[opendtv] News: What Convergence? TV's Hesitant March to the Net
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:52:18 -0500
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/technology/internet/16chip.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
What Convergence? TV's Hesitant March to the Net
Published: February 15, 2009
PALO ALTO, Calif. - You would be hard-pressed to find a screen today
that does not have Internet access. It's not just the PC and the
phone - online content appears in elevators, in the back of taxis and
at your airplane seat. Some companies have even tried (albeit
unsuccessfully) to get the Internet displayed on a refrigerator door.
So how is it that the Internet has largely escaped the single biggest
screen in most of our lives - the TV?
An intensifying, and perhaps surprising, debate is playing out around
this question and others. Should televisions be able to get access to
the Web? And not just the thin slices of the Web allowed by a few
services, but the whole cacophonous, unregulated, messy thing? And if
they should, how should they?
Now a movement is afoot by chip makers big and small to spur a new
generation of TVs with full browser capability, like a personal
computer. In October, Intel released its own TV-centric chip, and
many other semiconductor designers and manufacturers are doing the
same, industry analysts said.
But perhaps the most surprising thing is not how long it is taking to
get the Internet on TV but that, to some degree, that slow pace is
deliberate. Television manufacturers simply do not seem to want it.
"Sony's stance is that consumers don't want an Internet-like
experience with their TVs, and we're really not focused on bringing
anything other than Internet video or widgets to our sets right now,"
said Greg Belloni, a spokesman for Sony. Widgets is an industry term
for narrow channels of Internet programming like YouTube.
Ditto for Sharp Electronics. "I don't think that consumers are yet
ready to access all content on the Internet on the TV," said Bob
Scaglione, senior vice president for marketing at the Sharp
Electronics Marketing Company of America.
He added: "For now, it's more important to deliver content consumers
want on a TV and let them do their browsing on a PC."
Some industry analysts say TV makers have a point, in that many
consumers associate their television with one-way communications they
ingest while leaning back on the couch. Browsing the Internet, the
thinking goes, is a more immersive, active pursuit.
Analysts and industry executives say TV manufacturers have other
reasons for asserting that consumers do not want to use the Internet
from their couch. For one thing, profit margins in the TV industry
are as tight as can be. So adding the cost of surfing technology -
which could be $100 - is one potential roadblock.
Then there is the reality of opening a television up to the Internet
and, potentially, the viruses and hiccups that can creep in from
outside. Consumers have become accustomed to the occasional "blue
screen of death" on a PC, but imagine that happening during prime
time or the Super Bowl.
"People have very little tolerance for viruses and crashes on TVs,"
said Eric Kim, senior vice president for the Digital Home Group at
Intel. "If someone's TV ever crashes, they will pack it up and bring
it back to the store."
Intel's chip, called the Intel Media Processor CE 3100, does allow
full browsing. But it has been adopted by only a handful of
television manufacturers, and only in a limited fashion.
Manufacturers seem to prefer to keep their customers in a walled
garden of selected content.
Samsung, for instance, plans to sell TVs this spring that provide
access to news, weather and finance channels provided by Yahoo.
Sharp's Aquos TVs already have widgets that provide traffic, weather
and financial information, access to daily syndicated comic strips,
and some Web-based sports and entertainment programming from NBC.
Sony offers similar widgets on some of its TVs.
For some TV manufacturers, Intel itself may be part of the problem,
said Richard Doherty, an industry analyst at Envisioneering, a
consumer-electronics market research firm. Mr. Doherty said TV
manufacturers are wary of having Intel come to dominate the chip
market.
"Even companies that are working with Intel have told me that they
don't want a single-supplier solution if they can help it," Mr.
Doherty said. He added that Intel's entry in the market has
accelerated the development of Internet-centric TV chips at
competitors like Broadcom, Texas Instruments, ST Micro, Free- scale
and NXP.
Mr. Doherty said TV makers also risk losing control of the process if
they do not figure out a solution soon enough. Other competitors
include an array of set-top box makers, one, pointedly, deployed by
cable companies that Mr. Doherty said could solve some niggling
problems.
For instance, he said that such Internet access could run through the
servers of the cable companies, allowing them to screen for viruses,
add parental controls, and generally prevent some of the less
desirable aspects of full Internet access.
The other possibility is that some entirely new competitor will
emerge - someone like Gordon Campbell. Mr. Campbell, 64, was Intel's
first chief corporate marketing officer. He later designed
semiconductors and has since done pioneering work on chips for the
iPod and 3-D video games. He calls the opportunity to make
browser-centric chips for televisions "the biggest opportunity of any
of them."
His current company, Personal Web Systems, is poised this quarter to
ship its first product, a $150 adapter that will attach to
televisions to make them fully Internet-enabled. Mr. Campbell says
his company is reducing the technology included in the TV adapter
device into a single stamp-size semiconductor that would embed full
Internet access in TVs in more developed markets.
He thinks the price to manufacturers could be as low as $100. He also
thinks the TV manufacturers are not being genuine when they say
consumers do not want full Internet access.
"That's hogwash," he said. "This generation doesn't want their hands
tied behind their backs. They want the same experience as with a PC,
and widgets don't do that."
Industry analysts said that chip makers - whether Mr. Campbell, Intel
or others - need cooperation from the TV manufacturers. To some
extent, Mr. Campbell said, that is true, but he believes that
consumers will eventually buy set-top boxes that get the Internet,
forcing TV makers to embed chips themselves or lose the business.
"The ultimate test will be when the technology hits the market and
consumers decide," he says. "I wouldn't want to be on the widget side
when that happens."
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