TV 2012: A tale of two sets
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the era of big, it was the hour of small. It was the age of complexity, it was the era of simplicity. It was an epoch of freedom, it was a time of tyranny. It was the season of two dimensions, it was the moment of 3D. Everything was before us — and we have seen it all.
With apologies to Dickens, there’s a whole lot going on in the world of television, the medium that has dominated the world’s attention for three generations and was supposed to — at the very least — become an also-ran to the Internet. Convergence (in the 1990s’ sense of the word) is happening, but with no clear winner: Computers became TVs, and TVs are becoming internet-connected computers.
Likewise, TV programming has been in something of a renaissance for a decade — yeah, sure, for every Mad Men there’s a Work It (or 20 of them) — and even the experimentation in programs has something to do with technology, which has made it possible to watch on demand, and in places and at times of our choosing, and enabled new competition that entertains us with things that aren’t on TV at all.
But the real innovation is going on with what we used to call “TV sets.” They have gotten immense at the same time they have gotten tiny. They are components of complicated hardware systems, and they are also apps. These two delightfully disruptive strains — size and place — are coexisting in a remarkable way that suggests we are merely in the early part of a story arc that can only benefit the consumer.
It’s a sure sign of welcome chaos that innovation is happening at, well, both ends of the spectrum.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be ugly missteps. For two straight years (blessedly not for a third, though), the lords of the Consumer Electronics Show tried to seduce us into believing that 3D TV should be a consumer device (they aren’t giving up, but that’s a tale for another day). This year “smart TV” was the buzz phrase in Las Vegas. Every major manufacturer is incorporating internet access and apps as we mercifully inch past the era of the clunky set-top box and other peripherals, but still place a premium on padding the nest — er, living room.
At the same time, TV is going anywhere and everywhere. By leveraging the smartphone and tablet revolution, it is newly portable, fueled by hotspots, ubiquitous data networks, and “old” standbys like SlingBox.
