History of Smart TV? Why has it not taken off?

Smart TV has been around for a while, the idea of it has been talked about by many media experts for years. The real question therefore is why hasnt it taken off? In this blog I am going to look into a brief bit of history, concentrating on a PopSi article from the 90s and then come to a conclusion about why it has taken so long to come to the consumer market.

November 1990's issue of Popular Science has an article relating to 'smart TV' (see fig. 1 ) it talks about how complicated TV has become, the huge choice that is made available via cable and the possibility of TV's becoming smart. The article talks about how TV's will learn the users tastes, recommending listings and 'do some of the watching for you' (Antonoff p62). Another area it discusses is the devleopment of user friendly TV guides that are less like 'an office spread sheet' (Antonoff p62). The most relevent topic of discussion is the convergence of TV & Computing, it talks about the develpment of microprossors in TV's and talks about the possibility of programme management.


Fig. 1

Conclusions

Looking into the history of Smart TV is very interesting, it is a technology that has been talked about for nearly 25 years. Some of the things that have been discussed in the articles are common in TVs today; a good example is idea that TV would 'learn' our preferences and recommend programs. This is something which modern TVs do, it is interesting to think how accurate some of the predictions where. Having said this the convergence of TV and computer technologies hasn't really become available to in the popular consumer market; it is perhaps because of a lack of demand? as consumers have we cried out for computers to converge as one with our TV? Until recently we didn't have the technologies available to be useful in convergence with TV. On Demand Services have only become available in the past 6 years BBCi player (2007) and Channel 4's 4OD (2006). You have to ask weather prior to some of these technologies, was TV ready to converge with computer technologies? What would be the point in having a Smart TV prior to On-Demand TV, stable mobile apps and the explosion of social networking? Everything that holds Smart TV together as an attractive product has come about in recent times. Perhaps this is the reason that it has only just started to take off. Yes the idea has been there for a long time but there wasn't really a platform for it to grow and develop until now.



Sources of images


http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=tgEAAAAAMBAJ&pg=62&query=stay+tuned+for+smart+TV - Popular Science article front cover and inside article (Nov 1990)