May 31, 2010
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment
Steve Jobs’ “magical and revolutionary product”, the iPad, has
been launched in the UK and now everyone can have … well, what exactly? So much
technology, so little time to play, and with it comes the danger that such
high-tech products and services will promise more than they can deliver unless
they have access to a fast connection.
Without reliable broadband and high-speed data infrastructure in place nationally, will Apple, Google and other manufacturers of multi-function devices choose to launch their products elsewhere, or are they simply trying to cram too much into a single package? Not so many years ago, consumer electronics companies were convinced that CE products should be optimised for a single purpose.
Although the radiogram enjoyed a brief popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, home entertainment equipment in the 20th Century tended to do just one thing, and buyers of sound and television systems didn’t need more than a couple of lines to understand what they were getting. CD? Plays great-sounding music from a plastic disc. VHS? Records and plays back what’s on TV. Walkman? Listen to your compact cassettes while you walk. Mobile phone? Call home from the train. Life was simple then.
The announcement of Google TV earlier in the month highlighted just how far we have come from the days when anyone could buy a new 22-inch TV, take it home, plug it in and be watching “Coronation Street” by 7:30. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt said when he unveiled the concept: “It’s much harder to marry a 50-year old technology to new technology than those of us from the new technology era thought.”
The involvement of Best Buy as a partner in the launch programme for Google TV underlines the need to explain the connected world to the public, now that installation requires much more than a power socket and an aerial. Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn says, referring to his uniformed teams of experts, “We have 180,000 blue shirts fired up about this new category and 20,000 geeks in case it doesn’t work perfectly.” The Sony hardware will undoubtedly perform flawlessly; it’s what surrounds it that will keep the geeks busy.
Despite this, Dunn is an enthusiastic advocate of the idea. “When you actually see what it can do and you experience it, it’s compelling. It’s not just a new aisle. We think of Google TV as an entirely new category,” he says, “When properly explained and properly demonstrated, it’s going to solve real challenges that (customers) face today.” With that, he turned to Sony CEO Howard Stringer and told him “In fact I need one – right now!”
Apple iPad enthusiasts made a similar judgement on Friday as the product was launched in the UK. Supplies were limited, with the result that some Apple stores reportedly sold out by lunchtime, although the manufacturing capacity of 1 million iPads a month should ensure that the channel will soon be re-supplied. Analysts forecast iPad sales of between 4 million and 7 million units this year but this could be under threat if, as some reports noted on launch day, mobile operators struggle to meet demand as owners try to sign-up for a high-speed connection online.
Demands on the network are likely to increase, since Apple is not alone in launching a touch-screen tablet; Dell, Sony, Archos and HP are among companies rumoured to be introducing their interpretation later this year. Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci (pictured) was snapped in China this week demonstrating a prototype 7-inch tablet device said to be based on the Android operating system, which has already overtaken the iPhone in some markets, including the US. The link between this apparent leak and the announcement of Google TV (which also relies on Android) can hardly be accidental.
Tablets are not the only technology to take their toll on broadband networks. Blu-ray players are at their best when connected and laptops and set-top boxes require WiFi, Bluetooth and cables to deliver the functionality they promise. Then there is the TV itself, now touting widgets and interactive programme guides that depend on the high-speed internet. No longer can a single high-power transmitter mast cover millions of viewers in a metropolitan area, every connected home must have its own access.
Once retailers have completed customer education and persuaded them to buy next generation entertainment hardware, will network operators such as BT OpenReach, Orange and O2 be able to keep their part of the bargain? If the bandwidth isn’t available when it is needed, these sophisticated electronic products will fail to deliver their promise, no matter how well they performed in-store. If more than a few disappointed customers return the hardware, complaining of jerky video, long delays and poor connectivity, digital content delivery could scupper before it is launched.
The impact of low bandwidth could also affect the plans of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE). This coalition of 48 companies is working to ensure common standards for multimedia entertainment, and numbers the major studios and retailers such as Best Buy and Tesco among its members, although Disney and Apple are conspicuously absent.
The proposals centre on the concept of a digital rights locker, accessible by up to five users and across a dozen or so devices, which would allow members of an average family unit to access and share entertainment content. If DECE plans are to succeed, reliable high-speed broadband networks will be required to allow shopping baskets to be filled and ensure consistent delivery of digital entertainment.
Members of this coalition have a direct investment in the quality of service throughout the supply chain from content owner through entertainment retailer to the home. Unless reliable bandwidth is assured by telecom companies and cable operators, there will be increasing pressure to bypass ISPs and follow Virgin and Sky in owning and operating the majority of the network infrastructure.
Many of today’s consumer electronics devices, including smartphones and multimedia tablets, rely on fast broadband, Wi-Fi and high-speed mobile networks. Their performance is compromised by broadband connections that deliver a fraction of advertised “headline speed” that decreases with each new sign-up for the service although, in defence of BT OpenReach and 3G network operators, the costs associated with delivering data can easily exceed potential revenues, particularly in rural areas. Nevertheless, connected devices need an advanced infrastructure around them if they are to work as intended.
As Britain continues to slide down the international league table of broadband speeds, there is a risk that future product launches will pass us by. Packaged media will probably continue to fade and if we are to look to the cloud for home entertainment in the future, we have to be able to access the latest technology at the moment it becomes a mass-market product.
