What The Hell Is Google TV?

By Nigel Walley – Augst 2010

So Google and Sony have jointly announced the launch of Google TV – a range of set top boxes running a version of Google’s Android software. Google have also announced a range of other box launches in the US before Xmas.  You may have seen the press notices about this, and we would like to offer an explanation and opinion on its importance.

First thing is to understand the background landscape.  Broadly, there are three types of competitor in the TV market at the moment: the pay operators (like Sky and Virgin) who make their own boxes and software; the set top box manufacturers who are making Freeview and Freesat boxes with all sorts of fun stuff added over-the- top of broadcast  (sometimes called the ‘over the top’  or OTT  boxes); and the device manufacturers, like Sony,  who are desperately trying to grab ownership of the TV experience in the home with a device centric strategy.  Google TV has relevance for both the OTT and device manufacturers.

At the moment, the OTT phenomenon is being driven by some box manufacturers (like Humax and NetGem) and by service providers like Fetch (who  use a NetGem box).  None of them has a great heritage in making great software or interfaces, so Google TV represents a potential new bit of software to use in the next generation of their boxes.  This must be attractive given that is it free to use, and is supported by the weight of Google’s R&D team.   The fact that it gives Google software a route onto TV is important, but secondary.  The only problem, in the UK of course, is that this puts Google TV in direct competition with the other group developing a free-to-use bit of set top box software – Canvas.    Google vs the BBC’s Canvas would be a great head to head bit of competition were it not for the fact that they are both so desperately late to market.

For the device manufacturers like Sony, on the other hand, Google TV could offer them a way out of a problem of their own making.  The device manufacturers are connecting all their devices to the web and trying to create interfaces and on-demand packages that are available without subscription.  However, right now their offerings are very clunky and have no intelligence because the device manufacturers have no experience of putting together ‘services’. The current crop of connected devices (screens and BluRay players) are a shambles of incompatible consumer interfaces and remote controls.   The way to view Google TV’s deals with companies like Sony, therefore,  is not necessarily as a ‘web-on-TV’ initiative, but as a Sony initiative to make their connected TV devices more intelligent.

But Google may not even be able to mop up all the device manufacturers.  Samsung have just announced a deal to work with Tivo to launch DTT PVRs.

However, the key element to recognize with Google TV is that this is another ‘future TV’  initiative which fails to integrate broadcast into the emerging consumer experience. Yes, it will supercharge the search function on any TV system using it.  It will add functionality to EPGs (eg search) and the on-demand environment but will do very little for the core experience that most people have of TV – watching a live channel.   The consumer  outcome on one of these emerging ‘device-led’ systems is very fragmented – and will continue to be, even with Google’s input.   On these devices, it is impossible to move seamlessly from a broadcast show into the related catch-up shows (because there is no connection between broadcast metadata and on-demand data) or even onto the EPG and back.   This is what the BBC Vision Multi-Platform team call ‘flowing audiences’ between content.  It is a compelling vision of how broadcast, catch-up and red button content can be fused into a cohesive whole in this new IPTV fuelled TV world.   However these new device based systems, which will use Google, view each content type as separate and distinct, requiring the consumer to launch a different app each time they want to move from one to another.  It is not clear that they even recognise the idea of interactive content within broadcast.   It is a PC experience writ large, not a TV experience.  It is most certainly not consistent with the type of TV future that the interactive teams in the UK have been trying to achieve over the last few years.

This has to be viewed in the wider context of a battle for the soul of TV between technology and broadcasters.    There are groups of technology people around the world who are working on a vision of TV that largely ignores the primary role of broadcast.  They tend to be people from an internet engineering background who have been put in charge of TV projects.   These people are creating a vision of an ‘on-demand’ and ‘device’ centric TV experience, which is an outcome based on thier personal preferences not research into the mass audience.

