Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: How the Tech Are You? And today I got to
Speaker 1: thinking about television and actually debated about what I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about on today's episode, because there are a
Speaker 1: couple of topics I really want to dive into. One
Speaker 1: of those is the continuing decline of the cable and
Speaker 1: satellite TV business. People have been presaging the death of
Speaker 1: cable and satellite TV for ages. In fact, I kind
Speaker 1: of did it in an interview I did with CNN
Speaker 1: years ago. Turns out that was a dumb move on
Speaker 1: my part. Not that I was wrong. I wasn't, but
Speaker 1: at the time the company I worked for was owned
Speaker 1: by Discovery Communications, and turns out the bosses of a
Speaker 1: cable company are not happy. If you may the observation
Speaker 1: that cable is in trouble. Now, I maintain it's not
Speaker 1: like I caused folks to dump cable. I wasn't telling
Speaker 1: people to get rid of their cable. It's just observing
Speaker 1: the trend. But you know, I guess if you yell
Speaker 1: out Iceberg, you get the blame for the fact that
Speaker 1: the ship hit it. Anyway, that's not this episode, so
Speaker 1: we will look into that in the future. But this episode,
Speaker 1: I'm going to uh cover something else because if I
Speaker 1: want to talk about cable and satellite decline, I really
Speaker 1: need to sift through a lot of information, a lot
Speaker 1: of statistics before I do that, because it can actually
Speaker 1: be tricky to know what numbers to trust in that field.
Speaker 1: There's some sites out there that uh give pretty dramatic
Speaker 1: numbers for the decline in subscribers, and I'd want to
Speaker 1: verify all of that before I actually do an episode.
Speaker 1: So instead, today I thought I would talk a bit
Speaker 1: about smart television's, you know, essentially the standard kind of
Speaker 1: TV that you can buy these days. Not that every
Speaker 1: television on the market these days is a smart TV,
Speaker 1: but most of them are, like definitely the ones that
Speaker 1: tend to get prominent uh placement in in uh in
Speaker 1: in places like best Buy, those are definitely smart TVs.
Speaker 1: And you know, these are the kind of televisions that
Speaker 1: come preloaded with the ability to connect to various online
Speaker 1: content providers, you know, like streaming services and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: while they are the norm Now, it was not that
Speaker 1: long ago that your typical television was just an output device,
Speaker 1: a dumb one like you would tune it to a channel, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, or perhaps connected to a media player like
Speaker 1: a VCR or laser disc or something, and you saw
Speaker 1: whatever was on that signal feed, and that was it,
Speaker 1: and and it was one way, right. You weren't sending
Speaker 1: information back. No one knew what it was you were watching,
Speaker 1: unless you happen to be a Nielsen family, which would
Speaker 1: it require you to connect another piece of hardware to
Speaker 1: your television and that would register what it was you
Speaker 1: were watching when you were watching it for the purposes
Speaker 1: of collecting ratings. But most people, you know, they're just
Speaker 1: watching TV, and whatever they're watching, that data has lost.
Speaker 1: Today's televisions are very different. But how did we get there?
Speaker 1: When did televisions start to turn quote unquote smart, or
Speaker 1: if you prefer, when did our televisions start to become
Speaker 1: nefarious data gathering tools feeding into the data rich ecosystem
Speaker 1: of our modern world. Let's find out. First, let's get
Speaker 1: into some prehistoric stuff. So for decades, televisions were dumb.
Speaker 1: Depending upon whom you ask, they were dumb in different
Speaker 1: ways or they would make you dumb. You know, they
Speaker 1: would be the so called opiate of the masses. They
Speaker 1: were also large, they were heavy, they were clunky, you know.
Speaker 1: The earliest TVs were essentially pieces of furniture. They depended
Speaker 1: upon cathode ray tubes, which look a little bit like lightbulbs.
Speaker 1: These cathode ray tubes shoot a tight beam of electrons
Speaker 1: at the backside of the television screen. They scan line
Speaker 1: by line down the screen, and in the process they
Speaker 1: hit elements that would luminess and create the pictures that
Speaker 1: you would see on the other side. In the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: color television began to transform the industry, though it would
Speaker 1: take you know, like more than a decade for color
Speaker 1: TV tech to surpass the old, reliable, and perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 1: less expensive, black and white television technology. Meanwhile, there were
Speaker 1: scientists and engineers who were creating the tech that would
Speaker 1: allow for the emergence of flat screens. Now, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: these old CRT sets were boxing. These were the big
Speaker 1: cabinet style televisions. You could not easily mount these to
Speaker 1: a wall or anything like that. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: mount into a wall, but they'd be sticking way out
Speaker 1: on like an arm that was mounted to a stud
Speaker 1: in the wall, otherwise they would just fall right down.
Speaker 1: But as early as the nineteen six steas, you had
Speaker 1: teams creating the tech that would allow for flat panel TVs,
Speaker 1: and it would take decades for those to come to
Speaker 1: the market. At the same time, you had other folks
Speaker 1: creating devices that would allow consumers to connect other stuff
Speaker 1: to their televisions. So in the old old days, really
Speaker 1: the only thing you could connect your TV two wasn't
Speaker 1: antenna and you would get over the air broadcasts. Later on,
Speaker 1: you'd be able to connect your television to a cable connection,
Speaker 1: either from a cable service provider or later a satellite dish.
Speaker 1: Plus you would have connections that would let you hook
Speaker 1: up a VCR, laser disc video game system, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing to your TV. The television was gradually becoming
Speaker 1: a more versatile technology, or rather it's compatibility with other
Speaker 1: technologies would increase television's utility. The TV itself wasn't really
Speaker 1: getting that much more advanced, surprisingly, at least to me.
