At this year’s Television 3.0 conference in Los Angeles, 3D and Web content took center stage. Some were focused on delivering these to new users, others were focused on the peripheral devices and services that are needed to help support these platforms, from figuring out new ways to encode signals and free up bandwidth to developing content guides and user interfaces that make content discovery feasible with the millions, if not billions, of hours of content available from broadcasters and Web services.
Viewpoints varied. Tempers flared. Most were sure their specialty was the only way out from the coming storm. The one thing that everyone at the conference had in common was a white-hot enthusiasm for where the market was headed and the opportunity it offered.
A major theme is that those looking to the future of TV have one of two focuses: bringing quality 3D to market and making sure a Web presence is everywhere, especially OTT coming to the TV set from as many devices as possible.
The 3D camp has a very strong chieftain in ESPN, whose ESPN 3D channel is getting a lot of promotion and who has dumped a lot of money into developing 3D technology, 3D video practices and distribution. ESPN is so confident in the future of 3D that it recently invited the major broadcast networks and some of its biggest competition to see exactly what had been accomplished with 3D and to learn from the mistakes ESPN made early on.
The Web doesn’t have a singular champion, but it’s being led by the likes of Roku, Apple and Web content networks like Revision3. The device makers pushing the Web are hoping to expand the concept of TV beyond what hits the boob tube to be any video the user consumes on any screen. They want the consumer to think of ‘TV’ as Netflix, Hulu Plus, iTunes, Amazon VOD and other sources on their flat screens, iPads, laptops and home networks. The Web will have the most immediate impact, but it may also suffer from the most immediate headaches.
Content champions for the Web are of mixed temper and can rub traditional models the wrong way. Revision3 was at the conference in full swing, and the flippant nature of its CEO visibly upsetting some in the crowd. While a representative from Fox agreed with Revision3’s position on the eventual demise of DRM, he also sat with furrowed brow and muttering under his breath as Revision3 dismissed the future of pay-TV offerings and called Fox and other major broadcasters’ content subpar compared to the Web’s niche offerings.
A popular buzzword for 3D was ‘ecosystem’ because it highlights some of the strengths and weaknesses of 3D content. At its launch, 3D TVs had content available. Though it wasn’t a lot of content, it was still far ahead when compared when to HDTV was first introduced. Shortly after 3D TV sets came to market, professional-grade recording equipment hit the shelves, as did 3D graphics cards and other PC peripherals. At its consumer birth, 3D had a hardware ecosystem, which was followed by a robust, global 3D content ecosystem thanks to coverage of the World Cup.
Ecosystem isn’t such a great word when considering the consumer, unfortunately for 3D. The ecosystem is what the consumer has to purchase to enjoy 3D content. For most, a 3D home theater system means a new TV, new 3D Blu-ray player, 3D glasses and upgrading their existing pay TV service to a 3D package. While a 3D TV set only costs an average of $100 to $300 more than a high-end HDTV set of the same size, glasses are the big addition. For a family of five, purchasing additional glasses could add up to 18% to the total cost of a 3D entertainment system.
This ecosystem is also limited to a user’s own home because 3D glasses do not work across multiple brands of TVs – the exception is third-party glasses like those from XpanD, which are built for the express purpose of being cross-platform.
One of the most talked-about issues for the future of TV is content discovery. While access to premium content is still a major deal, the ability to sort and find relevant content was more important to many speakers. Unified search was a hot topic at the show, with Rovi getting a lot of compliments for what it demonstrated.
Sean Besser, VP of business development for Rovi, said that ‘83% of consumers do not know what they want to watch when they turn on the TV,’ and that these 7-out-of-8 users are looking to be marketed or sold to, but they don’t want to realize they’re being sold to.
While these users may not know exactly what they want, Besser said that 75% know what ‘bucket’ they’re interested in, be it long movies, TV shows, clips, trailers, short Web or OTT content.
Reaching these users with the content they’re looking for, or directing them to a certain sorted list is a good way to meet the customer half way and keep them engaged on whatever system they’re using. Rovi said that the average pay-TV user in the US accesses their channel guide 10 times per day, and that they spend around 14 minutes each day on the guide. Consumers are often seeking a leanback experience with TV and often want to ‘veg out,’ and meeting them with sectioned or sorted content and relevant advertising is how to catch their attention, keep it and secure it for multiple viewing instances.
Besser left the crowd with one last bombshell, saying that Rovi is what powers Google TV’s search and aggregation abilities.
Apps, according to the consensus, should not be the point where users first launch into content or content suggestions. Most believed that Hulu Plus and Netflix, mixed in with all the other services and broadcaster Web sites, should simply have their offerings aggregated into a unified search. By using a true search feature or engine for this instead of pulling up an app, the user will, to the hopes of many, be able to find more content they want to see both more quickly and more easily.
Platforms where an app must be queued up and then sorted and sifted through are going to be the old way to do things as smart TVs and STBs hit the market with unified searches. Apps will cease to be the launching platform and will instead be another source to aggregate from.
There was hardly a kind word said about advertising in its current state. However, there was a lot of hope for the future of advertising if it can get user data and begin targeting individuals with relevant ads or giving the user the ability to select a set of advertisements. ‘Whether we like it or not we’re all profiled today’ said Arnaud Perrier, VP of solutions for Envivio, a sentiment that was agreed by some that do the profiling as well as majority of the audience.
There was no love for ads and platforms that didn’t leverage this profiling, and it was also seen as one of the biggest ways to give a much-needed cash injection into the pay-TV and OTT market. According to multiple panelists throughout the conference, advertisers are willing to pay 3 times to 10 times as much for these targeted ad impressions, with the higher end for those on OTT and made-for-TV Web video delivery systems.
Search and discovery is the thing to tackle, and there’s no easy way to do it, said Tom Huntington, brand director for DivX, ‘Google TV is a notable approach and a notable failure.’
Google TV was heralded as a great first attempt, but how the service has rolled out, most said it won’t be the future as is. In almost every area discussed, Google TV was called a good try but said that it was lacking in some important aspect. One thing that was also brought up in multiple discussions was the surprise that the Google TV service came out when it still had some major bugs and issues.
One of our favorite sayings for the digital sphere is ‘when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ Never was that more true than at this year’s Television 3.0 conference in Los Angeles.
While the overall focus of the show was to look at new technologies that are coming down the pipes, each session and each panelist took a very skewed look at the market and what the next big thing is. For some it was all about bandwidth, others cared about picture quality, 3D was a focus for others and the rest were too focused on Web-based content to see any place for pay TV in the future of the TV market.
The conference ended with the few remaining panelists speaking about what the market would face down the road and what the biggest hurdles would be, but it seemed that the blinders were going to stay on until someone completely new enters the market.