SmartTV’s Should Be About More Than Just Running Apps

So with the coverage at CES (which I’m purposely trying to ignore), there’s talks of SmartTV’s and all this jazz. …Wait, what is a SmartTV? Well it’s pretty stupid, a SmartTV is any TV that can run apps. …That’s it.

Some of you might be thinking that’s a pretty amazing thing, compared to what TVs can do now. But it’s really not. For instance, both of my TVs in my house have been “SmartTVs”, I happen to have Roku and all my TV viewing goes through it. Roku has apps (which it calls “channels”). And although Roku’s amazing, it’s not amazing for the reasons PR people think SmartTVs are amazing.

SmartTVs… true SmartTVs, need to be able to run more than just apps. If SmartTVs run their functionality through *modal* computing (such as smartphones), that doesn’t benefit people much. Right now, with Roku, all that apps are used for is to access different content providers (hence why Roku calls them “channels”). Your either on Hulu Plus searching or watching content or your on Netflix or Pandora.

If SmartTV’s start trying to become truly smart and add, say, functionality to access a social network just for sharing and viewing what content your friends are watching or say an app that allows you to search IMDB.com, it can’t be done via the current modal model. If I’m watching a TV show, why would I want to leave the TV show (even if the video remains at the bottom of the screen) to launch an app (which currently takes a longtime to switch) just to do one of these functions??

See, that’s what these manufacturers don’t get. A SmartTV shouldn’t just be throwing something like Google TV into your product to allow you to do what a $100 Roku or AppleTV can do. We don’t want to have to leave the video of what we’re watching to interact with an interface to do “smart” functionality. A new style of user interface should be created that extends experience of what we’re watching, some kinda’ plug-in system.

For instance, picture if you could install a plug-in that allows you to change the video of what your watching, whereas a few clicks of the remote allows the video to turn black and white and look grainy (as if it were an old western) or to take a screenshot of the image (to later email to someone) or a transparent scrolling-ticker over the video that displays whatever you want, such as new emails, social network feeds or even subtitles or facts about what your watching.

See how this functionality is clearly lost on these manufacturers?? One of the big problems right now is that there’s no API to allow developers from knowing what content is being watched. Picture a plug-in that could allow pop-up lyrics to appear whenever a song is being sung in shows like Glee (ugg) or American Idol. There ain’t shit developers can do currently as there’s no “plug-in” system that I described, and there’s also no way of knowing what content is being played.

Really, “SmartTV” is just marketing bull shit. The only thing close enough to SmartTVs are devices such as Roku, and what makes these devices smart is the fact you only have to spend $50 to $100 dollars and not spend thousands of dollars. JbB