Speaker 1: One predecessor to smart TVs launched as early as the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. Now I say surprisingly because in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: you still had folks building out our panet, and our
Speaker 1: ponnet in itself was kind of a predecessor to the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's where a lot of the protocols that would later
Speaker 1: end up powering the Internet were first designed. So how
Speaker 1: could you have a smart TV if there were no
Speaker 1: Internet for the TV to connect to? Enter the video text?
Speaker 1: That's V I, D, E O t X. Now, in
Speaker 1: many ways, video text was like computer bulletin board systems
Speaker 1: or bbs is. These were things where one person could
Speaker 1: turn their computer into a host machine by running some software,
Speaker 1: and they could allow other people to dial in using
Speaker 1: an over the phone line modem into that PC in
Speaker 1: order to access files, maybe save files to the machine.
Speaker 1: They could leave messages for other bbs members, they could
Speaker 1: play the occasional game AIM that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't the Internet. It was contained to this one
Speaker 1: computer system, but people could dial into it. View text
Speaker 1: was similar, but it was meant mainly for television's or
Speaker 1: dumb terminals. Now, the view text typically consisted of two
Speaker 1: pieces of hardware that you needed in addition to your television.
Speaker 1: One piece of hardware was essentially a set top box,
Speaker 1: that you would connect to your TV. The set top
Speaker 1: box would connect to your phone line as well. Later
Speaker 1: versions would be able to connect to cable TV feeds,
Speaker 1: so it would connect like a VCR to your TV
Speaker 1: and would have an outward connection that would connect to
Speaker 1: some specific provider that would let your television display information
Speaker 1: sent over that transmission line from whatever company it was
Speaker 1: that offered the service. The other piece of hardware was
Speaker 1: some sort of controller. Frequently it looked like a keyboard,
Speaker 1: and these would often use infrared signals like your typical
Speaker 1: remote control to send messages to the set top box,
Speaker 1: and that made the video text. Technically, it could be
Speaker 1: a two way communications technology. Not only would you be
Speaker 1: able to view information on your TV like news articles
Speaker 1: or stock market quotes or whether information or whatever, you
Speaker 1: could potentially send information back up to the service. So
Speaker 1: some of these would offer message boards like classified ads,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. You could actually leave messages on
Speaker 1: those boards, and that became a popular service in a
Speaker 1: few places where this tech actually took off, which was
Speaker 1: mostly in France. Like it launched in different places around
Speaker 1: the world, but in most places it failed to get
Speaker 1: much traction apart from France. Now one reason why it
Speaker 1: didn't get much traction is the hardware was typically pretty expensive.
Speaker 1: There were a few places that really tried to make
Speaker 1: it work. The UK really pushed for this. Uh there.
Speaker 1: The Post Office was really promoting video text technology pretty hard.
Speaker 1: And you might wonder why was the post Office interested
Speaker 1: in this? While the time the Post Office was in
Speaker 1: charge of the telephone lines in the UK, and in
Speaker 1: the UK folks were charged for using the phones, even
Speaker 1: if it was for local calls. So the more you
Speaker 1: use your phone, the more you had to pay the
Speaker 1: post office. So why not create a service that encourages
Speaker 1: people to tie up their phone lines and generate revenue.
Speaker 1: Except it didn't really take off in the UK. Now,
Speaker 1: video text was fundamentally different from the Internet. Yes, you
Speaker 1: were getting information sent over transmission lines from another place
Speaker 1: and you were viewing it on a screen, but apart
Speaker 1: from that, it was very different because the Internet is
Speaker 1: a network of computer networks, and over the Internet you
Speaker 1: can access information stored on servers that are all over
Speaker 1: the world, not just one server, but any of the
Speaker 1: servers that are available to you to go to. Obviously,
Speaker 1: some servers have textions in place where unless you have
Speaker 1: the proper credentials, you don't get in, but you get
Speaker 1: my point. Video text was more like a direct line
Speaker 1: to a specific company's service. So if you purchased a
Speaker 1: video text system, you could only access whatever the company
Speaker 1: that offered this system had. That was it. You couldn't
Speaker 1: swap over to some other company's service unless you were
Speaker 1: to go and buy all new hardware and connect to that.
Speaker 1: So imagine for a second that you could only use
Speaker 1: your computer to access I don't know all of Disney's material,
Speaker 1: but nothing from anyone else. If you wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to access I don't know Reddit, you would have
Speaker 1: to go out and get a different computer and subscribe
Speaker 1: to a different service. It's not exactly consumer friendly. One
Speaker 1: brilliant bit of business with the video text was that
Speaker 1: the companies that offered them could double debt in a way.
Speaker 1: They could offer to carry information from specific providers, like
Speaker 1: content providers, like a like a prominent news paper, for example,
Speaker 1: and they would charge a fee to the newspaper and
Speaker 1: in return they would carry the newspapers content to users. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, content creators would have to pay a
Speaker 1: fee to video the video text provider for the privilege
Speaker 1: of having their content sent to viewers, and I'm guessing
Speaker 1: they would do this because it was a new way
Speaker 1: to make those viewers aware of the source of the
Speaker 1: information and that hopefully they would go out and then
Speaker 1: subscribe directly to the periodical for example. Then the video
Speaker 1: text provider turns around and also charges a subscription fee
Speaker 1: to the user on top of all the hardware fees
Speaker 1: they had to pay in order to get the system
Speaker 1: in the first place. So the video text company would
Speaker 1: get paid on both ends, the content and and the consumption. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of stuff that net neutrality proponents
Speaker 1: point at when they make their arguments that if you
Speaker 1: don't have net neutrality, you can have a situation where
Speaker 1: Internet service providers are charging both customers to access service
Speaker 1: and content creators to carry their content. That would fragment
Speaker 1: the Internet experience. A person who's subscribing to I s
Speaker 1: P A could end up with a fundamentally different experience
Speaker 1: from someone subscribed to I s P B, all because
Speaker 1: the two different I s p s only offer access
Speaker 1: to a subsection of all the stuff out on the Internet.
