Scanning the Big Screen Horizon
Everyone is amped up and on the lookout for the coolest new gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas, trying to pinpoint the innovation that will move the market to open its collective purse for the newest must-have. Given our culture’s communal obsession with screens, TVs have often generated the biggest buzz. Yet, this year, the flat screens remain flat. Though there have been strides taken, we’re still a few steps short of that truly revolutionary next big thing.
In the New York Times, Brian X. Chen in “As Sales Slip, TV Makers Strain for the Next Sensation” noted that television manufacturers are hoping to attract more eyeballs this year with supersized screens and quadrupled levels of detail in their images. Sony now offers an 84-inch Ultra HDTV, priced at $25,000, the Ferrari in its line that also includes “the Audi, Lexus and Mercedes side of the world,” according to Mike Lucas, a Sony senior vice president. As appealing as bigger and ultra high-definition TV might be, is it enough to incite that stop-look-touch-buy reaction that ushers in a major revenue-producing product embraced by the early adapters and then scooped up by the masses?
Not quite. Bigger and clearer misses the mark of responding to the marketplace and integrating features into products that complement what consumers are really doing in their lives. TV no longer holds viewers’ full attention; we watch two screens simultaneously now, a large-screen TV alongside our smartphone, PC/laptop, or tablet. In the course of a year, a user carries a mobile phone for longer than three times the hours spent watching TV.
Ideas or products that play into existing consumer behavior and desires have the greatest chance at success. To create a product that will truly engage the marketplace, innovators need to know what drives consumer behavior, and observing culture and understanding people is one of the necessary “red threads” that can help connect manufacturers and designers to a winning new offering.
Understanding that viewers are watching two screens at the same time, here is one big idea for the Big TV of the future: incorporate a side bar that allows viewers to search live for items or subjects they are seeing on the big screen so they don’t need their smart phones at all. Key words or links could even automatically pop up in the side bar to really get the big picture. The TV might also respond to spoken prompts, a feature that could be activated for use when it would not disturb the rest of the family who might be watching. What if a tab would report the minutes until the next commercial break, as well as how long the commercial break would last, so you could make that phone call, slip some popcorn in the microwave, or get that cup of coffee? Or let you access your calendar in a sidebar to note the date of an event you just learned about from a program or commercial? Today, TV with Internet requires users go to a different screen, losing current viewing, so TV remains in essence a screen, not quite accommodated to customer behavior. And picture-in-picture technology could be smarter, by “judging” where the smaller inset image should be placed, to avoid blocking the viewer’s vision of the central action occurring on their larger screen.
On NPR’s “All Tech Considered,” Steve Henn said he was at the CES weighing “the ongoing effort to get your TV to play nicely with your smartphone, tablet or PC.” He reported on Nvidia’s Project Shield, a gaming portable that allows users to stream games from the device — or, when attached to a PC, access and share movies — direct to the big-screen TV in the living room. Though a glimmer in meeting the consumer where he lives today, it is basically a projection device offering a connection to a larger screen.
Bigger, higher-def TV and wireless sharing certainly will get some action and trade-up but making our favorite big screen simultaneously dual use is more 21st century and responsive to how consumers live. That could be a real business builder, and a true showstopper at a future Consumer Electronics Show.
