Connected TV Needs Common Platform to Thrive, CEA Forum Told

SAN DIEGO -- The future role of the set-top box, standards for connected TV and preserving the traditional TV viewing experience while expanding the universe of TV apps were key topics at the “Connected TV Platforms” panel at the CEA Industry Forum Wednesday. In a world that’s becoming increasingly untethered, the question of whether the set-top box will be “disintermediated” by Internet delivery of TV programming was a recurring question.

Peter Redford, CEO of iLook, said cable and satellite companies won’t be disintermediated, “but only if they fully embrace [over-the-top video] as soon as possible.” If they wait too long, he said, they could become less relevant. ILook has developed a system for TV studios to broadcast directly from the cloud to an Internet TV without a set-top box by using the TV studio’s existing smartphone or tablet app, Redford said. With a CNN app on an iPhone, he said, a viewer can bypass the existing satellite or cable infrastructure.

"Comcast could put all their content on the cloud, deliver it directly through DLNA to an Internet-connected TV under the control of their own app, and they wouldn’t lose anything,” Redford said. Under that scenario, he said, they'd lose the high cost of maintaining a proprietary network and “the unscaleable cost of the set-top.” A cable provider could add 100 million subscribers overnight “and not have any additional costs beyond the marginal costs,” he said. “If I were Comcast, I'd be walking, not running, to do this, and I'd do it before DirecTV did it,” he said.

Panelists cited a previous session at the Forum where young adults spoke about their TV viewing habits, and set-top boxes weren’t part of their routine. Jack Perry, CEO of SyncBak, said the set-top box “will be around for years to come,” but an inevitable shift is in the works. “Four million people are born every year in the U.S. now who will likely never use a set-top box,” he said. Perry said if the content creator can get to the viewer more quickly, a lot of players in the TV chain could be disintermediated in the future.

Getting to that point will have to be an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, process, said Redford of iLook. Overall TV usage is up, not down, he said. One of the key things Google learned recently with Google TV was that “if it looks too much like a PC screen, people won’t enjoy it,” he said, and trying to change consumers’ behavior “is not a good idea.” The pipe may be changing, but “it has to be packaged in a TV-centric way,” he said. The ideal OTT experience looks like “normal TV,” but with an option to add services on a second screen, he said. “Everyone will have a tablet or smartphone on their table,” he said, saying the second screen could be used to display an ad and offer a consumer a way to get more information or purchase a product.

User experience has to be the number one consideration in the connected TV world, said Nandhu Nandhakumar, senior vice president-advanced technology for LG. “Whether it’s a two-screen experience or you're using a wand-type device, you have to be able to navigate and find things easily,” he said. Apps have to be easy to find, he said. “You need to use icons and graphics so consumers aren’t typing URLs,” he said. Current connected TV apps don’t provide the kind of user experience that’s going to last and become mainstream, Redford said. “We have 500,000 apps on mobile devices but only 500 that are native to TVs,” he said. Perry of SyncBak said the connected TV market has to “stop having a moving target. If the connected TV universe is going to work, there has to be a common standard we all write to. Innovation occurs when the moving target stops moving,” he said.

Nandhakumar cited the alliance announced by LG, Philips and Sharp to come up with an applications platform. “We expect to have others,” he said, and announcements “are forthcoming.” While supporting a common platform with common APIs, he said manufacturers still need a way to differentiate. “Maybe some will offer a camera for Skype, others not,” he said. Manufacturers have to be able to innovate and not be confined, he said. The alliance plans to “build standards as much as possible so there’s not the fragmented space we have today.” He said it was too early to talk about a timeline for standards.

Redford suggested DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) technology could fit that common platform role and noted that many TVs currently incorporate the technology. DLNA TVs “are capable of receiving OTT video without a set-top box,” he said, “but it isn’t yet used for some unknown reason.” He suggested TV makers are not fully implementing some key aspects of DLNA “so they can build a toll both for themselves.” DLNA is a “perfectly good way to turn an Ethernet input into an AV input,” he said. “You don’t need a set-top box anymore, and it works beautifully."

Nandhakumar said DLNA offers some “very attractive solutions,” but that manufacturers tweak it to ensure there’s no interoperability. Manufacturers don’t want to have to test every CE device with every set-top box and then support them, he said. Any “tweaks” are done to limit interoperability versus charging any kind of toll,” he said.