Speaker 1: But I digress. The hardware and services were so expensive
Speaker 1: that they just never really took off in almost every
Speaker 1: market except in France. In fact, France was really an outlier.
Speaker 1: The relevant service in France, called Mini Tell, was popular
Speaker 1: enough that it was actually more popular than the Internet,
Speaker 1: even as late as there were more people on France's
Speaker 1: Mini Tell service than there were subscribers to the Internet.
Speaker 1: But even many Tell could only remain relevant for so long,
Speaker 1: and in twenty twelve the service finally went dark. Still, Videotel,
Speaker 1: which had lots of different proprietary names depending upon the region,
Speaker 1: acted as a as a kind of predecessor for smart television's. Granted,
Speaker 1: this technology was an add on. It was a set
Speaker 1: top box that you would connect to your TV, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it was directly integrated into the television
Speaker 1: set itself. But some of the ideas relating to smart
Speaker 1: TVs were definitely showing up as early as the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: using the television to access additional content and services beyond
Speaker 1: your normal TV shows. Now, when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about the early history of smart TVs, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a break for these messages. Another thing
Speaker 1: I need to mention is a Japanese technology, though this
Speaker 1: one we have to have some caveats. So, according to
Speaker 1: gen Gregory in his collection of articles, which is title
Speaker 1: Japanese Electronics, Technology, Enterprise and Innovation, which I have to add,
Speaker 1: is not necessarily an unimpeachable source when it comes to
Speaker 1: historical data. According to him, Japanese companies developed an intelligent
Speaker 1: television receiver his words, that would allow Japanese broadcasters to
Speaker 1: include additional information that viewers would be able to access
Speaker 1: if they happen to have a television with one of
Speaker 1: those receivers. But beyond this assertion, I can't find a
Speaker 1: whole lot of information about this. Doesn't mean that that
Speaker 1: he's wrong or that he's not referring to something specific.
Speaker 1: I just could not find corroborating information. However, I found
Speaker 1: a ton of different sources that reference Gene Gregory, So
Speaker 1: they're using him as kind of the prime source for
Speaker 1: this particular entry into the history of smart TVs. It
Speaker 1: very well maybe true, I just can't find verification for it,
Speaker 1: at least I it, and before the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: maybe I will eventually come across some and then I
Speaker 1: can extend extensive apologies to Geene Gregory. But the idea
Speaker 1: was that there is unused bandwidth in a channel's range
Speaker 1: of frequencies, and that broadcasters would be able to tap
Speaker 1: into some of that because they weren't going to be
Speaker 1: using very much of it in order to send some
Speaker 1: additional information to viewers who happen to have these kinds
Speaker 1: of televisions. So if you do a search for the
Speaker 1: history of smart TVs, you're likely to see some mention
Speaker 1: of this somewhere. But as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: it all traces back to Gregory's collection of articles, and
Speaker 1: some people have said that he gets a little loosey
Speaker 1: goosey with historic facts because that wasn't really the relevant
Speaker 1: part of it. It was more of an overall view
Speaker 1: of Japan's influence in the innovation in general, and you know,
Speaker 1: the evolution of technology in particular. From there, things go
Speaker 1: quiet in the smart TV space for more than a decade.
Speaker 1: But in the mid nineties, Jean Marie Gattau and Dominique
Speaker 1: Batrand filed for a patent titled Television system in a
Speaker 1: Digital or Analog Network. Now, the abstract for the patent
Speaker 1: reads as follows. I'm just going to quote it directly,
Speaker 1: quote an economic television system used in a digital or
Speaker 1: analog network, incorporating at least one user identification device, at
Speaker 1: least monodirectional or bidirectional connector to data systems, and at
Speaker 1: least one image, sound, and data decompression and or compression element.
Speaker 1: This system also comprises at least one instantaneous acquisition means
Speaker 1: application to the fields of interactive multi transactions, remote monitoring,
Speaker 1: simultaneous transaction, or other communications uses end quote and like
Speaker 1: all patents, that's pretty wordy. It's a real, real dense
Speaker 1: with jargon. But in other words, the patent calls for
Speaker 1: a system that allows for a connecting a television not
Speaker 1: just to a network like a computer network, but to
Speaker 1: other components as well, including stuff like input devices such
Speaker 1: as light pens and barcode readers, or output devices like printers. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the patent is laying out the components needed to turn
Speaker 1: the television from a passive display device into something more interactive.
Speaker 1: Though the inclusion of monodirectional or bidirectional means you could
Speaker 1: have a simplified version of this that's only output oriented,
Speaker 1: where you can't have any sort of meaningful interaction beyond consumption.
Speaker 1: So that patent dates back to Does that mean that's
Speaker 1: when we started to get smart TVs not at all. See,
Speaker 1: when you file a patent, the patent is supposed to
Speaker 1: describe a technology that will work. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to file patents for stuff that can't work.
Speaker 1: Though that gets pretty tricky in itself. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: supposed to work using the approach that's described within the patent. However,
Speaker 1: there is no requirement that you actually make the ding
Speaker 1: darn thing, so you don't have to come to the
Speaker 1: patent office with a working model. You might find out
Speaker 1: that actually building the device ends up being more expensive
Speaker 1: and time consuming than it would be worth. Like, you
Speaker 1: might come up with a technology that does work, but
Speaker 1: it turns out that if you try and make it
Speaker 1: and then sell it, you wouldn't be able to sell
Speaker 1: any because you would have to charge such a high
Speaker 1: price to recapture your expenses, no one would ever buy it.
