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What Is the Future of the Television? (ben-evans.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Benedict Evans has an interesting post about where television hardware is headed. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the tech industry made a huge push to invade the living room, trying to make the internet mesh with traditional TV broadcasts. As we all know, their efforts failed. Now, we periodically see new waves of devices to attach to the TV, but none have been particularly ambitious. The most successful devices of the recent wave, like the Chromecast and Apple TV, are simply turning the TV into a dumb screen for streamed content. Meanwhile, consumption of all types of video content is growing on smaller screens — tablets, phones, etc. Even game consoles are starting to see their market eroded by boxes like the Steam Link, which acts as a pipe for a game being played elsewhere on a PC. It raises an intriguing question: where is the television headed? What uses and functions does one giant screen serve that can't be cleverly redistributed to smaller screens? Evans concludes, "The web's open, permissionless innovation beat the closed, top-down visions of interactive TV and the information superhighway."
The garbage heap.
Because that's how you kill the 17" MacBook Pros.
The future of TV is locked/bricked TVs sitting out in the garage or curb.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
... What uses and functions does one giant screen serve that can't be cleverly redistributed to smaller screens?...
The size and mobility of the screen will continue to evolve towards use cases that are both needed and appropriate for the task involved, along with a continuing and increasing lockdown of the media streams so that a tithe can be extracted..
.
There, I saved you from having to waste time reading TFA as I did.
But at home? That's a different story. I enjoy watching movies especially on a LARGE screen tv 60" or larger preferably. I rarely go to the movie theater anymore, due to pricing and all the damned idiots that won't shut up, noisy kids, etc.
I like to recreate the movie experience at home...and I have a sound system I've built over the years to run with a nice large picture.
No, I don't watch much traditional "network" type television...hell all that turned to stupid "reality shows" or contests of some kind (I remember when the FoodTV and cooking channel used to actually SHOW people cooking with recipes and techniques)...I tune that out.
Of late, good content has started to reappear, like Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc. However, with these, I tend to let them finish an annual run, and then binge watch them over a week or so.
But I'd not enjoy good sit down viewing like this with friends or family, or hell, even by myself on a 12", 7" or less size picture.
I want this on a nice LARGE high quality screen. Yes, I am bemoaning the loss of the plasma screen, I still think it has the best blacks, but still.
Of course my eyes are getting worse too..but I don't understand why so many folks seem to be, as this article posits, to be watching everything from a damned cell phone or tablet.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So according to a previous posting then, the future of the TV is to be bricked within minutes of being connected to the Internet. Please let me be able to do the same with my thermostat, spy-cam, fridge, car, couch, pet, kids, all the glorious IoT.
The problem is that the screen itself is a large, beautiful, and relatively expensive piece compared to everything that puts content on it. The price point makes it impractical to upgrade and replace on the same cycle as an XBox, Playstation, Roku, Apple TV, etc. Personally, I replace the screen every 7-10 years, and the connected devices every 3-5 years. Until the screens drop sufficiently in price to be replaceable in sync with the content devices, it makes exactly zero sense to cram more stuff into them. Especially when you consider the security issues.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
What uses and functions does one giant screen serve that can't be cleverly redistributed to smaller screens?
It isn't true that a small screen close to your face can duplicate the experience of a large screen further away.
For watching silly cat videos my phone is fine. For a movie I want to get into an enjoy, I watch it on my 60" (dumb) TV and high end audio gear, because it provides a better experience. For a very few movies, I still watch them in theaters, because even my high end home gear cannot duplicate that experience. (That experience is inferior in other ways: audience noise, sticky floors, etc, but I'm just talking about screen size: the experience cannot be matched by my home gear, even though the angular size of a closer smaller 60" screen might be similar to the giant further away movie screen).
I disagree that tech failed in the living room. My dumb screen has to be driven by something. It's driven by a Linux PC with an IR remote, which gives me far more flexibility and less ad-company tracking than a settop box or console.
TV will become the "Big Assed Screen" that other devices can display on.
Will broadcast TV survive? Maybe there is always a need for local news and weather.
Just give me enough dumb screen to give me a 47 degree field of view from my chair, and I'm happy. What I plug into that screen could be anything. It could even be a cable box, thus turning into a "television."
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Fucking hell. Already? It was only two hours ago our Smart TVs could be usurped by malware and hold the devices to ransom, just like full blown computers.
I know tech moves fast, but shit me a cock of cunt juice, this is getting silly.
Ow My Balls!
The future of television is on-demand and not scheduled programming with the option to pay subscription fees to kill all advertising. This means no cable TV as we currently see it. All TV programming will be sent over IP networks. Over the air local TV stations will start offering TV streaming to smart TV's, and will retire their transmitters. The spectrum will be freed up for other uses.
