TV is not a big monitor

There is a very stupid trend among TV makers, extolled at 2012 CES show, that all the TV has to do is have web access to be the next big thing. But this is stupid. It is the reason why the first Google TV failed, and why the next generation will also fail.

There are two reasons:

1 TV is a group activity, so you cannot have just one person clicking around web sites while others watch. It is as bad as someone flicking the TV remote, much to the frustration of everyone else in the room - I know my son does this! And so do I, muting the sound during adverts!

2 There is a good cause for using the TV for internet delivery of media. This could be the one thing that will finally drive the studios to be much more open about their product's delivery.

Today we still suffer from what is called "piracy" of movies and music. But the solution is a more open, and global, delivery system with reasonable charges. Make it easy to get the product, and charge an acceptable price, simple marketing. This is why iTunes music has succeeded. But not yet iTunes movies and TV shows as the studios only release them after it has done the rounds of theatres and DVDs and there is lots more diversity in this market, competing companies, no global players, local TV jealously guarding its product, free TV, yes you the BBC…. parasites like Sky... But things are slowly changing and the advent of TVs being able to view streamed internet programs will increase the pressure on studios to get behind this new global trend.

Note that I said "Global" and "Open". These are two very important concepts. Especially for artists and creative people, they want to reach the world and open their art to everyone. It is the studios and copyright slice-and-dice exploitation that prevents this. The huge studio monoliths have to be broken up and dragged screaming into the 21st century and made to adopt a new delivery channels.

So what should an internet connected TV be? For sure not just a dumb terminal, able to browse YouTube or the BBC iPlayer web site. No, it needs to be part of an eco-system. Where there is transparency between viewing broadcast programs and internet delivered ones. Individual users in the same room have to have separate access at the same time to the internet or alternative channels.

In other words a room with a 50" display, but individual iPads for each person, all linked and all independent. If you want to link your iPad to the actual program being watched then you can, and it will be available for further reading about the program's content, for example statistics during "question Time" that illustrate or contradict a speakers claims. Or back stage cameos of films, or information about the historic times represented, or about the actors… hundreds of possibilities, but linked. Or the iPad can be unlinked and individuals can read their emails while the telly is on. And, by the way, the iPad will be the TV remote, not those stupid, button hungry things we have today.

So there, that's what I think. Let's see how it pans out. Apple bring it on.