Speaker 1: You might also find that you can create the hardware,
Speaker 1: but then if you don't have content to run on
Speaker 1: the hardware, the hardware is not very useful. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine seeing a new kind of media player, but there's
Speaker 1: no actual content available on that specific medium. That wouldn't
Speaker 1: do you any good. It would just take up space.
Speaker 1: It would either take up physical space if it were
Speaker 1: something like, you know, kind of like a VCR, or
Speaker 1: it would take up digital storage space if it were
Speaker 1: talking about more of a virtual media player. And this
Speaker 1: is a big issue we see for video game consoles.
Speaker 1: They have to have compelling games available at launch, or
Speaker 1: else there's no reason to buy them. Well, the patented
Speaker 1: idea would lay dormant for another decade plus some change,
Speaker 1: but that didn't mean you didn't have companies thinking about
Speaker 1: how to deliver Internet content televisions. Let's talk about another
Speaker 1: initiative that launched not too long after Jean Marie and
Speaker 1: Dominique filed that patent in nine talking about web TV.
Speaker 1: I actually knew a guy who had web TV. I
Speaker 1: only saw it in action a little bit. I thought
Speaker 1: it was charming and odd and slow. But web tv
Speaker 1: was a startup company and it was co founded by
Speaker 1: a former Apple engineer, the guy who actually developed the
Speaker 1: QuickTime technology, Steve Perlman. He unveiled this idea in nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties six and I would say the web TV concept
Speaker 1: was kind of like video texts from two decades earlier,
Speaker 1: but it had been updated for the Internet age. So
Speaker 1: instead of a set top box that would connect to
Speaker 1: a specific company's services, this was a set top box
Speaker 1: that would let you use your television to browse the
Speaker 1: World Wide Web. So why even do that? Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna jump into some stereotypes for a moment. One stereotype
Speaker 1: is that older people have trouble grasping younger technology. And
Speaker 1: as a rapidly older person myself, I can at least
Speaker 1: anecdotally vouch for this. You should see the look on
Speaker 1: my face when I have to dive into our project
Speaker 1: management tools. Tar knows. We've emailed about it. It's not
Speaker 1: that the tools are bad, it's just I'm old and
Speaker 1: I do not learn new things very well, which is
Speaker 1: a good thing that I run a tech podcast. Huh well,
Speaker 1: self deprecating humor aside, there was this perceived untapped market
Speaker 1: of older television owners, uh that weren't owners of computers.
Speaker 1: That these are people that we could access if we
Speaker 1: could find a way to get them online. So these
Speaker 1: were users who were less inclined to purchase a computer
Speaker 1: for the purposes of going online, simply because that was
Speaker 1: a big expense. It was unfamiliar technology, so there was
Speaker 1: there were barriers to entry. So why television's well, everyone
Speaker 1: knows how to work at television. They've been around for decades.
Speaker 1: So selling a device that you could just hook up
Speaker 1: to your television, like a VCR, which was another technology
Speaker 1: that had been around for a couple of decades, that
Speaker 1: was an easier sell, at least so it was thought
Speaker 1: at the time. Web TV was positioned as a technology
Speaker 1: that could bring the world of the web to your
Speaker 1: living room and it wouldn't require anyone to learn how
Speaker 1: to operate one of those gosh darn computers. But the
Speaker 1: challenge of bringing online content like web pages to a
Speaker 1: television spanned beyond the technical While the technology needed to
Speaker 1: do that was relatively straightforward, essentially meant building a purpose
Speaker 1: built computer that was a set top box and it
Speaker 1: had a built in modem that could send signals to
Speaker 1: the television, getting it to be a good experience was
Speaker 1: more challenging. The Web was not designed to be viewed
Speaker 1: from a distance. The assumption every web designer was making
Speaker 1: in the nineties is that their visitors were going to
Speaker 1: be sitting at a computer they might be at most
Speaker 1: two feet away from the screen. All the layouts and fonts,
Speaker 1: everything that was in web design was aimed at that experience,
Speaker 1: the assumption that the person who was consuming the website
Speaker 1: was on a computer not far from a screen. If
Speaker 1: you're sitting on your living room couch and your several
Speaker 1: feet away from your TV screen, that experience isn't going
Speaker 1: to work for you. You won't be able to read anything.
Speaker 1: The print would be way too small, and it would
Speaker 1: be difficult to navigate the pages. It would be hard
Speaker 1: to click on links because you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: see which link to what. So Perlman and his team
Speaker 1: focus not just on the technical requirements to make this
Speaker 1: connectivity possible, but also on the user experience and the
Speaker 1: display settings so that once you were online, you could
Speaker 1: actually see what you were doing. That would mean doing
Speaker 1: stuff like having to increase font sizes and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to get around the layouts of web designers and stuff.
Speaker 1: And the font size thing was a relatively straightforward solution,
Speaker 1: but navigating pages what ended up being slow and cumbersome.