My take on Advertising: Advertising is a scourge which causes weak minded people to go into debt wasting money purchasing things they don't need. Think of it as the 20th/21st century Jedi Mind Trick.
If you still define a TV as something with both a display and a tuner/channel selector, then yes, it's dead and covered with larvae.
If you separate the display from whatever collection of boxes you use to generate a video (and audio) stream, then large displays will always be desirable.
If you get literal, translating "tele - vision" as "distant seeing," then any streaming source to the monitor counts as TV. It's just OTA sources that will go away -- unless you count cellular video streaming to your phone followed by Chromecasting to the monitor -- , as well as fat-pipe CATV.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The killer app for the big screen was and still is to enable immersive shared experiences for real-time events, like sports and various other live performances, and for long-form story-telling (ie. movies). Smaller screens, except perhaps VR goggles or some distant-future holographic room, will never compete.
As other devices with displays take over the short form functions that don't demand that immersive experience, like talking-head news and low-resolution amateur content, perhaps the big TV will become a niche device, only for those who can afford to set a system up that rivals commercial theaters. But I predict that many will still choose to have a near-theatrical experience in their homes.
The Internet generation expects easier choice, such as clicking on Favorites to go elsewhere on whim, and will not sit through long commercial breaks. Plus, gaming, social media/chatrooms, and cat videos compete for attention.
This may mean that TV shows are less profitable and have a smaller budget. But it could also mean that new lean and mean media companies will offer a wider variety and experiment more because they don't have to deal with the bureaucracy and oligopoly collusion of the big networks.
Table-ized A.I.
Hello.. don't multiple people watch TV together any more? It is a pain when my wife and I watch 'content' and have to use a laptop. Occasionally the family gets together for a move. TVs are still required. In fact, I have computers on all my TVs because sometimes it's nice to browse while sitting back on the couch.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What TV needs to become is what it once was, a big dumb box that displays what you tell it to display. By trying to turn TVs into Smart TVs, all we do is put crappy, malware-friendly software onto our TV which can turn it into an expensive brick even though all of the actual display components are still working. Putting software on an appliance is just dumb.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Something else that you can do with a cheap set top box is have a single unified user interface imposed upon all of your displays without the need to restrict yourself to a single display vendor.
The premium for the smart parts of my first smart TV was 3x the cost of one of these little boxes. Simply not worth it for embedded functionality that will quickly be desupported.
It's much easier to replace an external box and keep the nice expensive display.
There is simply no need to replace displays on the schedule that industry wants you to.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
thank for share , i am see your article , awesome Of late, good content has started to reappear, like Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc. However, with these, I tend to let them finish an annual run, and then binge watch them over a week or so. But I'd not enjoy good sit down viewing like this with friends or family, or hell, even by myself on a 12", 7" or less size picture.
http://www.lantaikayu.biz/
The future of "television" is commercial-free streaming video services such as Netflix. These services can stream video to TV sets, PCs, tablets, and phones. Commercial infested cable TV is dying because of insanely high prices and far too many commercials.
Console gaming is dying too because of insanely high prices for both the console and the games. Most console games today are just rehashes of older games and the resolution suffers greatly from the limitations of the television set the console uses as a display. The game-play on consoles has suffered also, and the controls have always been crappy and are only getting worse. The PC has always been a superior gaming platform. The mouse and keyboard are far superior as controls, and the processor speed and graphics are superior to any console.
The future of television (hardware) is the status-quo: big screens with geographically appropriate OTA tuners and input jacks for content peripherals. The problem with building content decoders (beyond OTA) into televisions is the market and technology moves too quickly and there's little incentive for the television manufacturer and the content provider to keep up. OTA is the exception as the technology is set in stone and there's no conditional access to handle (e.g. CableCard).
And I'm sorry, while a phone or tablet screen may be sufficient for some content, they cannot replace a big screen.
An important aspect of the big screen TV is the social aspect.
Watching a movie or sports together, playing a multiplayer single-screen game like Smash Bros, this is better done with a big screen in the middle of the living room.
I don't know about everyone else but I haven't owned a TV in at least 10 years. I've never been a big TV person.
That said, I did buy a small projector that I use for watching movies and documentaries on Netflix.
It is low power, very portable and displays in HD (720p). It will literally fit into a large coat pocket.
Details here.
I'm not a big fan of Dell, but I highly recommend this device if you are in the market for a projector/TV.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
At the mooovies?
Big screen size is being positioned as somehow opposed to the concept of 'openness' of web. It's one of a few jumbled concepts in here..
-No, big screens aren't going away, still as popular as ever. Other screens may also be popular as people watch things in a car, at lunch, etc, but big screens are still the go to in the home.
