The third screen

In talking yesterday about the challenges of keeping our living room clean, it got me thinking about the incredibly competitive battle that seems to be revolving around control of the screen that, still, most people spend most time in front of – the television. There’s been lots of talk from Microsoft over recent years about the concept of “Three Screens and a Cloud” – computing devices, mobile phones, the TV and a bunch of Internet-centred services to provide content and function to each of the three. As we stand today, there are probably only three or four players of significance in the markets for the first two screens: Microsoft, Apple, Google and some others. The TV market is much more fragmented – you’ve got:

Hardware manufacturers, notably Sony and Samsung, who are now equipping their TVs with a network connection and an environment for Apps to run (this is the way in which I now consume on-demand TV with the iPlayer app on the Samsung Internet@TV platform.

Games console manufactures, notably Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo who all have the ability to stream video content via the Internet to the TV.

TV platform operators, notably (in the UK) BSkyB and Virgin Media – in the former case who have developed out their own device platform (Sky Plus) which has just about entered the language as a verb, and in the latter who have partnered with the granddaddy of the PVR world, Tivo.

TV Channel operators, notably (in the UK) Sky, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, UKTV (part-owned by BBC Worldwide) and others. Despite our multi-channel, on demand world, the traditional terrestrial broadcasters still have a huge sway in how things work in the UK – notably with things like interactive content (although “pressing the red button” seems to be going our of fashion).

Telcos, notably (in the UK) BT.

Other consumer technologybrands,withboth Google and Apple providing tv-connecting devices to give access to content via their subscription services.

Within all of that diversity there are a few things that strike me…

The dominant medium for the TV is still video. Games are interactive video (literally, still, video games), but the “sit back” nature of the device seems to lead to relatively passive consumption. More natural user interfaces on games (Wii, Kinect etc) might change this more than the shoehorning of other content forms onto the living room screen.

If video is what you are pushing out, alternatives to TCP/IP are still hugely cost advantageous if you can afford the infrastructure costs up front. A lot of the diversity in the living room is borne of the three competing broadcast distribution technologies that are still required to make mass audiences possible – terrestrial (soon to be totally digital) broadcast, satellite broadcast and cable. We are a long way, it seems, from an IP-only distribution model for TV content. For as long as that remains the case, it seems to me that we’ll continue to have diversity of providers in the living room…