Speaker 1: It wasn't bad if you just need to check on
Speaker 1: a page for a moment, like maybe just check your email,
Speaker 1: but it was not a satisfying experience if you really
Speaker 1: wanted to and pardon my oldness here, Surf the web,
Speaker 1: as we used to say, web TV didn't get enough
Speaker 1: consumer support to really get the initiative or to get
Speaker 1: any real leverage. And that's interesting because a decade later
Speaker 1: we would see a transformation in the way people consumed
Speaker 1: web content that did force web designers to change how
Speaker 1: they worked. Web TV failed, right, web TV was not
Speaker 1: popular enough. If it had become popular, then there would
Speaker 1: have been an incentive for web designers to create at
Speaker 1: least a version of their sites that was optimized for
Speaker 1: the web TV experience. That would have made browsing on
Speaker 1: web TV much better. But with such a small target
Speaker 1: audience because not a lot of people were adopting web TV,
Speaker 1: there was no real reason to put forth that kind
Speaker 1: of effort. But a decade later, smartphones would succeed where
Speaker 1: web TV failed, and that the trend of people relying
Speaker 1: more on their smartphone to access websites and services meant
Speaker 1: that web designers were compelled to respond or else risk
Speaker 1: becoming irrelevant. Smartphones forced a change in how web designers
Speaker 1: approached their work. I should know, because I was very
Speaker 1: well aware of that working at a website like there
Speaker 1: was a lot of work done to figure out how
Speaker 1: to optimize how stuff works for the mobile experience, because
Speaker 1: as more and more people were switching to using their
Speaker 1: phones to casually access the internet, that's where our audience
Speaker 1: was going. We had to respond or else we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have an audience anymore. But web tv never had enough
Speaker 1: customers to follow that same path, so it just kind
Speaker 1: of floundered and obscurity. Now, oddly enough, Microsoft actually went
Speaker 1: on to acquire web tv for a whopping four five
Speaker 1: million dollars when the little startups service had only been
Speaker 1: active for like eight months, so less than a year
Speaker 1: in action, Microsoft swoops in and buys this company. So
Speaker 1: you might ask, well, why were the folks at Microsoft
Speaker 1: thinking that this was a good idea. I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to that, But then we're also talking about
Speaker 1: a company that had a lot of missteps in this era,
Speaker 1: leading up to and including the company's failure with Windows Mobile.
Speaker 1: I'll have to do a full episode about Windows Mobile
Speaker 1: at some point to now. Just to close out the
Speaker 1: web Tv part of this story, Microsoft would continue to
Speaker 1: support the service until two thousand thirteen, although in order
Speaker 1: to do that it did have to send out some
Speaker 1: updates because as equipment gets older, it can't necessarily keep
Speaker 1: up with the changes that are happening on the software side.
Speaker 1: That's actually is a really big problem with smart TVs
Speaker 1: in general. The Web evolves at a rapid pace and
Speaker 1: services evolve at a rapid pace as well, and in
Speaker 1: the case of web TV, the hardware couldn't accommodate all
Speaker 1: the changes, and so the hardware would become obsolete over time.
Speaker 1: Plus it would cost money to continue to support that service.
Speaker 1: Microsoft had to invest in order to keep that service going,
Speaker 1: and as we see, that's a combin issue with smart
Speaker 1: TVs today in general. The required ongoing support means that
Speaker 1: there's an ongoing expense for companies that eventually tend to
Speaker 1: decide to pull the plug on that support, and that
Speaker 1: leaves customers with what who own that particular kind of
Speaker 1: hardware kind of up the creek, But we'll come back
Speaker 1: to that anyway. Microsoft would redirect a lot of its
Speaker 1: web TV efforts to its video game console division. The
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty would include many of the features that
Speaker 1: could trace their lineage back to the web TV days.
Speaker 1: Uh and it's set top box. Actually, really, the video
Speaker 1: game consoles kind of became front and center in this world. Briefly,
Speaker 1: you might remember when Microsoft was promoting Xbox One. The
Speaker 1: idea was that the Xbox One was going to be
Speaker 1: the center for your media entertainment system, and it would
Speaker 1: allow all sorts of access to streaming content, to live TV, UH,
Speaker 1: it would open up gesture controls, all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and actually ended up alienating a lot of Xbox fans
Speaker 1: because they were just interested or primarily interested in games.
Speaker 1: But Microsoft was kind of shifting its promotion to say
Speaker 1: that this is more than a games console, and meanwhile
Speaker 1: the fans were saying, okay, but tell me more about
Speaker 1: the games part of it. Anyway, we're gonna get back
Speaker 1: to the actual emergence of smart TVs. Just as web
Speaker 1: TV was starting to become a thing, we started to
Speaker 1: see the first consumer flat panel televisions and flat panel
Speaker 1: TVs and smart TVs. Obviously, those are not the same thing.
Speaker 1: These are two different technologies that just happened to converge
Speaker 1: into the current form factor for television's UH. And at
Speaker 1: this point in the late ninety nineties, when flat panel
Speaker 1: TVs first became a consumer technology, the tech was very
Speaker 1: very young and very very expensive. Like if you wanted
Speaker 1: one of the first consumer flat panel televisions, you had
Speaker 1: to be willing to shell out like fifteen thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for the privilege. And obviously, as moreties began to produce
Speaker 1: flat models and improve manufacturing processes, we saw prices come
Speaker 1: down to a point where you didn't have to choose
Speaker 1: between buying a new flat TV or buying a car.
Speaker 1: And the same thing would be true with smart television's.
Speaker 1: Early smart TVs because they had this additional capability, would
Speaker 1: be marketed at a much higher price, but then it
Speaker 1: became the norm and prices would come down. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take another quick break. When we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: start talking about what are arguably the first true smart
Speaker 1: televisions and where they came from the first another break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we were in the nine nineties before the break, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna skip ahead a bunch of years because while
Speaker 1: we started to see set top streaming services, we weren't
Speaker 1: really seeing much movement of incorporating those directly into televisions. Now,
Speaker 1: there would be attempts to bring some streaming capabilities and
Speaker 1: digital offerings to TVs. Once we get into the mid
Speaker 1: two thousand's, a guy named Anthony Would created the earliest
Speaker 1: digital video recorder or DVR in the late ninety nineties.
Speaker 1: That would set the stage for companies like ti Vo
Speaker 1: to have a brief but impactful run in the industry.