-Linear television content's days are numbered, which should be apparent to anyone paying attention since the days of the VCR's popularity. People want the content on their terms and time, and time shifting linear delivery is the workaround to use broadcast technologies. Advanced networks mean the need to broadcast is more and more limited. Business and legal wrangling of licensing terms will keep broadcast television around longer than it should be, but it will happen. Programming
-Game consoles are in no way threatened right now. They are massively popular streaming platforms, and Valve's streaming device isn't even on the radar for most folks. Sales of consoles are higher than ever.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Seriously, put some frigging better speakers in them. Every TV gets hooked up to an audio system or at least a soundbar because the stock speakers sound like they were pulled out of an old AT&T rotary phone.
What the hell do you think people do with TVs?
That's right, we watch them ... TV, movies, maybe video games.
I don't want my big TV replaced with anything which is "cleverly redistributed to smaller screens".
I have never used my TV as anything but a dumb screen for content from other sources. Most other people probably won't either.
People keep telling me what my TV will be in the future, and like so many people telling us what "the future" will hold for us, they're not actually listening to what anybody wants.
So, the next time I'm sitting and watching a movie in my living room in my comfy sofa ... I sure as hell won't be asking the not-so-very-intriguing question of What uses and functions does one giant screen serve that can't be cleverly redistributed to smaller screens?.
A TV is a display device, for one or more other devices, all of which are infinitely more suited to retrieving and rendering content than my TV.
Oddly enough, the monitors on my computer are also just dumb displays.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
in the future. like: tomorrow morning.
The services began as ad-free like a shady crack dealer. Then once people got a taste of Ad-free content and were hooked and those scumbags cranked the ads back up to 11.
I think the TV as such is mostly going to go away, at least the form with a tuner. Here in Norway the mean broadband connection is 33 Mbit/s, the median 24 Mbit/s and 90%+ have 4+ Mbit/s. In say ten more years of fiber rollout "everybody" will have enough bandwidth to watch whatever they want, whenever they want it. That doesn't mean I think TV as such will go away, but the big screen in the living room will just be one of many where you can watch it. As for "smart" TVs, well they don't cost more than a cell phone less screen, camera and radio/wireless so why not throw it in there even if 95% don't use it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Unless you can provide some very surprising evidence backing this claim, I'm going to have to call bullshit. Sales of console and handheld games and hardware have been steadily, reliably increasing since the 1990s, and the industry's rate of growth has started to increase exponentially over the past few years (source here).
Not only that, but Steam Link was only released earlier this month. Even assuming it will take a chunk out of console sales, there hasn't been enough time to see evidence of that eventuality. If Steam Link was just used as an example of devices that allow PC games to be played through the television, you run into the same problem. That tech has only been available/known to mainstream consumers for about a year and a half. Still not enough time to prove this point, even if it wasn't based on false assumptions.
I don't see broadcast TV lasting more than a couple of decades. Scheduled programming will disappear, and everything will be available everywhere, all the time. TV shows will do away with actual human beings - once computer graphics hardware/software has improved sufficiently, you will not need prima donnas with huge salaries appearing in movies and shows: humans depicted in TV will be, by and large, computer-generated (I am thinking recordings, not live events, of course.) Which implies that movies and shows should improve a lot, for most of the budget will go to the creative parts: screenplays and character design. Computers will do all the hard work, and the ridiculously expensive prima donnas will become a thing of the past. Finally, recorded material will not be strictly streamed any more - at some point, computer programs will be downloaded, and the video material rendering will be done by the TVs in real-time. Yes, the kind of thing that currently takes big render farms weeks to complete, will be done by your TV in real time.
TV is for movies and binge watching. I keep the smaller screens for news and YouTube. I've been off any signal provider (cable, dish, whatever) for 15 years: best $$$ ever not spent !
I think there should be advances in OTA broadcast technology.
Several years ago I decided that I was tired of paying $50 a month to Comcast for a whole slew of channels I never ever watched, a handful I did, and all the shitty extra re-compression they were doing to jam all the crap channels I never watched into the same size pipe, and got an antenna on the roof and started watching local broadcast stations instead, and never looked back once. Best decision I ever made. I've got more stuff on my DVR than I have time to watch, typically, it cost me nothing other than a one-time expense for the antenna, and the picture quality is about as high as it can be. Updating of OTA broadcast, I think, will find more people turning to it and away from shitty cable and satellite, which is already a trend. Streaming over the Internet, I think, is just another 'pay TV' trap like cable and satellite, and as a matter of fact if you think for a moment, how is it really any different than cable or satellite directly connected to your TV? Worse in some ways, you're paying for the connectivity and paying for the content! Get Netflix or something like it for the things you can't get OTA (newer movies, specific content) but OTA makes so much sense.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
With camera-enabled smart TV's this cheesy slashdot joke is coming back to haunt us, expect more usage of the camera by TV channels to give you better targeted advertising and make sure you watch it. They'll have a nice 100-page privacy policy which basically entails a live videostream going to their HQ and them agreeing not to have real people watching it.
