Smart TV, let's talk about this industry

LeTV's "Refresh 4x4" conference at the Wukesong Stadium has once again hyped up the long-dormant concept of smart TV, which has basically become a regular phenomenon: wonderful PPT and fluent speeches, martyrdom and ambition, hot media discussions and Weibo screen-sweeping, and finally ending in a limited-time sale. The digital miracle of sold-out time appears frequently and cheaply, but the ambition to change the world disappears in the process of cooling down.

Let’s talk about objective issues first.

Smart TV has always been a type of product that is a "large household appliance" rather than a "consumer electronics". It is neither an "extension of the skin" nor a "capital for showing off". It may be considered a basic need, but it is difficult for people to love it. With the remote control acting as an intermediary, the user's operation on the TV screen is still clumsy and passive. This interactive scene that remains at the level of man-machine rather than man-to-man makes the dilemma of smart TVs have many interference factors other than hardware, so that even the manufacturers are struggling in the quagmire of misunderstanding.

The most difficult issue is that buying a smart TV actually means choosing a lifestyle, and this lifestyle is somewhat anti-Internet in nature: it is not fragmented - on the contrary, the conditions for using TV are more stringent, requiring concentration, long time and a family environment as a prerequisite; it is not very socialized - as an image terminal that lacks input and interactive interfaces, even if it is labeled as "smart", all smart TV products at the current stage have not produced a revolution comparable to the "mouse + keyboard" form. Whether it is connected to the Internet, on demand, or integrated through a box, they are just patching up the shortcomings of traditional TVs, and the user's initiative is far from being truly released; as for the legendary Internet thinking, including rapid iteration, full-time online, Web 2.0 and other features, the smart TV product does not have much of it.

The so-called "smart TV" industry is actually a bet on whether the current mainstream urban population aged 20-30 will return to the living room at night after entering the middle-class families in the next ten years, just like their parents. Many people are not optimistic about this bet, because the problem with TV has never been whether it is smart enough, but whether it is different from the radio in terms of necessity. Its mission is not to subvert the traditional life left over from the industrial age, but to continue it.

This is the biggest reason why the market rules of smart TVs are different from those of emerging technology markets such as PCs and smartphones. The former is about redemption, while the latter is about breaking.

I once talked with a former employee of Xiaomi, who said that Xiaomi's efforts to "objectify" mobile phone products were very successful. For many Mi fans, Xiaomi mobile phones are an adult toy that matches their personal struggle period. However, when Xiaomi TV was being made, it was a bit "confused". Lei Jun copied the "cross-level top configuration" strategy of Xiaomi mobile phones and made many exquisite details based on the Apple TV standard, but the user feedback changed: hardcore Mi fans still bought it very much. Under limited production capacity, they completed the task of contributing to pre-sale performance, but when it came to the stage of expanding the purchasing community to the periphery - this is Xiaomi's marketing process, driving the public through enthusiasts and forming an atmosphere of product fandom - it was found that the product appeal of Xiaomi TV did not achieve the expected effect, at least not as outstanding as Xiaomi mobile phones in the same market. In addition, the license issue could not be easily resolved, causing the importance of the smart TV project in Xiaomi to decline rapidly. Coincidentally, domestic mobile phone manufacturers started another round of new phone launches. Xiaomi took the opportunity to return to the mobile Internet strategy, and the voice of Xiaomi TV also faded.

It is common sense that the consumers of television products are families rather than geeks. Hardware fever is just a personal desire, but it is public demand that dominates the living room. Therefore, in the purchase decision of smart TVs, extreme idealism is destined to be defeated by universal compromise and compatibility.

Moreover, as a medium, just as people buy newspapers not for the paper but for the news, instead of constantly repeating how "advanced technology" this smart TV has, it is better to tell users that this smart TV "can show programs that other TVs cannot provide."

If you still don't understand, you can read a joke on Weibo: "I bought a 1TB mobile hard drive on Taobao. The seller asked me if I was a man or a woman, and I said I was a man. He also asked if I bought it for myself or for my wife. I said I bought it for myself. But when it arrived, I found that it was filled with several GB of action and romance movies. So I asked the seller on Wangwang, if I had answered that I was buying it for my wife, what movies would you put in it? The seller said, Korean dramas."

Of course, from another perspective, the success of iTunes in the music industry is also the reason why many hardware manufacturers (including Apple itself) who are trying to reform the TV industry have been led into a ditch: through the best-selling hardware terminals, they implanted an empty market, and then extended an olive branch to the record companies that suffered from piracy, creating a win-win industry chain out of thin air. Many smart TV manufacturers did not pay much attention to content in the pioneering period, because they relied too much on the lessons of the past, thinking that as long as the shipment volume increased, content suppliers would come to them.

