2014 Smart TV Year-end Summary: Many Products Are Not Smart Enough

For the smart TV industry, 2014 was undoubtedly a fruitful year. Smart TV hardware products were constantly updated, and software applications were rich and diverse, making the entire smart TV industry no longer just a theoretical talk, but a new type of home appliance that can truly enter the living room and bring users an alternative experience.

However, as the smart TV industry has made rapid progress, the shortcomings and drawbacks of the industry have also gradually emerged. Although the smart TV industry has seen a significant improvement in both products and sales, looking at the overall situation, the defect of smart TVs not being "intelligent" enough still exists.

The hardware system is not intelligent enough

Compared with traditional TVs, smart TVs are undoubtedly in urgent need of getting rid of the reality that they are "just a screen". Just like the emergence of smartphones, smart TVs also need a diversified future. Since they are labeled "smart", they are destined to have diverse functions.

However, the performance of smart TVs in terms of intelligence still disappoints consumers. Whether it is the operating experience or smart applications, most of the current smart TV products show the phenomenon of "stuck, frozen, etc." This has forced more and more users to turn to smart mobile devices.

Take the hardware configuration of smart TVs as an example. From the high-performance Qualcomm hardware platform in 2013 to the Mstar 6A918 hardware platform in 2014, the overall performance of smart TVs has hardly improved significantly. As a TV with a long lifespan and slow replacement, it is really difficult to maintain a smooth smart system with such outdated hardware configuration.

In terms of operating systems, among the smart TV products currently on the market, smart systems can be roughly divided into three categories: Android, Windows, and enterprise-built systems.

Among them, the Windows operating system with a powerful CPU is not suitable for switching from PC to TV, and remote control operation cannot completely replace the convenience of mouse operation; secondly, the operating methods of self-built operating systems, such as Konka's OMI operating system based on Linux system and Hisense's independently developed HITV-0S operating system, are slightly inconsistent, which will seriously hinder the user's improvement in smart systems and smart experiences.

Therefore, the Android operating system, known for its open platform, has become the mainstream of the current smart TV system. The Android operating system is an operating system launched for mobile terminals, and it needs to be transplanted when transferred to the TV end. If the problem of changes in product form is not completely solved during the transplantation process, the highly open Android will also cause many poor operating problems on the smart TV end.

As the center of home entertainment, smart TVs can only attract more mobile device users with their unique and exclusive TV application experience if they are truly intelligent.

The application experience is not intelligent enough

To understand the concept of intelligence, we may refer to the current achievements of mobile phones. Just like the smartphone industry, smart TVs also need to enhance the interaction and communication between users and products. However, the current situation of smart TVs is that they still exist as a large output screen.

In fact, the intelligence of smart TV determines that this new type of TV is no longer a one-way interaction between TV users and TV stations in the past, but a networked interaction between users and users, and users and TV content.

However, most smart TV products currently do not allow users to achieve interconnection and multi-screen interaction between smart TVs and any smart devices such as mobile phones, computers, and tablets. Smart TVs are still isolated from other electronic devices, just like traditional TVs.

In addition to the independence of the product itself, the product service content of smart TVs also shows a kind of isolation. Take video on demand as an example. Unlike mobile and PC terminals, the video playback on the TV terminal does not accept the comment function. Users can neither express their preferences for the content nor share the wonderful content with friends. From this point of view, smart TVs have not shown intelligence beyond traditional TVs.

There are also TV game applications that showed an explosive trend in 2014. As one of the most profitable game categories, TV games have obviously not yet exerted their due strength.

In terms of game content, most of the existing TV games are simply ported from mobile and PC games, and are not compatible with TV in terms of both game content and operation methods. Such a gaming experience can neither reflect the platform advantages of smart TVs nor be conducive to the future development of the TV game industry.

Big-screen games are different from video applications. They have higher requirements on the hardware configuration and operating system of smart TVs. Currently, smart TV products are gradually moving towards a high cost-performance trend. More and more smart TV products are attracting attention with prices close to cost, but the shortcomings in configuration are exposed when large-scale games are running.

Apart from the above points, there is still a lot of room for smart TV to improve its technical content, such as voice control, gesture recognition, naked eye 3D, etc., which have just emerged; and high-quality and high-utilization applications are also particularly scarce, such as TV shopping, online education, video chat, etc. Compared with smartphones, the rise of the smart TV industry is relatively slow, and this lag in development speed is obviously caused by many factors. And this also indicates that the smart TV industry in 2015 may have more highlights.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.