The usual "but you'd have to pay so much more for the quality programming you're getting" argument will be trotted out to anyone who dares to criticise.
Slashdot, your headline link on the front page has a URL to the referring page containing a hyphen. This is causing the page to render it across two lines (at least in Google Chrome). It is not as annoying as the content of most articles, and certainly not the comments (which still manage to be the site's main draw anyway) but it's still annoying.
So as far as I'm concerned, TV is dead already.
The future of television is on-demand and not scheduled programming
Good luck getting the sport leagues to play matches when you want to watch them.
Everything is changing into a service with an individual monthly fee. TV broadcast frequencies will get sold to the top 2 cellphone carriers and HDCP2.2 will kill the DVR.
Antenna TV really only works if you really really REALLY don't care about the crap you're watching.
There are plenty of people in Slashdot's home country who care about the national championships of the country's major professional sport leagues: the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, and the World [sic] Series.
This was before smartphones, youtube, mandatory HDTV broadcast TV and G3. Icould see hints in video podcasts and plasma wall screens. Now that we have video screens everywhere ranging from watches to jumbotrons, the hardware dream has been fully realised. Content distribution still has to catch up. Cable monopoly bundles still dominate. But that is fading.
I do not have a television but I do have a computer with a 3 monitor PC setup (24" 27" 24") and a good surround setup. I would by a "TV" if I could get a big basic screen with a decent resolution - but they simply don't sell those. 40" with supposed "HD" which is really 720p half-HD? This the dark ages? Am I to be impressed with a resolution lower than the average cellphone?
I also do NOT want a "smart" screen ("TV") with some ultra lame SOC which will be outdated in a month running some garbage OS with a lot of bugs and no chance of future updates. These "Android on a stick" type things are likely selling because you can simply replace them with newer models when you feel like it without buying a brand new screen.
I also do NOT want to pay for a garbage tin-can sounding "stereo" when I buy a SCREEN ("TV"). That joke of an amplifier combined with poor quality stereo speakers they include in TVs have no place anywhere near my living-room.
I personally don't even want that "TV decoder" part of a TV, it's not like any of the channels offered are worth wasting time on anyway. The supposed "news" the "mainstream media" offer is nothing but fascist propaganda mixed with entertainment and watching TV shows with commercial breaks it out of the question.
In short: I personally HOPE that the answer to "What is the future of Television" is nothing, I hope it dies and like the telegraph. If someone were to offer a big screen with an acceptable resolution with nothing but inputs and outputs on the back then I would probably buy that. As it stands right now I don't have a television and I do not want one and I would not accept one if I got one for free.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
It's just OTA sources that will go away -- unless you count cellular video streaming to your phone followed by Chromecasting to the monitor
I'll count that once advertisers pay for all the data that such streaming uses.
TV=they decide when & what I WATCH.
Internet=I decide when & what I DO.
Television as a concept is not even the slightest bit interesting to me. Let it die, or are the masses so dull, moronic ans stupid they are pleading with "Them" to drip-feed them the bread and circuses on "their" timetable and "their" content.
Apps as a new way to stream on TV is not that interesting and will not really do anything much to increase traditional TV watching.
What will be much larger is the potential for apps on TV to add lots of context around what we are watching, which will mostly occur by linking mobile apps to TV apps driving the display. Then you can have more of a shared experience, or direct feedback related to the video which the video producer could also use live...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Answer that, then go from there. The TV world got turned upside down with the advent of digital cable. When TV networks started getting real feedback of who's actually watching and how long, instead of the WAG Nielsen ratings, that caused a panic among the TV and advertising industries. That's about the time reality TV and their lower production costs started really taking over, because you couldn't count on the same amount of advertising sponsorship to fund the higher production cost series.
I don't really watch TV anymore and the medium might as well go away as far as I'm concerned. They've cancelled all the good series I watched for more than 10 years, and replaced them with garbage. The Netflix model seems to be working OK for now and I have pursuits that make entertainment trivial to me; the idea of spending hours paying attention to merely entertain my brain and deliver an IV of advertisement is ghastly when I consider what I want life to be about.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
It finally is feeling like there is a snowball starting to roll towards buying a few specific subscriptions to stuff you like instead of a smorgasbord of crap you have to sift through. I have not watched "live" TV in my house in probably 4 years.