In this world, the programme brand takes over from the channel brand as the primary organizing device, and the web as the primary distribution context.  A seemingly un-connected announcement this week from the BBC, about the iPlayer now connecting with Facebook, makes this point.  The BBC on-demand team have not yet successfully connected their catch up TV with Sky, Virgin or BT Vision, (through which 15M homes watch their broadcast channels) but FM&T have achieved a ‘breakthrough’ with a social media site.  These people are building what they personally want, and are not creating a TV future that has relevance to the mass of the current TV audience.  (The astonishing thing is that senior TV management in broadcasters like the BBC, are letting them do it).

In the UK, where innovation has historically been led by the platforms,  we have an opportunity to create a completely different approach, in direct competition to the Google TV / Sony vision of the future.  This is dependent on the TV platforms (Sky, Virgin and the Canvas group of companies) launching the next generation systems in which broadcast is central to the experience.    This experience should recognizes that the channel is the primary navigational device that consumers understand, and would include features that lock broadcast into the future, such as ‘next generation red button’,   ‘jump to VOD from broadcast‘, and  ‘play-over from the EPG’ in creating  a new interactive consumer experience.  In this light, Project Canvas has an opportunity be the pre-eminent example of a broadcast centric platform – designed to show what the future looks like from a channel controller’s point of view.  But they need to deliver against this promise, not get sucked into a ‘me-too’ apps-centric strategy like Sony, or Samsung.

We have to ask is could Google TV be good for UK broadcasters?  The answer is probably not, but in the same way that Hulu and Joost weren’t good for broadcasters – and they were seen off.   So it will be possible to minimize the impact of even Google in this world, if the broadcasters act in a co-ordinated way.  However, this is where it gets tricky.

Five have broken ranks already,  launching a Demand Five app on Sony TV,  and Channel 4 have broken ranks with the YouTube deal.  So, we are fast approaching a situation where UK broadcasters are unable to act in concert to achieve a broadcast friendly outcome.    Decipher believe that broadcast channels in the UK need to decide which camp they want to play in, because it will be impossible to support both platforms and devices in a single country. (It is important to note that in countries like Germany, with very weak platforms broadcasters may have to work with the device-led OD offerings to achieve significant roll-out of their catch-up content).

It is Decipher’s contention that the most commercially viable future for a commercial broadcaster is in the type of integrated future provided by the existing TV platforms.  However, the platforms have to deliver the required functionality to do this, and they need to do it in a consistent, integrated way between them.   This will require them to talk to each other about functionality that is used by broadcasters across all platforms.  In the past they have failed to do this, as anyone working in red button will tell you.  If the platforms want to fight off the Google TVs of this newly emerging world, they need to learn how to co-ordinate on the development of broadcast-centric functionality and do it very quickly.

Filed under: Future Content, Interfaces & Functionality, IPTV

Why do I still watch broadcast TV?

