Slashdot Mirror
Television Needs To Be Reinvented, Says Apple SVP (businessinsider.com)
Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Service at Apple, isn't happy with the current state of how people watch TV. He said we currently live with a "glorified VCR," the interface of our current TV is the problem and we need to reinvent it. Cue pointed out a number of other issues he has with today's TV:"It's really hard to use [a cable box or satellite TV]. Setting something to record, if you didn't watch something last night, if you didn't set it to record, it's hard to find, it may not be available. There may be some rights issues," Cue said. "It's great to be able to tell your device, 'I wanna watch the Duke basketball game, I don't care what channel it's on.' I just want to watch the Duke basketball game. Today you got to bring in the TV, go through the guide, find which sports programs or whatever -- it's just hard to do."
...if Apple has a new product to help with that
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The headphone jack.
The rights holders are the problem and will never allow this.
The fragmentation of media into smaller entities is a good thing and while the complexity goes up, the result is a buffet of entertainment for any mildly skilled geek due to the broken technologies that resulted from this lack of coordination. Apple can talk and talk about fixing the brokenness but nothing is going to happen. Mainly because no one can figure out how to make money off of it except Apple.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Now bout we re-boot how TV is served up today and go back to not having the words in the corner of the screen, animated things while the show is on, and lighten the commercial load to what it was like in the 60's?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Your cable DVR uses voice commands for that stuff... You just call Comcast on your phone, press 0, then just keep saying "Duke basketball game" until it appears on your TV.
Alternatively, you could just ditch the TV altogether and go read book.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Netflix already reinvented it, at least for many of us. You're not going to pull another iphone success story this time around.
sports blackouts, lack of channel choice, forced to use and rent there hardware or pay outlet fess.
Are the real things that need to be fixed.
Also the pay TV distributors that cram ad's on each F* page of the guide need to go as well.
I don't buy the theory that TV needs to re-invented and that it is the reason for driving change. The powers that be wan't people to believe that though. I think its probably more about being the first to introduce new technology and whoever does that (as seen by Google and Facebook) will 'control' the new distribution model. That is what its really about.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Don't get me wrong, I agree television/cable box UIs could use a rethink, but can somebody please please explain to me why all the current UI designs trends revolve around simplification via killing off menus and obscuring all of a device's features behind a single text/voice search interface? Maybe I've just gotten so old I can't understand the new hotness, but do the "kids" today really have trouble navigating a menu of hierarchically organized items? I just feel like we're barrelling down the road to that one Star Trek TNG episode where the crew happens upon a world where the inhabitants have lived with their technology for so long that nobody knows how it actually works anymore.
All TV should be pay TV, and you just rent the programs you want to watch when you want to watch them! Come on, doesn't that make more sense?
Yeah, no thanks. I don't know about the rest of you, but my version of 'cutting the cord' involved installing an antenna on the roof and not paying anything for TV ever again. I'd rather not watch anything at all than ever have to pay for TV shows. I also mercilessly scoff and mock the whole idea that using a TV and a program guide of any kind is 'too difficult' and that it needs to be simplified; are we really becoming so dumb and slow that we can't even figure out how the TV works? I know I have no problems with it, what about you?
You don't need TV. But the companies that profit off TV need you to watch TV. And if the way to do that is to "reinvent" it...
Set it up so that each hour watched costs $1.00. To avoid being charged ridiculously high fees, make it so that you have to confirm you're watching each time the program switches over, or make it confirm every hour that you're still watching. This gets rid of the issue of worrying about what channels you do or don't subscribe to... because you won't need a subscription!
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I just go and grab the torrent if I missed it.
What needs to change is BULLSHIT copyright laws.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
>> "It's great to be able to tell your device, 'I wanna watch the Duke basketball game, I don't care what channel it's on.' ...which is exactly what I've already been doing for years (and for $0.00 give or take a few watts) with my Linux-based media PC that is running MythTV and plugged into an OTA antenna.
Uh,content owners want to overcharge you for that. I mean, they know you are desperate to see some show so why not make some money off that? It's like buying bottled water after Katrina. We'll sort of, but without the malice.
They know you want it, so why not make some extra money off that? Why not charge you for the convenience of watching it later?
The only reason VCR is allowed is because the Supreme Court forced it on the TV networks.
What with Netflix; both streaming and DVDs, YouTube, 4 different MMORPGs I alternate between (Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, and Champions), weed being legal for recreational use in this state (including being able to grow up to 4 plants at a time), a huge backlog of totally free classic books sponged off Gutenberg; getting into various little projects that we have talked about doing all our lives, enjoying engaging in unimportant discussions on forums like Slashdot and elsewhere, and even coming up for air frequently in order to go out and about in the real world and interact in person with others; the TV industry will have a long road ahead of them to get people like me interested enough to take the bait.
And yes, I am aware that the above is an exceptionally long run on sentence. As an envoy of the Duchy of Don't Give a Shit, I do not give a shit. :D Now off to go get today's shipping and shopping done and grab a bite to eat, then come back for an early 4:20 and work on photos for my next round of Etsy, eBay, and eCrater sales.
This space unintentionally left blank.
My television, cable box, and surround sound system are EASY to use. I have a DVR with an external hard drive and I've never had any problem finding what I've recorded. And choosing what to record is so easy a six year old can do it.
What is Eddy's problem? Is he just that dense or does he want to hype a new product from Apple?
it's just hard to do
Duh? We all know it sucks. What's actually hard is fixing it. Fix that, Apple.
Opaque, maybe over the screen itself, 24" diameter.
Then we can spend 45 minutes programming the DVR and brag about it.