ESPN, QVC, and their ilk will hopefully be left high and dry with not enough folks willing to pay for them to keep them alive. ESPN in particular is the poster child of what I hate about cable. I don't want it, but must still fork over ~$8 a month in dues so the masses can cheer on their adopted tribal warriors and feel better through the accomplishments or failures of folks they have likely never even met. My guess is that on the open market ESPN will find itself in a death spiral where the current costs of operation cannot actually be supported by the few folks willing to fork over for monthly access. More than the money, I hate that I was supporting what i view as a negative influence on the country.
So in the future I can see us with a lot fewer options, but with a lot of the absolute crap gone. I am heartened by Hulu finally offering an option to be (mostly) ad-free. Netflix was already ad-free.
But on the whole the prevalence of tablets for easy internet browsing has filled a lot of the idiot box utility. Why watch the news when I can read what I want and skip around the fluff on Apple or Google news? Why watch the financial shows when I can look at the plots myself and read only the advisors i trust, not the wackos and cranks that CNBC is rife with?
I'm getting older. I don't need glasses yet, but after many hours of looking at a nearby screen my vision gets blurry. Looking at something far away keeps my eyes happier. So now I use a bluetooth mouse & keyboard, plug my box into my big screen, and browse/read/CLI/program from the couch. Television means distant seeing; just what I need.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Paradoxically, if you want a reasonable number of HDMI ports (so you can attach your own devices) you have to get a smart TV.
Or a dumb TV and an external HDMI switch. You need an external switch anyway if you have a lot of legacy devices with composite, S-Video, or component outputs, such as retro video game consoles or a VHS player for those movies that haven't yet been rereleased on Blu-ray.
That's right, we watch them ... TV, movies, maybe video games.
I don't want my big TV replaced with anything which is "cleverly redistributed to smaller screens".
So do you want to make it that much easier to give away your position in a first-person shooter to your screen-peeking competitors?
I've been off any signal provider (cable, dish, whatever) for 15 years: best $$$ ever not spent !
Your ISP is likely still charging you a "line fee" for Internet without TV, probably roughly the same price per month as its lowest TV package.
I think there are still improvements that could be made to TVs that would probably tempt me to upgrade a little earlier.
Remote controls still suck. I connect a Raspberry Pi to my TV and it gets input from the TV's remote via the HDMI cable and CDC protocol. The remote is not very responsive and far from ideal for controlling XBMC, or even smart TV apps for that matter.
Better sound would be nice too. I have a sound bar and sub, but most of the time I'd be happy with TV sound if it was as good as my old CRTs. It's hard to see how it could be done on flat screens, but I'd happily accept an extra 10-20cm depth for really good sound. Maybe we could have a universal standard for wireless sound too, so I don't need to wire in my sound bar and sub.
Bring back plasma. Panasonic were the last people to make good plasma TVs, but gave up because the cost of upgrading to 4k was just too high. The colour on plasma still can't be beat. Maybe if someone can create an LED TV that is as good I'd be interested, but for the moment I'm worried that when my current plasma dies I'll be forced to downgrade.
Add automatic muting during ad breaks. I rarely see them, but I want it anyway.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
the internet becomes like cable bundles where you are forced to buy lot's of stuff that you don't need or want to get online.
the ISP's that own cable tv / other systems will lower caps to push people to get there cap free TV.
Just leave it disconnected from your network and the internet, and it stays "dumb".
I seem to remember reading somewhere that some models of "smart" TV will freeze on a "Please connect to the Internet to activate this TV" screen.
Instead of a 'smart' tv how about one with an api that would let you control the TV from a connected device?
love is just extroverted narcissism
The opposite has been happening in my area. Caps are increasing and pricing is flexible in that you can call, threaten to cancel, and keep your subcription rate stable for 1-2 years (At least with Cox Internet).
I would rather call that "a very beautiful display panel for streamed content."
The garbage heap.
Yes, but it will take decades to transition and the industry will move along with it to some extent. The future is the small screen close to your eye. The big screen you used to need in your house will eventually disappear. But like the desktop computer, it will take a long time to do so.
4k just starting to stream, 8k on the horizon and most content compressed so much it does not matter.
Were at the saturation point for flat panels so they are struggling to try and keep the market up.
Now that's not to say they do not need work.
CEC needs to work far better.
TV's need wifi and ethernet so they can be controlled/automated/integrated.
TV's need sensors, motion, camera, mic, and lux at least. They need to be exposed in a standard way.
No sir I dont like it.
Um. I'm not sure where you've been looking at flat screen TVs, but 1080p has been available on 40" TVs for years. There are even some 4K TVs in that size range, although not very many.
Dumb TVs have been available for some time, but *those* seem to be fading away.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Somebody wrote a book about the future of television, among other things. It's called "1984".
In corporatist 21st century, television watches you!
