What if it is all vapor? That may be the disturbing reality of the much-ballyhooed, but little delivered, hybrid TV of tomorrow.
This incredible machine, say proponents, will put a networked device in a prime place in the living room, where family members will happily do everything from checking Twitter feeds to writing emails, all while watching Family Guy on the 42-inch flat-screen HD television.
Isn’t it pretty to think of?
Just one problem: It isn’t real.
“I call it Hype TV, not Hybrid TV,” laughs Jim Forbes, a senior advisor with technology consulting firm the Ibex Group. “This really is vaporware.”
For several years now, manufacturers from Samsung Corp. to Vizio Inc. and Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) have shouted about their efforts to put Internet functionality into televisions, and much of the press has dutifully reported this trend.
But it increasingly looks like a non-starter.
“I am not convinced the merging of the television with the Internet is ready for prime time, or even necessary,” says Michael Kaufman, editor of Website TechnoGorilla.com.
Ask experts and the naysaying mounts. “The device in your living room will not provide a true Internet experience. The terminology is misleading,” says Michael Inouye, industry analyst, digital home, at ABI Research . “I do not see Windows 7 running on these devices.”
Also, today's televisions simply are too dumb for the Internet. “They do not have the processing power to run a browser,” says Parag Sheth, VP of marketing at Hillcrest Labs , a developer of consumer electronics products. At most, he says, manufacturers are building widgets that are one-trick ponies -- offering, say, streaming of a Netflix video.
Even when televisions get smart enough to offer a full Internet experience, will we want it? “Most consumers are not thinking about their TV becoming a computer,” says Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio , an outsourced software development firm.
Hsu says that, maybe, the TV will emerge as one of our Internet-ready tools, “but five years from now most of us will have ready access to three to five Internet-capable screens” -- a mobile phone, maybe a tablet computer, maybe a laptop, and probably the TV, too. So big deal: Internet access will be ubiquitous.
Even the putative leaders in developing Internet television acknowledge that the future is a lot more complicated: “We are big believers in a three-screen future -- cellphone, computer, television,” says Sean Besser, vice president of business development at Rovi Corp. , a digital entertainment company.
Over at Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT), Jonathan Ruff, senior director of technology marketing, says his company is committed to the ”4 Anys” strategy: any device, anywhere, any content, any time. And this multiplicity of screens seems to be emerging as the hedged bet of smart money.
But one device we may not want the Internet on at all is that big-screen TV in the living room, notes ABI’s Inouye: “The computer, despite the social networking/twittering, etc. that occurs on this device, is still largely a personal experience. In other words, when I read articles online, email, or surf the Web it’s usually just me looking at the screen. The TV is far more social (e.g., big screen in the living room), so there is also the belief that consumers won’t want others in the household to see what they are doing on the Internet, to read their emails, etc.,” wrote Inouye in an email.
Is this RIP for hybrid TVs? Probably not. Probably the day will come when just about every device in every household has some kind of Internet functionality. When? Pick a number from 3 to 10. Your guess probably is every bit as good as anybody else’s. But the one certainly is that 2010 will not be the year of the Hybrid TV, and neither will 2011.
— Robert McGarvey is a widely published author and expert on social media.
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