Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
And in 20 years, both of you will realize a close in small screen is a completely dumb idea only a kid would want to have.
Eyesight beyond 40 is NOT conducive to any type of product like that. You'd have to assume lots of medical breakthroughs that are safe, effective, AND inexpensive to fix eyesight first.
Now get off my lawn.