This is Max Headroom, coming to you live and direct on Network 23...Edison, take it away!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The problem is that the screen itself is a large, beautiful, and relatively expensive piece compared to everything that puts content on it. The price point makes it impractical to upgrade and replace on the same cycle as an XBox, Playstation, Roku, Apple TV, etc. Personally, I replace the screen every 7-10 years, and the connected devices every 3-5 years. Until the screens drop sufficiently in price to be replaceable in sync with the content devices, it makes exactly zero sense to cram more stuff into them. Especially when you consider the security issues.
At some point, when more money is made from the connective devices and services than the TV itself, there will be one or more players (perhaps including Apple) who merges the set-top box into the TV while keeping upgradability separate.
One way this might come about while keeping the existing ecosystem intact might be to have a "made for AppleTV" or "made for Roku" type licensing scheme so TV features like video cams (e.g. FaceTime for TV) or 3D support or basics like screen size/refresh, etc may be bundled into a single approved profile that the smart device attached can use the features properly.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
n/t
The future of television is apparently this: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/11/25/145232/even-the-dumbest-ransomware-is-almost-unremovable-on-smart-tvs
What uses and functions does one giant screen serve that can't be cleverly redistributed to smaller screens?
Um, you can actually clearly see what you're watching?
When I was young, I would save my beer money for a big TV and a powerful stereo to give me the concert theater experience at home for ~$2K. That price point hasn't moved too much over the decades, and maybe I was some sort of archetype that retailers packaged equipment for. But this year at Oculus Connect 2, John Carmack mentioned that Netflix works on the GearVR.
With Software, the phone in my pocket suddenly became the biggest screen in the world with a $100 accessory. I've spent perhaps a dozen hours in in VR watching Netflix, and I would chose that over watching a movie on a ~42" screen. Some high quality over the ear headphones and the sound fidelity has fully immersed me.
As a disclaimer, this is the worst VR will ever be. The resolution can be higher, the color fidelity has a long way to go, and long term (4 hour+) stints are still taxing. But once you experience what is possible with the present VR systems my first and since only thought is. The future of TV is the future of newspaper. Everything has just been leapfrogged.
If you can wait a few years, your eyes might just downgrade in synch so you won't notice the difference.
There are advantages of getting older.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
In short: I personally HOPE that the answer to "What is the future of Television" is nothing, I hope it dies and like the telegraph. If someone were to offer a big screen with an acceptable resolution with nothing but inputs and outputs on the back then I would probably buy that. As it stands right now I don't have a television and I do not want one and I would not accept one if I got one for free.
But, I don't know about you, but I also need a Remote with Power, volume, Sleep, mute and Change input buttons for my dumb panel.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
I am still fairly young (or rather, not yet too old) and am just getting to the stage were student debt is paid off, job is steady, and I have (for the first time in my life) a significant amount of disposable income. I have never paid for cable. None of my friends or colleagues has ever paid for cable. But every single one of us gladly pays for at least one, if not multiple, streaming / on demand services. Although we certainly consume a lot of media on phones and tablets, every single one of us still has a TV for "regular" watching. Chromecast, Amazon Fire, Apple TV are all popular. In fact, a popular point of discussion is the best way to stream on-demand services to a dumb TV. Hell, my main TV is hooked up to a PC tower for all of my streaming and gaming needs (BTW, this is the only PC tower in my house -- yet another sign of the times). So the impression that I get is that, at least for my cohort, traditional TV hardware is not going away.
Antenna TV really only works if you really really REALLY don't care about the crap you're watching.
There are plenty of people in Slashdot's home country who care about the national championships of the country's major professional sport leagues: the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, and the World [sic] Series.
You're splitting hairs. For regular season sports, my particular metro has only football on broadcast TV. As for championships, I'm not so confident. I'm discouraged that Fox moved the ALCS from broadcast Fox to the new Fox Sports 1 cable channel that it's been pushing lately. I wonder what other such moves are in the works. I'm more discouraged when there's a perfectly good pro sports game on, but it's on cable, and I'm stuck surfing past "Dancing with the Stars" and remakes of shows that were on the air in the '70s and '80s. Sad.
"I like to watch." - Quote from Chauncy Gardener (Peter Sellers) in the movie 'Being There'.
Many people leave the TV on all day, some all night. Some have multiple TVs on in different rooms. These people tend to be home alone and their television is a 'companion'. They like the stream of voices, especially happy voices like from game shows. They usually don't actually watch a show, almost never from beginning to end. They get sound bites, they see an occasional pleasant scene as they vacuum the floor or wash dishes or talk on the phone.
Clearly these are not /. people, but they vastly outnumber us. They are the demographic that advertisers want to reach. TV ads slip in to the distracted mind unnoticed where they can have maximum impact on the subconscious.
The future of television for the masses of dull ignorant people is exactly what we have. What we have had since B&W Jackie Gleason shows. Lots of easily accessible mindless entertainment for mindless people. Thank goodness for some new producers who offer more stimulating fare.
