the big screen to do it. Which is what the TFA is no doubt saying.
John
FWIW, the Kindle Fire, the Nook Color, and the iPad are all available in contract-free form. You don't like those?
You seem to be treating the iPad as a dedicated TV remote that never gets used for anything else.
The iPad is already next to me whenever I am watching TV. I check texts, emails, look up actors that are in the movies we are watching, etc etc.
When I am done watching TV, I don't leave the iPad on the couch, it goes with me, unlike the remote that is normally dedicated to the TV.
So why wouldn't I charge it every day?
I like microcars
Just what I need. A two-handed remote.
Please pass the chips.
Within that timeframe, everyone will already have one; a smart phone.
Think of the "smart TV" as having a web api: you see a second screen icon on your 'phone, drag a video onto it, the TV (in reality a computer) starts displaying that: pulling content directly not necessarily "X forwarded"
(it would be insane wasting wireless bandwidth in the house supplying a heavy bandwidth SuperHD device that-sits-in-one-place. Control it by wifi, but its main content over a wire.
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
But it incorrectly assumes that no one, including Apple, isn't working on exactly this.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/home-theater/apple-patents-new-touchscreen-remote-control-for-a-future-apple-tv/5610
I already do that. I have a Mac Mini attached to my TV running XBMC as a media server, and I use my iPad using rowmote as the controller. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Apple - but it Just Works. In fact, I like the setup so much I made the mac mini my dedicated media server and got an Airbook for development and everyday computing.
Only thing I don't like is the Mac Mini doesn't have BluRay. Other than that, everything I could want.
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until you punch in the air as your team is close to scoring a goal and find yourselt automatically switched to the cooking channel...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Do any of the people advocating using a $500 tablet as a remote to my $800 TV have any kids? The remote has been dropped more times than I can count (and that's just from me, not including the kids). It's regularly coated with chocolate, popcorn butter, and other food residue, and has survived more than one bath in coke.
When my wife wants the remote, I just toss it to her across the room, something I'm not likely to do when it's a heavy tablet (even if I wasn't worried about her missing it and having it crash to the floor).
I don't want a tablet to control my TV, I want a rugged remote and I don't want to add 50% (or even 10%) to the cost of the TV by having to purchase a tablet to control it.
Except remotes like this totally suck to use. I've tried several, including using the iPhone as a remote. Ignoring the 1-time setup pain, actually using it is annoying. At the very least, you have to keep looking up and down, between the remote and the device to do anything that takes more than one press to accomplish.
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10' interface works exceptionally well. Ask any TiVo user. Simple, intuitive, complete. Thing is, for $170 a year, most consumers expect more content than guide data and software updates, or at least access to your shows and recorded data. The industry hated the concept of TiVo and killed the real content (no cable or sat for you!), the users hated the restrictions that kept them from the content they'd recorded and limitations on what could be played from their own network. TiVo puts everything else to shame when it comes to controls and useful simplicity. Really, any TV control box that I can plug in, hand my wife the remote and manual, and walk away is an absolute winner.
The interface already exists, but it will be under patent lock and key for another decade.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
No, the contention is that if you chose not to have a tablet, you will be made by marketing types to feel increasingly marginalized, just as if you chose not to have a Pet Rock, Chia Pet, Billy the Big Mouth Bass, computer, a cell phone, or some form of transportation. If you will be a luddite or intelligent enough not to buy into the hype, that is your right, but it comes with some costs and many benefits.
Increasingly in other areas such as automobiles, useless features are appearing that are only accessible to those with iPhones or iPads, they are really cool the first three times you use them, they cost almost nothing to the manufacturer, but add to both the purchase price and maintenance costs of the product and they will only be supported for a few years. It's like not having a PC in the 1990s: sure, you don't have to have one, but there is a bunch of stuff that you shouldn't care about and won't be able to do as a result. It's your choice how to make that tradeoff. Stay in the past, if you'd prefer, but don't bitch about the things you can't do as society moves on, or you can keep up with the Joneses / modern life, which is increasingly mobile-centric, and that's only going to accelerate paralleling the decline of modern society / education / freedom over the next decade.
FTFY
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
> Within that time frame, everyone will already have one; a smart phone.
Finally, I can call my remote to find the darn thing.
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We're already using iPads for this, and more. Our AV system is based around a Marantz AV7005 pre-pro, which has an extensive web interface hosted on its own web server that allows control over pretty much everything it does, including selecting av sources, room eq, etc. Very nice interface, actually. Because it's a web interface, there's no "app" required other than a web browser.
I also have the room lighting remote controlled with a web interface using a Synaccess network AC power controller, basically we can do almost anything we want from anywhere -- as our home is basically a large open loft design, that means controlling the AV system from the bedroom, too. The AV7005 brings up my MA700 power amplifier array as part of the power-on sequence, also puts them in standby when shut down.
We use a smallish secondary LCD monitor rather than burn hours off the projector for things like streaming audio, also controlled by IR. You can select between them using the AV7005 web interface, and they power up and down based upon having valid input or not, so it all works together very nicely.
This stuff isn't ultra high-end, it's more mid- to mid-high, but these capabilities are trickling down to the broad consumer price ranges just as everything does. Pioneer has some nice remote iPad AV control stuff too, implemented as an actual app.
The iPad itself makes for an awesome control surface.
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