Speaker 1: DVR tech saw some stiff opposition from the cable television world. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is typical. Whenever there's a technology that allows users
Speaker 1: to make a copy of something, you often see established
Speaker 1: industries really put up a fuss about this. So in
Speaker 1: this case, cable companies didn't like the idea of folks
Speaker 1: being able to digitally record content and then, horror of horrors,
Speaker 1: skip commercials when the commercials popped up bad news. Folks
Speaker 1: were already doing that with older tech like VCRs, but
Speaker 1: that opposition slowed down the growth of the DVR business
Speaker 1: until the early two thousand's. In two thousand two, Would
Speaker 1: would go on to found a new company called Roku,
Speaker 1: but it would be several years before a Roku streaming
Speaker 1: device would be available for consumers, and even longer for
Speaker 1: Roku capabilities to be built directly into television sets. The
Speaker 1: first Roku device was also the first one capable of
Speaker 1: bringing Netflix is streaming service to television's Originally, Netflix was
Speaker 1: going to produce its own hardware, but then Read Hastings,
Speaker 1: who at that time was the soul CEO of Netflix.
Speaker 1: Today he is co CEO along with Ted Surrenders. He
Speaker 1: figured that if Netflix started to make its own hardware,
Speaker 1: that would potentially scuttle future partnerships with other hardware manufacturers
Speaker 1: because they would view Netflix as a competitor. So he
Speaker 1: thought it would be better to not get into the
Speaker 1: hardware business instead just be the entity that provides the
Speaker 1: streaming service and partner with hardware manufacturers to bring that
Speaker 1: streaming service to customers. Roku was then handed the chance
Speaker 1: to make a name for itself by being the first
Speaker 1: product that let Netflix customers stream shows directly to their
Speaker 1: television's The company produced its first Roku player in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. One year earlier, in two thousand seven, HP
Speaker 1: introduced the Media Smart TV. This television would connect to
Speaker 1: your home network, so it required a PC a computer
Speaker 1: in order to stream content from the computer to the television.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to access online content so that capability
Speaker 1: wasn't native to the television itself, you had to have
Speaker 1: a computer that would act as kind of like a
Speaker 1: set top box. Sort of like the Roku player, and
Speaker 1: some people refer to the Media Smart TV as the
Speaker 1: first smart TV, which would put the origin for smart
Speaker 1: TVs at two thousand seven. But the Media Smart Well
Speaker 1: innovative wasn't a huge hit. Samsung would create a quote
Speaker 1: unquote smart TV in two thousand eight that would only
Speaker 1: be available in South Korea. It was the p A
Speaker 1: VV borda T the seven fifty or have bordou. It
Speaker 1: allowed customers to watch YouTube videos, they could scan news
Speaker 1: and weather, and they could do a few other Internet
Speaker 1: related activities. This television didn't need a set top box,
Speaker 1: didn't need a PC in order to access these features.
Speaker 1: The TV itself had an Ethernet port. It also had
Speaker 1: a USB port if you wanted to connect it to
Speaker 1: a network via a USB adapter. It also came with
Speaker 1: a gigabyte of content preloaded on the television itself. It
Speaker 1: did not have writeable storage, so you couldn't use the
Speaker 1: television like a DVR, but you could access online content,
Speaker 1: you know, in the form of stuff like YouTube videos. Okay,
Speaker 1: so a lot of other stuff was going on around
Speaker 1: this time that would really push the evolution of smart TV.
Speaker 1: So here in the United States. The country was in
Speaker 1: the midst of a digital transformation in which all broadcasts
Speaker 1: were going to switch from analog to digital. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of digital broadcast sting already, but now it
Speaker 1: was going to be a requirement. You were going to
Speaker 1: abandon analog transmissions for over the air broadcasts. Now this
Speaker 1: was when we first launched the tech Stuff podcast. We've
Speaker 1: gotten to the point where tech Stuff is a thing
Speaker 1: at this point, and one of our early episodes explained
Speaker 1: why some people would need a digital to analog converter,
Speaker 1: so it would accept digital signals converted to analog and
Speaker 1: then send the analog signal to the television. But they
Speaker 1: would only be needed for over the air broadcasts, and
Speaker 1: it would be only for people who are actually using
Speaker 1: antennas to pick up their their television signals. This whole
Speaker 1: digital transformation had people in the United States confused. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of efforts to try and clear out
Speaker 1: that confusion, some of which were met with, you know,
Speaker 1: differing amounts of success. There were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are ordering these converters, and it turned out they
Speaker 1: didn't actually need the converters because they were getting their
Speaker 1: feed from like a cable box or something, but they
Speaker 1: didn't know because it wasn't terribly well communicated early on.
Speaker 1: This also, however, meant that the country was committing fully
Speaker 1: to digital transmissions and that would incentivize more innovation in
Speaker 1: the digital TV space. Another big development was that more
Speaker 1: households in the United States were gaining access to broadband connections.
Speaker 1: Without broadband, streaming content is not good. It's kind of allowsy,
Speaker 1: particularly if you want to stream content at a size
Speaker 1: and resolution that would work well on a television. But
Speaker 1: this was when we started seeing an improvement in broadband
Speaker 1: accessibility in the United States. Of course, we are nowhere
Speaker 1: near done with that phase. There's still plenty of communities
Speaker 1: in the US that have little to no broadband access,
Speaker 1: so it is not mission accomplished by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination. The introduction of television is like the media
Speaker 1: smart and the p a VV sent the message that
Speaker 1: this is going to be the future of television, or
Speaker 1: at least a future of television. If not the future,
Speaker 1: I mean, you had companies that were hedging their bets,
Speaker 1: but it was definitely seen as a potential future. Another
Speaker 1: big one that was being debated at the time was
Speaker 1: three D TV which ultimately went nowhere that that that
Speaker 1: branch of the timeline ended in a dead end. Then
Speaker 1: we entered into the era of widgets. Widgets. You know,
Speaker 1: these days we would just call them apps, but at
Speaker 1: the time we called them widgets. And some widgets were
Speaker 1: very very simple, like it might just give you a
Speaker 1: quick weather report to you know, highlight and choose that widget,
Speaker 1: or maybe a stock market read out or a list
Speaker 1: of headlines. Some ended up getting more complicated, like you
Speaker 1: could have a widget that would allow users to launch
Speaker 1: a service like Netflix or YouTube. These days, you're likely
Speaker 1: to find smart TVs that have built in interfaces for
Speaker 1: numerous streaming services, although with more arriving all the time, uh,
Speaker 1: you're not guaranteed to have access to all of them
Speaker 1: natively through the television and there were some drawbacks right so.
