Smart TVs

Thoughts: 

"We must know who these mutants are and what they can do."

Personally, I'm thinking more about content creation and means of distribution.

Think about Kinect merging with other media like GPS, and the real deal will be smart glasses and blended reality. I think it's going to be getting really weird around here.

There will have to be compelling content to drive the Smart TVs. I would tend to think that these smart TVs will be effectively like big iPads, and if the price point is right, the addiction factor of mobile devices, social media/chat, and web surfing is certainly chumming the waters, but bring on the aforementioned advances and maybe some practical usage, and you have justification. Back in the day, VR was the buzz word, but this could really make it happen. Think haptics ala reach and out touch someone.

I'm no eager consumer. Afterall, it took my mom buying me a kindle fire to get me out of the stone ages. I was outcast as untouchable for waiting until Fall of '07 to get a cell phone and I'm still peeling off the dry rot today.

Consumers don't buy what they need, they buy what crosses their minds once the impulses are properly seeded into the nerve centers, and that's what propaganda is good for. You're watching the rumors and lies channel, brought to you by Paranoia. Sponsored by the 7 Deadly Sins. Let the gladiatorial combat and zombie porn begin.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/smart-tvs-the-next-tech-war-is-in-the-living-room/2012/01/11/gIQAMFgHrP_story.html

Smart TVs: The next tech war is in the living room 

View Photo Gallery — A peek into the future of TVs: Companies are scrambling to be the one-stop shop for Web, media consumption, social networking and gaming with their TVs and accessories.

By Hayley Tsukayama, Published: January 11

Hawking their wares at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, the world’s top television manufacturers are bent on making a splash: They’re trying to sell a whole new approach to television.
In a world where the latest gadgets are automatically expected to be hooked up to technology “ecosystems” — apps, Internet connectivity and access to social networks -- television makers are banking on the fact that couch potatoes will want to see their friendly living-room TV get in on the act.

We’ve heard this all before. The idea of a “smart” television has been around for a few years, and Google introduced its Google TV platform in May 2010, promising to put all the convenience of the Web onto the largest screen in your home. But a little over a year later, the idea has yet to take off, hampered by low adoption and a lack of hardware partners.
All that’s changing this year for Samsung, LG, Sony and Lenovo, to name a few. Microsoft has proven with the Kinect — which chief executive Steve Ballmer announced had sold 16 million units to date — that there’s a market for quality apps on your television. Even Google has the chance at a second wind, having partnered with several of the major television manufacturers, each offering its own take on putting the TV back to the center of home entertainment.
Samsung is working on integrating voice and motion control into its new sets, enabling users to speak commands to their TVs or change channels and other settings with just a wave. Vizio is the first to join with the cloud-service company OnLive to put streaming games on its Google televisions. All Google TV partners have added the OnLive Viewer app, which lets users manage their accounts and watch others play games, to their app ecosystems with the promise that gameplay will be close behind. Sharp is augmenting its huge television lineup with access to apps from Netflix, Hulu and Facebook.
To compete, the companies will have to offer carefully curated, high-quality applications and be open to supporting mobile devices such as tablets. Other media companies have already started: Comcast, for example, announced that it’s going to allow OnDemand streaming not only to Samsung Smart TV’s but also to the iPad.
The TV makers are hoping that the multitude of additional features will be enough to trigger turnover like the industry saw after the introduction of flat-panel screens, Bloomberg noted. It’s a big market, if the television makers can figure out how to crack it. A consumer media report from Nielsen released Friday showed that 114.7 million American households have at least one television and that almost one-third of of those households have four or more sets.
But the big manufacturers have to fight the historically long television buying cycle: Consumers are more hesitant to upgrade to newer televisions than to trade in their smartphones, computers and other devices for the latest model.