...omphaloskepsis often...
40" with supposed "HD" which is really 720p half-HD? This the dark ages? Am I to be impressed with a resolution lower than the average cellphone?
At a typical TV viewing distance of 2.6m, you can only see the resolution of 720p with a 45" set or larger. For 1080p resolution, you would need a set of 68" or larger. For 2160p resolution, you need a set of 148" or larger.
. Maybe if someone can create an LED TV that is as good I'd be interested, but for the moment I'm worried that when my current plasma dies I'll be forced to downgrade.
LG is shipping AMOLED TVs, at long last, the first vendor to break from the pack and do it. They have true black, just like plasmas. The largest sizes are still fantastically expensive, but they are available, and they're UltraHD.
How did they manage to develop a 4K television standard that still kept the old 50Hz/60Hz dichotomy? Could we please just pick one universal framerate? Tying the screen refresh rate to the power line frequency is sort of silly at this point, isn't it? (Yes, I'm also upset the "4K television" and "4K movie" are two completely different resolutions)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Do they still exist?
Please stop repeating this nonsense.
I have a 40" 1080P tv more than 2.6m away and I can easily see the difference between 480P, 720P and 1080P.
I would not be afraid to make a blind test (ha!) anytime.
Try it! Library of Babel
Yeah, I'm hoping that AMOLED becomes more common. It's weakness is colour reproduction, but it's getting better. My Panasonic has a THX calibrated mode for colour. The led models do too, but it's not nearly as good.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I believe from a cartoon many years ago (I believe Bugs Bunny) that Smellivision will be the next big thing to replace TV.
Friend of mine just dumped Comcast and bought an Apple TV. I helped him get it set up. Netflix? No problem. Just about everything else...you have to subscribe to over cable to get permission to watch via stream. It's a stupid, outdated model, but content providers will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into our brave new streaming world. HBO seems to get it, but the price is a bit high IMHO.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Assuming a 2.6m viewing distance, you can see the full resolution of 480i with a 25" set. So yes, I believe that you can tell the difference between 480 lines and HD resolutions on a 40" set.
You may be able to "perceive" a difference between 720p and 1080p on a 40" set (through vernier acuity). But you are unlikely to be able to actually resolve details at the full resolution of 1080p on your 40" set unless your vision is much better than 20/20.
With 20/20 vision, you can identify a letter (such as "E") only with a subtended angle of 5 arc minutes or more.
I had a chat about using monitors and Apple TV with a tech friend and he says that he watches most stuff on his tablet or PC. I asked about watching shows with his wife and he just looked at me. I guess everyone watches what they're interested in these days and that often doesn't coincide with your spouse. Our television is from the 1990s and it's a CRT hooked up to an antenna in the attic. We use it maybe once a week (some of us do). We aren't set up to do group watching but I could get around to that. My ideal solution would be an Apple TV hooked up to a 27 inch WQHD monitor (these are only $300 these days). I don't know what we would be watching though.
Broadcast television will survive (with ads) because the content is free. I cancelled cable in part because the OTA picture quality was better than the cable rebroadcast. While I supplement OTA with a Roku, that still isn't a viable (or affordable) option for many people in rural areas. [I would be amazed if my parents could get a reliable 1 Mbps connection. Heck, even reliable cell phone service would be a surprise...coverage maps are very optimistic.]
Recent efforts like the Amazon Original Series "The Man in the High Castle" (based on the Philip K Dick book of the same name) show that the future of TV should be companies making programming based on what people want to watch (and are willing to pay for) rather than on what the companies convince advertisers to support.
But as long as dinosaur last-century media companies like Comcast, Time Warner, CBS corporation, Fox, Disney, Viacom and others continue to do everything they can to preserve their status as gatekeepers dictating what content people get to see, the future of TV will be people paying ever-increasing subscription fees for overpriced pay TV products that force them to pay for 500 channels they dont want just to get the 5 channels showing content they are actually interested in.
Disney is by far the worst offender here where they force anyone who wants ANY of the vast portfolio of Disney content (including rebroadcasts of their local ABC affiliate) has to pay money for ESPN even if they dont want it, dont like it and never watch sports at all. Should ESPN go away? No, plenty of people DO like what they air. But Disney should stop forcing ESPN (probably one of the more expensive channels when it comes to how much the TV companies pay to get it on their platform) on people who dont want it and will never watch it.
You may be able to "perceive" a difference between 720p and 1080p on a 40" set (through vernier acuity). But you are unlikely to be able to actually resolve details at the full resolution of 1080p on your 40" set unless your vision is much better than 20/20.
Exactly, even if you can't resolve every pixels, it still looks better, like it was more "in focus" if it means anything.
And last time I went to the optometrist he said that I had better than 20/20 with my contact lenses.