Speaker 1: A big one was that these televisions frequently need ongoing
Speaker 1: support from the manufacturers to ensure that those features remain usable.
Speaker 1: This gets to that issue where new streaming services launch,
Speaker 1: and unless the company that makes your smart TV is
Speaker 1: able to patch out and update where they're able to
Speaker 1: include an app that lets you access this new streaming service,
Speaker 1: you might find that you can't do it unless you
Speaker 1: have some additional piece of hardware connected to your TV.
Speaker 1: And just as we saw with the rapid evolution of
Speaker 1: the web, which ultimately left web TV in the lurch,
Speaker 1: we see streaming services change as well, and the behind
Speaker 1: the scenes changes of these streaming services might not be
Speaker 1: immediately noticeable to the average person, right like the changes
Speaker 1: could be done in codex and transmission and compression and
Speaker 1: decompress and all these kind of things might be changing
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, and ideally as a user, you don't
Speaker 1: even know about it. You don't need to know about it.
Speaker 1: The technology handles it. But in some cases these changes
Speaker 1: can make a service incompatible with older hardware, Like there
Speaker 1: can come a point where the service has requirements that
Speaker 1: the older hardware simply is unable to meet. Now, if
Speaker 1: you are lucky, your hardware will be resilient enough so
Speaker 1: that your TV's manufacturer can hatch it repeatedly send up
Speaker 1: out updates to the equipment so that way you can
Speaker 1: continue to access the services and it keeps your television relevant.
Speaker 1: But in some cases that's just not a possibility, or
Speaker 1: the company just chooses not to support it anymore, and
Speaker 1: that means over time, those TVs lose functionality, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you might have an icon that says you can connect
Speaker 1: to YouTube, but it doesn't work because YouTube itself has
Speaker 1: changed and evolved and is no longer compatible with the
Speaker 1: old hardware of your TV, and so now it's just
Speaker 1: a widget that doesn't do anything except take up space
Speaker 1: on your screen. And this was a problem, particularly for
Speaker 1: the first couple of generations of smart TVs, where because
Speaker 1: of changes that were not in the control of the manufacturers,
Speaker 1: the functions would lose relevance pretty quickly. So, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a problem if you don't want to have to replace
Speaker 1: your television every couple of years. Right. You know, the
Speaker 1: price of TVs has fallen dramatically over time, but you
Speaker 1: probably still don't want to have to trade out your
Speaker 1: television over and over. So one big downside of smart
Speaker 1: TV technology is there's no guarantee that all the features
Speaker 1: on the TV, the stuff that is meant to sell
Speaker 1: that television, there's no guarantee that those will remain relevant
Speaker 1: for the lifetime of your TV, or at least the
Speaker 1: amount of time you expect to own and use that TV. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know it should continue to serve as an actual television, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like all functionality is going to go out.
Speaker 1: In most cases, I assume would be a terrible idea
Speaker 1: to have a hardware that would completely shut down the
Speaker 1: television entirely once it got irrelevant. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you want to do all the other stuff, you'd be stuck.
Speaker 1: You would have to find a set top box solution
Speaker 1: to give you more functionality. But you have to remember
Speaker 1: set top boxes have the same kind of limitations that
Speaker 1: smart TVs do. That services can evolve beyond the capability
Speaker 1: of the hardware to present those services. So that's one
Speaker 1: big issue is just obsolescence. These devices can go obsolete
Speaker 1: faster than you would prefer. Because if you're buying a TV,
Speaker 1: chances are you plan on using that TV for a while.
Speaker 1: I don't know about all of you, but like the
Speaker 1: television I have in my living room, I've owned that
Speaker 1: for I don't know, maybe a decade at this point
Speaker 1: somewhere along there, and it works fine. It's not a
Speaker 1: four case set either. It's I have thought about upgrading
Speaker 1: to a four K, but I haven't, and it's fine,
Speaker 1: especially since I don't watch much television at all. There's
Speaker 1: no reason for me to upgrade. Well, you don't want
Speaker 1: to have basic feature servior television become defunct and require
Speaker 1: you to upgrade every couple of years. That would be
Speaker 1: very frustrating. Another big issue, and a growing issue with
Speaker 1: modern televisions is privacy. So in June of this year,
Speaker 1: this year being twenty two for any of y'all listening
Speaker 1: from the future, Roku and Walmart announced a new partnership
Speaker 1: and the plan is for Walmart to enable viewers the chance,
Speaker 1: the opportunity, if you will, to purchase featured products directly
Speaker 1: through their Roku streaming service. So, in other words, you
Speaker 1: can imagine a situation where maybe you're watching a particular
Speaker 1: show and there's some product that's prominently featured on the show.
Speaker 1: You know, I see this all the time with laptops,
Speaker 1: Like if you watch certain movies, you can tell what
Speaker 1: year they were made based upon the incredibly prominent logos
Speaker 1: that are on display from all the different laptops that
Speaker 1: are open on different tables and stuff. Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: there's a chance that Walmart can leverage that and then
Speaker 1: shoot you an AD to give you the chance to
Speaker 1: buy the product you've just seen on screen through Walmart,
Speaker 1: just by pressing a button on your Roku remote more
Speaker 1: than that, because smart TVs are essentially data gathering machines.
