There is an old saying that tends to work today and I expect will
work for years to come: ”Follow the money.” In particular, follow
where consumers spend their money on new products. It is the ultimate
definition of consumer choice. In the word of consumer electronics,
consumers have been, and continue to spend their money on brand spanking
new HDTVs.
Consumers are adding TVs to their households.
According to Nielsen the number of TVs in homes increased in 2009 over the previous year, to 2.93. In addition the
percentage of homes with DVRs increased to 34%. Now what do you want
to do when you buy a new big, flat screen TV? You want to watch stuff on it!
No one buys an HDTV in order to ignore it.
But wait there is more. Another 35% and quickly growing have and
use VOD from their TV provider.
You know what is amazing about VOD ? It gives you thousands of
choices and its already connected to your TV. It just works.
You don’t have to buy another box. You don’t have to figure out how
to connect it to your TV. You don’t have to stream from another device
over your WIFI network and get all confused about how to pull video from
the internet. It just works. That’s what you want when you un-box that
great big flat screen TV. You want it to work… like a TV. Easily.
Quickly.
Which is why I don’t understand why so many people think that
consumer choice is about having millions of videos available online to
watch any time is some big deal. Consumer choice is about having the
brand new device on which you just spent hundreds of dollars or more
work immediately and just as you expected. It’s about getting the most
out of your investment in your new big screen that looks beautiful on
your wall.
When you buy a car, you don’t want to have to figure out how to make
it work. You don’t want to have to bring someone in to make sure the
engine starts, or have to buy some 3rd party device so that you can go
full speed or blast the stereo. When you buy that car, you want to jump
in the drivers seat, smell that new car smell, be excited when you turn
it on, and crank that stereo and roll down the road in your brand new
car. You made your choice as a consumer. You spent your money. You want immediate gratification.
The same applies to big ticket consumer electronics. When you buy
that new TV and get it installed on your wall or wherever in your
apartment or house, you want to turn that baby on and watch your
favorite show, the big fight or concert or put on your favorite video.
You want it to look and sound good. It doesn’t matter if you are 20 and
living in a dorm or an apartment, or 65 and watching Oprah. It’s a proud
moment.
You don’t want to have to figure out which 3rd party box or
streaming service you can hook up via the internet and then stream to
your TV and then find out the video you are streaming looks nothing like
the video they had on in the store. You don’t want to tell your
buddies not to bump the mouse so it stays full screen. You don’t want to
piss off everyone because your screen saver of your dog just came on
or have to stop everything and turn your facebook alerts back off
because they keep interrupting everything. You don’t want to scream to
your girlfriend/roomie/wife/kids in the other room to stop downloading
stuff so you can watch your show without it buffering. You just want it
to work.
The beauty of that TV is that you unplugged your set top box from
that old piece of shit you used to have and you plugged in your new, beautiful, ready to roll HDTV and it worked great. It worked so great,
that you want as much content as you can possibly get , with the best
possible picture. So you started saving stuff on your DVR, or if you
didn’t have a DVR , you called your TV provider to pay the extra 5 bucks
a month. And when you got that new set top box with the DVR, which
worked when you plugged it in, you started checking out all the programs
and movies they have in the VOD section.
You can save any show you want on to your DVR. You can watch any of
thousands of shows , anytime day or night on your brand-spanking new HDTV.
I just don’t understand why media pundits think that people are going
to want to turn those brand spanking new HDTVs into PC monitors
watching Internet quality video. It’s a hassle. There is nothing that
works out of the box. You have to be your own personal systems
integrator and get the right box, figure out how to get content to that
box over your in home internet, and then eat up your internet bandwidth
in order to watch video that is dumbed down because it takes so much
bandwidth. Why? That is not consumer choice. That is consumer hassle.
What about the future?
The number of DVRs, HDTVs and VODs users will continue to expand
every year. Every year for the next 10 years we will be discussing the
future of internet video and all the great things that could possibly
happen.
Remember this. The potential for video over the internet is huge…..
and always will be.
The future of TV is TV. That is what consumers want. Consumers have
made their choice to spend money on new HDTVs. Why? Because they want
to watch TV.
(image source: cache.gawker)