To quote Howard Stringer at the Google TV presentation, “It really is a very big deal – I can’t stress that enough.”
Without reliable broadband and high-speed data infrastructure in place nationally, will Apple, Google and other manufacturers of multi-function devices choose to launch their products elsewhere, or are they simply trying to cram too much into a single package? Not so many years ago, consumer electronics companies were convinced that CE products should be optimised for a single purpose.
Although the radiogram enjoyed a brief popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, home entertainment equipment in the 20th Century tended to do just one thing, and buyers of sound and television systems didn’t need more than a couple of lines to understand what they were getting. CD? Plays great-sounding music from a plastic disc. VHS? Records and plays back what’s on TV. Walkman? Listen to your compact cassettes while you walk. Mobile phone? Call home from the train. Life was simple then.
The announcement of Google TV earlier in the month highlighted just how far we have come from the days when anyone could buy a new 22-inch TV, take it home, plug it in and be watching “Coronation Street” by 7:30. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt said when he unveiled the concept: “It’s much harder to marry a 50-year old technology to new technology than those of us from the new technology era thought.”
The involvement of Best Buy as a partner in the launch programme for Google TV underlines the need to explain the connected world to the public, now that installation requires much more than a power socket and an aerial. Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn says, referring to his uniformed teams of experts, “We have 180,000 blue shirts fired up about this new category and 20,000 geeks in case it doesn’t work perfectly.” The Sony hardware will undoubtedly perform flawlessly; it’s what surrounds it that will keep the geeks busy.
Despite this, Dunn is an enthusiastic advocate of the idea. “When you actually see what it can do and you experience it, it’s compelling. It’s not just a new aisle. We think of Google TV as an entirely new category,” he says, “When properly explained and properly demonstrated, it’s going to solve real challenges that (customers) face today.” With that, he turned to Sony CEO Howard Stringer and told him “In fact I need one – right now!”
Apple iPad enthusiasts made a similar judgement on Friday as the product was launched in the UK. Supplies were limited, with the result that some Apple stores reportedly sold out by lunchtime, although the manufacturing capacity of 1 million iPads a month should ensure that the channel will soon be re-supplied. Analysts forecast iPad sales of between 4 million and 7 million units this year but this could be under threat if, as some reports noted on launch day, mobile operators struggle to meet demand as owners try to sign-up for a high-speed connection online.
Demands on the network are likely to increase, since Apple is not alone in launching a touch-screen tablet; Dell, Sony, Archos and HP are among companies rumoured to be introducing their interpretation later this year. Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci (pictured) was snapped in China this week demonstrating a prototype 7-inch tablet device said to be based on the Android operating system, which has already overtaken the iPhone in some markets, including the US. The link between this apparent leak and the announcement of Google TV (which also relies on Android) can hardly be accidental.
Tablets are not the only technology to take their toll on broadband networks. Blu-ray players are at their best when connected and laptops and set-top boxes require WiFi, Bluetooth and cables to deliver the functionality they promise. Then there is the TV itself, now touting widgets and interactive programme guides that depend on the high-speed internet. No longer can a single high-power transmitter mast cover millions of viewers in a metropolitan area, every connected home must have its own access.
Once retailers have completed customer education and persuaded them to buy next generation entertainment hardware, will network operators such as BT OpenReach, Orange and O2 be able to keep their part of the bargain? If the bandwidth isn’t available when it is needed, these sophisticated electronic products will fail to deliver their promise, no matter how well they performed in-store. If more than a few disappointed customers return the hardware, complaining of jerky video, long delays and poor connectivity, digital content delivery could scupper before it is launched.
The impact of low bandwidth could also affect the plans of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE). This coalition of 48 companies is working to ensure common standards for multimedia entertainment, and numbers the major studios and retailers such as Best Buy and Tesco among its members, although Disney and Apple are conspicuously absent.
The proposals centre on the concept of a digital rights locker, accessible by up to five users and across a dozen or so devices, which would allow members of an average family unit to access and share entertainment content. If DECE plans are to succeed, reliable high-speed broadband networks will be required to allow shopping baskets to be filled and ensure consistent delivery of digital entertainment.
Members of this coalition have a direct investment in the quality of service throughout the supply chain from content owner through entertainment retailer to the home. Unless reliable bandwidth is assured by telecom companies and cable operators, there will be increasing pressure to bypass ISPs and follow Virgin and Sky in owning and operating the majority of the network infrastructure.
Many of today’s consumer electronics devices, including smartphones and multimedia tablets, rely on fast broadband, Wi-Fi and high-speed mobile networks. Their performance is compromised by broadband connections that deliver a fraction of advertised “headline speed” that decreases with each new sign-up for the service although, in defence of BT OpenReach and 3G network operators, the costs associated with delivering data can easily exceed potential revenues, particularly in rural areas. Nevertheless, connected devices need an advanced infrastructure around them if they are to work as intended.
As Britain continues to slide down the international league table of broadband speeds, there is a risk that future product launches will pass us by. Packaged media will probably continue to fade and if we are to look to the cloud for home entertainment in the future, we have to be able to access the latest technology at the moment it becomes a mass-market product.
To quote Howard Stringer at the Google TV presentation, “It really is a very big deal – I can’t stress that enough.”
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