However, there is a fatal difference between TV content and music content, that is, the former is charged backward, while the latter is charged forward. In other words, for users, genuine music needs to be paid, so when free pirated music appears, it is easy for them to switch sides, even if it requires extra time costs and tolerance of less than perfect quality. Therefore, when the interests are deprived by the sharing economy, record companies will find Apple to share the profits in exchange for the opportunity of sustainable development. However, genuine TV series do not require users to pay to obtain them. Under the background of separation of production and broadcasting, the producer sells the content to the broadcaster, and the broadcaster provides it to the audience for free. It can not only obtain income through advertising, but also distribute the copyright multiple times. In this process, the attraction value of pirated TV series to users is not as high as that of pirated music. Both are free, and the picture quality and acquisition time of pirated TV series are not as good as those of genuine TV series. At the same time, the licenses held by TV stations are scarce resources (meaning industry access system). When the survival space of TV stations is still abundant and moist, they have no motivation to show goodwill and get close to smart TV terminals.

As a result, the "empty shell" of smart TVs has become the norm. Except for a few users who can use them as professional-level tools, most users have not experienced the significant difference between smart TVs and traditional digital TVs. In other words, the Internet's liberation of information productivity has not yet penetrated into the television field. If intelligence only stays at the functional level, a smart TV is no different from a more complex and cumbersome large-screen computer.

What about LeTV - it seems to be a media/technology group that has avoided its content shortcomings. Behind the export of hardware terminals, there are independently controlled content production factories such as LeTV Entertainment and Huaer Film and Television. LeTV.com connects the upstream and downstream. Jia Yueting said that what LeTV provides to users is not a smart TV but an ecosystem, which is not an exaggeration.

Let's talk about 4K. Last summer, 4K TVs were everywhere at CES. Geoffrey Morrison, an American technology editor, published a cold article on CNET titled "Why 4K TVs are Stupid". While admitting that the 4K trend is unstoppable, he believed that scattered hardware manufacturers were not capable enough to formulate a unified standard. Even if the screen meets the standard, if it cannot carry the data transmission rate of 4K content, then 4K TV will only be a decoration.

LeTV's solution is to integrate the industrial chain. It is ambitious to achieve quality control through capitalized self-production and self-sales, and even does transcoding by itself. Since 4K coordination is very difficult, it will bring all the standards into its own hands. In this way, there will be no worries about the various connectors fighting with each other, and LeTV itself will also be 4K (4K=LeTV) - this is a high-risk and high-return road. The risk is that the collapse of any link will affect the overall situation, and there is no alternative. The entire industrial chain requires extremely large-scale hardware shipments to ensure a balance between income and expenditure. Needless to say, the benefits are pervasive in taming users. Once the ecosystem of software and hardware integration is truly formed, LeTV will definitely be a heavyweight player in the post-Internet era.

It is said that Jia Yueting has a strong gambling nature, and he always bets on the right position at key turning points in history. In the eyes of viewers who have bought LeTV stocks, the future of LeTV seems to be in Schrödinger's box, full of suspense but still with a chance of winning.

However, potential variables may exist outside the "television" industry. If one only watches broader and more comfortable film and television content, there is no guarantee that "living room entertainment" will be able to defeat "study room entertainment". More than half of China's Internet output value is in the gaming industry. Giants such as Sony and Microsoft are also focusing on game consoles, trying to draw young PC and mobile phone users back to the living room.

LeTV's formulation of standards is actually a self-created bonus - the PS4 and Xbox One launched at the end of 2013 have confirmed support for 4K picture output. At ChinaJoy in the same year, NetEase exhibited an FPS online game "Crisis 2015", which also used a 4K resolution TV from Sony as the game screen. When game manufacturers all start to output 4K pictures, the interactive value of smart TVs will be fully reflected. In short, the more living rooms LeTV occupies, the more it can strengthen its voice in standard output. When 4K games become popular, LeTV, which has the highest support matching rate, will stimulate new market growth.

The biggest circumstantial evidence is that Nintendo is using TV remote controls as a model to transform its own handheld terminals.

If the downloading, running and consumption of 4K games can be completed in a closed loop on smart TVs in the future, LeTV will be able to intervene in every link of distribution, joint operation and fee deduction. Given LeTV's size, it is not a bad idea to invest in several game development companies to cultivate its "own sons". Such a simple leap is the terrifying gameplay of Tencent + Apple.

Finally, horizontally speaking, the entrants into the smart TV market are currently only focused on competing for the starting line advantage. Before the production capacity is released, the start time of the marathon will be indefinitely postponed. Whether it is to use marketing skills or to recover funds, if the hardware is always lingering on the shelf with a "rare" label and may become "out of stock" at any time, then the popularization of content and even the ecosystem will always be an unattainable myth.

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.