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
Awww, are AppleTV sales too low for your shareholders liking?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
but the needed reinvention is less about being able to record the input than it is about the quality of the input being recorded. For all the dozens of channels I have in my cable package, there is precious little input worth recording or watching.
linquendum tondere
Actually, real OTA stuff is trivially easy to deal with with PCs and consumer electronics. The lack of encryption makes things easey peasey and terribly reliable.
It's the encrypted cable stuff and proprietary on-demand and pay-per-view that's difficult to handle.
Although all of that stuff has already moved to streaming.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Bingo.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Like pretty much everything coming out of Apple these days, this translates to:
"You have money you're not giving us. And even worse, you're giving it to someone else, you Satan worshipping devils. And equally bad, you're doing things we can't keep a record of to sell to advertisers. How dare you keep secrets from your deciduous overlords!"
I watch PAL content on my HTPCs all the time. In the old days, international DVD players were no big thing. This kind of stuff has been done already and for a pretty long time.
It's like subtitles on streamers. Companies making gear just have to think that it's worth bothering with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If only Apple made something to change the interface to television, oh I don't know, an Apple TV...
Stop complaining and start coding!
BTW Comcast X1 is gaining a lot of useful features, such as "Team Reminders" for sporting events, "People Also Watched", Custom Playlists for DVR, etc.
I don't care what channel something is on. I just want my TV to present me with a slection of programmes I do like - given my watching history - and some suggestions for others I might like. When I choose one, just show me the dam' programme. That's all! If I then specify that I want more, don't ask me any questions: just get it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Without commercials TV shows would have to be purchased.. this would make it more expensive. In addition, consumers will have no means to know about useful products and services. Without that, product sales will reduce. When there is less trading, there is less employment. When there is less employment few people can afford the TV shows. This will cause TV show revenue to decrease, resulting in poorer quality tv shows.
Anyway what I am saying is that I hate advertising as much as the next guy but long term suffering through a few ads may actually be beneficial to society and yourself.
Since the Tivo was released back in the last century, there is NOTHING I view as linear. This includes "live TV". The great beauty of a recording is that you can skip through it and ignore the fluff. This includes commercials. This includes commentary. This includes tedious aspects of some sports.
I even know someone of the older generation that specifically likes to watch his baseball games like this now.
It's GREAT to start a "live" event far enough long that you will never catch up to the commercials.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The ad-ratio and crap-content-to-wothwhile ratio drove me off it long ago.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Not sure I see the need for reinvention here. TV is not about the newest coolest gadgets every month, it is about entertainment, the user interface makes for a tiny fraction of the time someone spends with their TV. Netflix as well as various TV boxes have reinvented the VCR about as much as is required at this point. Portable media players, Smart Phones and tablets needed reinvention, you could make the most awesome perfect interface for a TV and it still won't be (or shouldn't be) the primary selling point.
I still like to channel surf. The problem is everything has its own guide and they need to be integrated into one. He's right about not caring about channels, although the channels themselves do care because they want you to be aware of what channel is providing some content you are watching. I'd like my basic cable from cable and sling tv channels and hulu and whatever else all in a single guide that just knows how to get what i click on.
I kinda like higher resolution and more consistent color.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
sports blackouts
OMG yes. I bought my wife an MLB.tv season pass because she loves watching baseball. What do you get for $109.99? Every game on TV except the ones in your home market. You can watch the Twins suck any time you want, so long as you don't live in Minnesota. Oh, and no postseason: that's a separate subscription.
Who the fuck came up with those ideas? I'll be damned if MLB ever gets another penny from us.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Apple is going to reinvent your TV by making it thinner. They will remove everything but the screen and give you a bag to hold all the dongles and parts they removed that the TV requires to work.
Tell that to Netflix.
And to my $70/mo "basic cable" bill (of which only about $20 is 'taxes and fees' -- wtf?!).
I don't mind paying for what I use; that's fine. What I do mind is that the content providers are so entrenched that they can charge far more than their content is actually worth. I also object to both paying for cable, and being saddled with a ridiculous number of commercials, some of which actually play over the program I'm trying to watch!
Enough is enough. I'm moving in a couple of months; I'm going to put a TV antenna up in my attic. Cheaper, better quality, and carries the four to six hours a week of TV that I actually watch.
-- sigs cause cancer.
Channel owners want to lock you into their channel, regardless of which device you use to watch it.
Device manufacturers want to lock you into their device, regardless, of which channel you will watch on it.
...god forbid people have to actual learn how to do anything rather thean just randomly say "I want xxxxxxx" and it just happens for them....
As for "rights" issues, eliminate copyright, problem solved
I just to go titan tv, look up what I want, and if it is something I want to record, click the record button. 1,2,3 done.
NHL center ice is the same way, it really pissed me off when I couldn't watch the playoffs.
If Apple is the one to reinvent it, it'll be a closed off tightly controlled ecosystem where they take the lions share of any profit and charge far too much for the experience. If TV needs to be reinvented, it doesn't need Apple to be the one to do it.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It's a question of rights. If you're recording and you paid to watch it, that's OK. If you're downloading it from the internet there's no way to know if you had the right to a copy in the first place. Believe me, if it were economically viable they'd have gone after you for pirated VHS collection too. The internet just happens to give them the means to start targeting these people.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Eddie Cue can fuck right off, as far as I'm concerned. I'm perfectly happy with how I watch TV, when I happen to do so. None of the "issues" he whines about bother me in the least.
Frankly, if you find watching television so difficult that you need a speech interface and search engine to accomplish it, perhaps television is not for you. You might want to take up recreational drooling.
That's the message I get from this. Which message is exactly in line with Apple's previously demonstrated opinion of it's customers.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"