
TV, mobile and the living room - aaronbrethorst
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/11/24/tv-mobile-and-the-living-room
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camillomiller
I'm wondering why no single producer is trying to go a different route with
their tv sets. Would there be a market for a super dumb TV set born to be
paired with one of set-top boxes or TV sticks we have at our disposal now?

I'm looking for a new TV right now and I'm struggling: I don't wanna buy any
Smartcrap tv set, I don't need any smart feature. I need a friggin' living
room monitor with nice picture and audio, that's it. I want it for my Apple TV
and my Playstation. Nothing else. Wouldn't that be a good product to offer in
the current scenario?

Strip off all the extras, gimme good picture quality, the most basic digital
signal tuner, decent audio and nothing else. Wouldn't margins be even higher
without all the overhead for software and interface developers, smartcrap
marketing and stuff?

Am I just totally daydreaming?

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flavor8
What you want is sold as a "commercial TV monitor", e.g.
[http://www.lg.com/us/commercial/led-
tvs/lg-55UX340C](http://www.lg.com/us/commercial/led-tvs/lg-55UX340C)

You can find them on craigslist fairly often.

~~~
camillomiller
Not really, they're way too expensive usually, and aimed at business
(basically they're made to be always on, which you wouldn't need for a TV).

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saturdaysaint
Interesting, then, that Amazon is so eager to go to war over TV (by refusing
any sales of chromecast or Apple TV). This could end up just being another
Fire Phone style blunder, but Bezos' strategy points to a decent counter
argument - content is actually becoming king, just in a different form than
the console makers have long envisioned. Instead of big budget first person
shooters, long form serialized storytelling is increasingly capturing the
popular imagination. If Google or Apple decide to draw battle lines here and
build studios, Evans argument could look shortsighted pretty quickly.

I think he also underestimates the ability of software to enhance what he
dismisses as "linear programming" (sports, live events, etc). Fantasy sports
are a rudimentary example - tech and 24/7 access to stats allows fanatics to
build a deep, addictive experience on top of the game. Imagine this built into
TV apps that can automatically cut between pivotal games across the NFL.
American Idol is an antique now, but it's not hard to imagine new popular
programming that could handle viewer feedback in far more sophisticated ways
than "dial in to vote".

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jmduke
What you're describing in terms of how software can change the act of watching
sports is halfway there already, with RedZone (for the uninitiated: basically
a live clip show that shows all red zone / scoring possessions and highlight
plays, falling back to live football when necessary). An evolution of the same
thing except it weights the clips shown in favor of the starters on my fantasy
football team would be incredible.

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OldSchoolJohnny
The author perhaps has neglected the most common compelling use-case for large
tv sets in living rooms: live sporting events. Edit: also, it peeves me when a
page intended to convey simple text continually attempts to load something in
the background.

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chiph
I think PCs never made it to the TV because the control options were never
right. Using a bluetooth keyboard in your lap is inconvenient if you're
snuggling with your spouse (or cat). Much less using a mouse or other pointing
device (even the Wii remote). Just awkward.

I think the future for PC on TV is going to be voice control. Either the
upcoming Cortana on XBox, or something like Amazon's Echo combined with their
Fire unit.

You could tell it to skip a movie forward 40 seconds to jump past the scary
scene that would frighten your child. Or if you're cooking in the kitchen and
your hands are covered in flour, tell it to play some Top 40 hits.

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ghaff
In general, designers/manufacturers have long not paid sufficient attention to
interactive modes. I've wasted way too much time and money over the years
setting up PCs as media stations only to conclude yet again that the various
wireless keyboards and pointing devices I had--combined with software designed
for a keyboard/mouse/monitor experience--was just more trouble than it was
worth. Traditional remotes on the other hand are also an incredible
frustration whenever you need to do something other than a simple pre-defined
function.

I tend to agree with you about voice control. Voice recognition/AI is finally
_starting_ to get good enough that it's a useful rather than just a
frustrating control mechanism. The ready availability of rich touch interfaces
(whether tablets or phones) is also a big win.

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chiph
The Windows 8/10 UI of having big boxes as program icons is a plus for a
living-room PC, as they give you a very large "hit box" for a Wii-type remote.
But then you need to enter a URL or search for a movie title/genre/etc, and it
falls down.. Lenovo has a home-theater style remote [0] that is wireless and
has a keyboard + mouse on it, but again the usage is awkward and doesn't solve
the hands-free scenario.

[0]
[http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...](http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?hide_menu_area=true&GroupID=460&Code=888011668)

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ghaff
I actually have one of those (or something very much like it from Lenovo). It
is probably the least bad keyboard/mouse solution I've run across for a living
room PC attached to a TV. But the whole experience still wasn't great.

For now, using either a tablet or a laptop with a Chromecast is the best thing
I've run across.

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walterbell
For those who dismiss immersive shared viewing experiences from couch
distance: do you think consumer VR will succeed?

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exelius
I dismiss immersive shared viewing experiences from couch distance (also known
as "lean-back" viewing). You can have "lean-forward" experiences on the TV,
but they need to be continuously interactive like a video game. But at couch
distance, you have to pick whether an experience is "lean-back" or "lean-
forward": consumers dislike switching back and forth frequently.

And whether or not I think consumer VR will succeed depends on the definition
of success. Do I think it will be a multi-billion dollar market? Absolutely.
Do I think it will remain a niche within the larger video gaming / media
market? Absolutely. I do not think consumer VR will ever be the norm, but I
think that there will also be some compelling VR experiences that will draw a
significant number of people into them.

Augmented reality has far more promise as a consumer technology that's more
than a fad. VR is pretty much only useful for media consumption; when you're
immersed in a virtual world you're not immersed in the normal world, so its
use will be reserved for those times you can ignore what's happening around
you. Augmented reality is a multi-purpose tool: it's a general purpose display
that enriches the world around you, and can thus be used to enrich every day
experiences. But the display technology for augmented reality is a lot
trickier.