Speaker 1: Remember old TVs, it was output only, like no one
Speaker 1: knew what it was you were watching. They didn't know,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were paying attention to something that
Speaker 1: had a lot of product placement in it. But with
Speaker 1: smart TVs that data goes both ways, and while you're
Speaker 1: watching that can all be sent back to the streaming
Speaker 1: service provider or the manufacturer, whatever it may be. That
Speaker 1: means data is being gathered as you watch different programs
Speaker 1: and when you watch, and how much you watch, all
Speaker 1: of those kind of things. Well, that would mean that
Speaker 1: Walmart could actually start to target ads to you based
Speaker 1: upon your behavior. Walmart and Roku can analyze what you
Speaker 1: do and come up with the most ideal way to
Speaker 1: present ads to you that are most likely to get
Speaker 1: a positive response from you. So, in other words, your
Speaker 1: TV watches you. You're not watching the TV as much
Speaker 1: as the TV is watching you as measuring your behaviors
Speaker 1: in an effort to sell you more stuff and to
Speaker 1: do it more effectively. And that it's possible that the
Speaker 1: ads you encounter as you navigate through the user experience
Speaker 1: are going to be based off that analysis of your behavior.
Speaker 1: So you could see this extending beyond this kind of
Speaker 1: implementation that I'm describing. Imagine that you have streaming services
Speaker 1: that are switching to add supported tears of service, presumably
Speaker 1: at a lower cost for subscribers, so that people who
Speaker 1: don't want to pay full price to subscribe to whatever
Speaker 1: can pay us a lower fee for ads supported access. Well,
Speaker 1: you can imagine those streaming services paying attention to what
Speaker 1: people are watching and how they watch it, and then
Speaker 1: presenting ads that are customized based upon that user behavior.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to imagine you have five different households
Speaker 1: sitting down to watch the exact same program on the
Speaker 1: exact same streaming services, but they all get different ads
Speaker 1: based upon the behaviors within that individual household. In order
Speaker 1: for that to work, that means your television is constantly
Speaker 1: paying attention to what you're doing on the TV, just
Speaker 1: as we've seen with computers and smartphones and other smart devices.
Speaker 1: So in a way, this is nothing new. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: this new specter of surveillance is upon us. We've been
Speaker 1: under that for a long time, but now we've got
Speaker 1: another a piece of technology that is participating in that
Speaker 1: surveillance in an effort to make money off of your information,
Speaker 1: either by using your information to target ads to you
Speaker 1: more effectively, or maybe even to sell your information to
Speaker 1: some other third party, depending upon the user agreement for
Speaker 1: that particular streaming service in that particular hardware. There are
Speaker 1: definitely privacy concerns with that kind of approach, but we're
Speaker 1: likely to see several instances in which people's privacy tends
Speaker 1: to be compromised before we start to see corrections to
Speaker 1: prevent similar issues in the future, just because that's typically
Speaker 1: how it works fun times, and it's not likely to change.
Speaker 1: If anything, I expect we're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: more integration of programming matched with user behavior that is
Speaker 1: fueled by things like the smart television technology. According to
Speaker 1: Hub Entertainment Research, fifty seven percent of all televisions are
Speaker 1: now smart sets, so that means they now effectively they
Speaker 1: out and borthy non smart or dumb TVs. The television
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the one that I have upstairs, is a
Speaker 1: dumb TV. It's not a smart TV. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: any native ABS in it. I can't access anything unless
Speaker 1: I have another piece of hardware connected to the TV,
Speaker 1: like my Xbox. I can do it through there, but
Speaker 1: the TV itself is a dumb TV. It is now
Speaker 1: in the minority of televisions that are out there in
Speaker 1: the United States of households with a television have a
Speaker 1: smart TV. That trend is also playing a part in
Speaker 1: the death of cable and satellite TV, as people access
Speaker 1: more streaming content and less traditional cable and satellite content,
Speaker 1: which leads people to say, why do I need a
Speaker 1: cable TV subscription? I never watch cable TV, so I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'm going to come back to that if I
Speaker 1: do a full episode about the decline of cable and
Speaker 1: satellite TV, or when I do an episode, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure I will. I just don't know when I will
Speaker 1: do it yet. But yeah, that's kind of how smart
Speaker 1: TVs came into being, and it's I'm actually surprised that
Speaker 1: we haven't seen more leveraging of smart TVs in order
Speaker 1: to gather more data and to advertise more directly to
Speaker 1: two users. There have been instances of that before this
Speaker 1: Roku Walmart deal, but generally speaking, it's been kind of
Speaker 1: on the d L. It hasn't been that big of
Speaker 1: a trend. Uh not as big as I would have
Speaker 1: expected it to be, but it seems like that is
Speaker 1: changing now, and I think maybe the reason for that
Speaker 1: is that there is this noticeable shift away from the
Speaker 1: traditional media sources for television, that being like cable and
Speaker 1: satellite and over the air, toward the online streaming services,
Speaker 1: and therefore the opportunities to gather that information and to
Speaker 1: make use of it have increased. So maybe that's why
Speaker 1: we're starting to see it now. If you have topics
Speaker 1: you would like me to cover in future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, reach out to me and let me know
Speaker 1: what those are. One way to do that is to
Speaker 1: download the I Heart Radio app, navigate over to the
Speaker 1: text stuff page, and use the little microphone icon to
Speaker 1: leave a voice message. It can be up to thirty
Speaker 1: seconds in lengths. The other way is to reach out
Speaker 1: on Twitter to handle for the show is tech stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.