Adrian Stroud – June 2009

I recently challenged myself to work-out why I still watch so much ‘live’ TV. I don’t mean news or sport because I can rationalise those genres quite easily. I mean bread and butter programming.
The challenge came about because I was debating just how much more damage all the VOD services and PVRs will do to live TV viewing figures in the long-run. This is important because it is those live viewing figures that contribute the vast bulk of advertising impacts. VOD currently delivers far, fewer impacts per hour of viewing than live TV, so the ‘end game’ for advertising funded TV programming is defined by this question. My guess was that live TV won’t drop more than perhaps 25%, no matter how many VOD and time shifting gadgets like Sky+ launch, but I could not say why. I suspect I’m making the mistake of confusing the technology with the benefits.
VOD and the PVR are the rational way to consume all but the livest of live TV events. So, when VOD has all the content you want and it is available on every screen in the house, why would you want to watch ordinary old broadcast TV at all?
Live TV has one strong thing going for it – ‘missability’. When you turn your TV on, the rational thing to do is to check a few favourite channels to see if something is sneaking past you that you might like. If I find something valuable in this initial foray into live TV I’ll add it to my Sky+ planner. But here is an odd thing, having committed to recording a newly discovered programme and all subsequent episodes; I’ll probably continue browsing likely sources of live entertainment. When I’m in this mode I’m not actually looking to make a commitment to something I really enjoy. I’m probably expecting to be interrupted or be forced to change channel to meet someone else’s taste. The stuff I really like is salted away for some future, quiet, uninterrupted hour that never comes. So missability is a factor for me at the moment but what if just about every TV programme you could think of was available on demand? How can you miss something then?
Misability is not always what drives me to the broadcast channels first. The conditions under which it seems appropriate to commit to a piece of VOD material are quite specific. The kids must be in bed (a deadline that slips further and further into the evening) and a joint decision must be made with Mrs Stroud as to the duration available for shared viewing and of course there is then a debate about exactly what to watch.
By habitually recording things I like and then delaying their consumption to some future ideal moment that never arrives, I could easily end-up watching less programming that I really enjoy than I did when I had to strike while the iron was hot.
Here is another odd thing. Watching one of my ‘favourite’ programmes sometimes just does not appeal as much as watching short bursts of fairly random content. When left alone with the remote control and hour to waste, I’m likely to channel hop. I might leave a programme in a dull bit and give it another chance a few minutes later knowing that it will have moved-on.
The use of Sky+ to time-shift seems to have levelled off at about 15%. This is an average drawn from a very wide spectrum of behaviour so don’t worry if you are not typical. It is not an average like the average shoe size for men is 10, it is more like the average score for a blindfolded darts player will be 10.
Maybe 15% has always been the average amount of consciously planned TV viewing, and VOD and PVRs have simply revealed this underlying truth? Maybe 85% of viewing was always low-commitment and ‘a bit random’ and we were unconsciously quite happy with this. Let’s face it, how could TV have become such a world-wide hit, occupying many hours a day for most people in most countries if ‘fairly random, low commitment viewing’ was not fun?
So the reason I watch live TV is rational but it is not about being live, it is about serendipity and the way it can be randomly sampled – it is a about browsability. When I channel-hop into a programme half way through, I know that is what I have done and that is exactly what I wanted to do. I don’t want to navigate a hierarchical menu system, highlight a title, see the channel indents, pre roll and then sample ten minutes of scene-setting before a drama gets going. I want a random few seconds somewhere in the middle. I don’t even want a ‘sampler’ of best bits edited together. If I go back to the same programme five minutes later I want it to have moved-on by five minutes. If I’m channel hopping while the children are still around I want to know that I’m not going to stumble across something violent, rude or frightening. Of course, when they are safely in bed these become positive selection criteria.
I have yet to see a VOD system that has the browsability of live TV and that encourages the same happy-go-lucky lack of commitment to viewing a whole programme. But surely a VOD system could mimic these attractive features of broadcast TV and offer added benefits? I suspect that the current generation of VOD systems are assuming that our TV consumption is more planned and sensible than it really is.
Rather than thinking about what the end-game is for live broadcast versus on demand, the real question might be how much TV viewing will remain low-commitment, fairly random sampling? It would be surprising if on-demand systems did not eventually meet the need for browsability better than the current broadcast channels. But if they do, will they be able to deliver about fifteen, spots an hour like live TV does? If you have some cash for research I’d love to see what can be done.

Filed under: Ad Formats & Cases, Commercial Models, Distribution & Devices, Future Advertising, Interfaces & Functionality, IPTV, PVR / DTR / DVR, 4OD, BBC, BT Vision, CH4, CH5, ch5 on demand, demand five, iPlayer, IPTV, ITV, ITVplayer, Joost, Sky, Sky Anytime, SkyPlayer, Tiscali, topupTV, VOD

TV iPlayer Looks Like A Duck But Quacks Like A Cuckoo

Nigel Walley – March 2009

 There is a rule in life that if something walks like a duck and talks like a duck it must be a duck.  It is a good rule, but we have been struggling this week with a slight variation to it.  How about if someone really big and important repeatedly tells you something is a duck, and has gone to the trouble of painting the thing to look like a duck, but every time you look at it,  it still doesn’t walk or talk like a duck?

The duck in question is the TV version of iPlayer that is available on Virgin cable.  The BBC and Virgin have made a great fuss over the fact that ‘iPlayer is now available on Virgin’.  But however much we have tried, we can’t make it quack or waddle.