Try it! Library of Babel
They're called "computer monitors."
These days, everyone just needs a screen/monitor that is able to accept their favourite input device.
Examples of such input devices include...
Broadcast (free) TV receiver
Pay TV receiver
Satellite receiver
DVD/Blu-Ray Player
Computer running software that can play media
Gaming console
Mobile phone (i.e. stream playback from phone to screeen/monitor)
USB drive containing media files
Etc...?
In other words, store or receive your media in whatever format you prefer via whatever device you prefer and then just connect that device up to your screen/monitor.
Yeah, cutting the cord is not necessarily cheaper than a cable bundle, but it depends on how you define cutting the cord. For example we currently subscribe to Sling (ESPN, AMC, etc.), Amazon Prime (all the HBO stuff) and Netflix which adds up to around $40/mo. Then add in $45 for internet access. That's not really cutting the cord in the formal sense. It's replacing a cable package with something resembling a la carte.
It's a slippery slope. When I cut the cord last July it was just OTA and Netlix and things were fine. That would meet the true definition of cutting the cord.
Then the wife wanted to see the local college basketball games that the university locked into with the SEC network (i.e. ESPN) so Sling entered the picture. Amazon Prime is something we used anyway but really should be counted in the cost column.
The cable and satellite companies have crafted their packages very carefully but at least there is some more choice now vs. 5 or so years ago.
It is no more than a large monitor / screen. No need for all the "smart" features. As a family we decided about 10 years ago that we had no need for 40 channels of rubbish, repetition and ads. No TV in the house. One man, one laptop though, all on Linux, running AdBlock to stay sane and prevent malverts. The advertisers did it to themselves. TV is dead, joining the landline, fax machine, pager and telegraph...
The thing I hate about TV is that there are 4 channels per stream of programming.
Why do I need channel X and channel X HD. I'd like to set my recordings to non-HD so I can save space, but I always want to watch HD if available. It's even worse when all the HD channels are off somewhere completely different (and in a different order).
Also, a standardised ID for programs. My auto-record failed? Pick it up on the Wednesday night repeat.
Already recorded that program? DONT FUCKING RECORD IT AGAIN!
The hardware is fine (apart from all the smart crap - that should be an add on box, maybe a standard mount, power and connection on the back or something).
Well, not too worried, at least. When the day comes where I can't use a tv without an internet connection, I'll simply get rid of it and use a computer with an OS that I have full control over. And if that isn't possible, then never mind. I rarely use it any way - mostly news, sometimes a factual program, nearly all from BBC, which I think it is reasonable to hope will stay free to air.
And that is probably the nub of the problem: lack of interest. Every time I see those hyped up adverts about how many hundreds of channels you get with cable, and how you can see the latest and greatest movies etc, I think about hundreds of channels all showing more or less the same reality show, soap opera, ..., and the latest and greatest movies are going to turn up a few months later on free to air. I can wait - it's only entertainment; and if I really want to, I just go to a cinema.
Perhaps, in years to come, tv will disappear and be replaced with online services; and if you want to enjoy something less utilitarian, you go to a live performance.
No.
Er.. Wait.
What uses and functions does one giant screen serve that can't be cleverly redistributed to smaller screens?
Sitting in your living room with your friends all watching the game whilst drinking beer and eating pizza.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
It's weakness is colour reproduction, but it's getting better. My Panasonic has a THX calibrated mode for colour. The led models do too, but it's not nearly as good.
Samsung's AMOLED for phones now covers 97% of the Adobe RGB color gamut, which isn't bad. LED backlit LCD can now squeeze out 99.3-99.5% of Adobe RGB. Not a wide gap, anymore. AMOLED definitely covers far more than sRGB.
My upgrade cycle is 20 years.
Unless the shows improve.....
I can't really justify it, but what I want is pretty close, in the form of 1080p LED short-throw projectors; right now Philips and LG both have models out, though reviews favor the LG by a long shot.
LED: long projector life, and brightness figures that are getting better with each year's new models.
Short-throw: less clutter in my living room or wherever; I've got a projector (720p) from LG which I rather like, but the throw it requires makes set-up rather annoying. I suppose I could bother with a perma-install, sure, but I like being able to move it around.
Projector: vs. conventional TV -- easy to move within the house, or bring it while traveling, or secure / hide against theft ...
I'd also like to be able to get two of them, turn them on their sides, and make an even bigger picture; I've seen multi-projector set-ups that worked surprisingly well, but the set-up was finicky, and pretty much requires a dedicated viewing room. If this was a simple endeavor (to the user!), something like making a panorama shot on a modern phone, it would be great -- just put up all the projectors available, and let some algorithms work out how to use them all to make a high-as-practical total output ...
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
TV is getting flatter!