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We enter 2010 with the prospect of rising Blu-ray sales and the
launch of 3D to spice up the New Year, so it is worth reflecting on the changes
in home entertainment that imminent advances in consumer electronics will
bring.
It’s not just the onward march of broadband that will shape the
year ahead; there has been a fundamental change in the black and silver boxes
that once lined the shelves of Dixons. What we know and understand about
audio-visual hardware is about to alter significantly as the legacy of one box
per task finally gives way to multi-function devices.
The announcement week that Tesco has joined the cross-industry
Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) shows that Tesco Category
Director for Entertainment Rob Salter has grasped what’s ahead. The membership
of DECE includes studios, distributors, retailers and other parties interested
in ensuring that digital deliveries of entertainment content will work any
time, any place and anywhere in what has inevitably been called the “Martini
moment”.
Consumers have tired of buying the same title over and again for
each new format, and DECE members – currently numbering 21 – have united to set
a common standard for digital distribution. Disney, which at one time was
thought to be going it alone with its Keychest digital rights management (DRM)
initiative, has stressed that its proposals are completely compatible with
those of DECE. Format wars have no place in the coming decade, so full marks to
Tesco for encouraging other retailers to get on board.
Inevitably 3D captured most of the headlines at the Consumer
Electronics Show 2010, which opened in Las Vegas, but the impact of
stereoscopic content on packaged media sales is likely to be insignificant
until 2011 and beyond. The fact that we now have an agreed Blu-ray 3D standard
is welcome news but the most important announcements to come from the show are
about hardware: after many years in which convergence was little more than a
buzzword, technology has finally converged.
The audio-visual landscape was reassuringly simple for most of
this century with little change from the final decade of the 20th. The
television set dominated the living room, a dumb box that received a regular
supply of content from broadcast programmes and packaged media. Into that was
plugged a recorder, a player and a set-top box for watching subscription
programmes from satellite TV. Broadband added a connected computer to the mix,
usually in a different room and always restricted to web browsing and low-res
streaming video.
It was easy to label the function of each element in the chain –
the TV, the DVD player, the PVR and the Sky Box – without having to look under
the hood and understand what was inside. Even though the public eagerly
accepted the flat screen, for most of the 13 years since it was first shown at
CES 1997, it remained a dumb TV set.
In the same way as “go-faster stripes” were a must-have motoring
accessory that concealed the fact that your budget hot-hatch was little
different from a standard saloon, external appearance has been the biggest
differentiator for entertainment hardware for many years. Chrome, stainless
steel and polished wood defined the product’s place in the market; designer
flat screens costing thousands sometimes housed the same small number of
standard components to be found in much cheaper devices.
After several false starts, computing, communication and
entertainment are now to be found in a single box together with a wide screen
and a wireless connection to the world outside. It began with the Apple iPhone,
which combines all of the above along with GPS, in what we once referred to as
a mobile phone. The Nexus One from Google adds a camera with more megapixels
and an organic LED (OLED) screen to the mix to compete with the many other
devices with similar innards launched at CES.
At the Sony presentation on the eve of the show, CEO Howard
Stringer announced that later this year any PlayStation 3 will be able to play
Blu-ray 3D content through a simple upgrade. What was once a games console is
now positioned at the heart of entertainment in the home, streaming content
from the PlayStation Network (PSN) and delivering full HD 1080p to the TV.
The TV set, too, is no longer the single-function box it once was.
Every major CE manufacturer at CES including Samsung, LG, Toshiba and Sony, is
offering internet-connected TVs that link directly to catch-up services such as
iPlayer and Hulu, stream Video On Demand and support web browsing. They are
3D-ready as well, as viewers of BSkyB will discover when the Sky 3D service
launches later this year.
Another indication that the TV is no longer “just a TV” comes from
LG, Panasonic and internet phone company Skype. What was once a free phone
service on your computer has become a “1080p video communication centre”,
bringing life-sized images to the living room TV. Of course, if you own the
152-inch 3D HDTV screen from Panasonic that was announced at the show, the
prospect of conversations with larger-than-life relatives may drive you back to
your desktop PC.
Portable phone handsets now include advanced GPS features that are
the equal of dedicated satnav units, which have to be removed from the car
every time you park. What does the future hold for companies like TomTom when
an iPhone or a Nexus One can offer as much in navigation and a lot more
besides?
Since most of us spend a lot of time on the road, it is no
surprise that Sony, Ford and Microsoft are planning to include the car in the
converged environment. They came together for the keynote address at CES 2010
to present their view of the automobile of the near future.
Get ready for cars with interactive dashboards, full satellite
navigation, in-built web browser and content downloading direct to the in-car
entertainment system. Thankfully, the driver’s screen is disabled except when
parked, so conversations with relatives on Skype are restricted to sound only.
Ford claims that it is the first car company to have the equivalent of the
Apple App store onboard, allowing drivers to tailor their vehicles to their
needs.
Perhaps now is the time to take off those go-faster stripes and
acknowledge that the future has arrived.
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