What is actually available on Virgin is an alternative menu structure to the main Virgin on-demand menus, painted to look like a duck, sorry, like iPlayer. These menus have been created using the red button software already present in the Virgin set top box.  Apart from the fact that these menu screens have been coloured black and pink, it doesn’t look or behave anything like iPlayer.

First off, it must be pointed out that, despite the inference from the BBC PR at the time,  BBC catch up programming has been on the Virgin system since it launched, and is still available through the main Virgin menu system. Admittedly the amount went up from 50  to 400 hours when the new screens launched, but all this new content was also made available through the Virgin menus.  The new iPlayer menu screens therefore don’t offer the only route to the BBC catch up content in the Virgin TV VOD system.  If you want to see yesterday’s Cash in the Attic, you can go to the main Virgin A-Z menu and select A-C, and you will find the programme you were after. 

Secondly, the TV iPlayer is not connected to the internet or to the main iPlayer servers or content network.  The iPlayer branded menus merely point back at the same episode of Cash in the Attic on the Virgin servers that the Virgin branded  screens do.  Once you start playing the video, the Virgin VOD controls take over. This means that none of the presentation twists or web functionality that we have come to expect from the web iPlayer exist on the Virgin service.

Thirdly, there is the strange absence of TV channels (and radio channels for that matter).  On PC iPlayer you have a choice of looking for content via ‘Channel’ branded menus, via ‘Category’ or genre clusters, via editorialised clusters such as ‘Most Popular’ or ‘TV Highlights’, or via a very slick search functionality.  On the TV version almost all of these options have been removed.  Radio does not appear at all and all TV channel references have been removed. You are left with a genre based menu, and a very temperamental search function.

The one interesting innovation that ‘TV iPlayer’ has delivered is the ability to jump into BBC catch up content whilst watching a BBC channel.  This functionality is not currently available to any other broadcast channel who offer catch up content on the Virgin system. However, it raises an interesting question about whether this feature should be built by the broadcaster (as in this instance) or should be provided as standard across all broadcasters by the platform (as on Tiscali/Homechoice and a number of European cable platforms).  We would favour the later, as it creates a uniform menu approach for the poor customer.  

Now none of this would really matter if wasn’t for two things.  The fact that the BBC keeps telling us that the thing that has appeared on Virgin is iPlayer, when it clearly isn’t, and more importantly that the BBC keep telling us that people are using it, when they clearly aren’t.

When announcing performance statistics, the BBC have taken to calling any use of a BBC catch up show on Virgin, as ‘TV iPlayer use’, irrespective of the route that users chose to find the show.   However, we surveyed 750 Virgin homes to ask how they access BBC catch-up shows, and over 80% claimed to be rejecting the black and pink painted menus and to be still using the Virgin A-Z menus.   The BBC PR department claims these people as ‘TV iPlayer users’, when it is clearly aren’t.  They are merely Virgin on-demand users who have chosen a BBC show.

As a consumer, this stuff doesn’t matter.  As a commentator, it does rather feel like an iPlayer agenda being pursued.  Or more specifically, an inter-departmental land grab, as the iPlayer team attempt to grab and control the TV VOD world from under the nose of the channels part of the BBC, Vision.  I can understand why Virgin would allow themselves to be complicit in this in the short term, because it meant that the full power of the BBC’s marketing department was shouting about a functionlity on the Virgin platform that wasn’t available on Sky. For many Virgin customers who had yet to experiment with on-demand functionality, this may have broken down some of their reservations and encouraged trial.  But as the months go on, it must feel to Virgin that this fake iPlayer is becoming more like a cuckoo in the nest.

I like to think that the organisation that brought us Life on Earth would be able to spot the difference between a duck and a cuckoo.

Note: A truncated version of this opinion piece was published in NMA’s Comment Section this week.

Filed under: Interfaces & Functionality, BBC, Future Content, iPlayer, On-Demand, PC VOD, TV VOD, Virgin