I had the opportunity to attend a few panel sessions at the Digital Hollywood conference this week. The first session I attended, entitled "The Television, the PC, Online Video and the Digital Consumer Experience" left a lot to be desired, but I was still able to walk away with some nice bite-size, packaged pieces of fodder.
In our current world of un-conferences, regular meet-ups, and foo-camps, I easily forget about how unidirectional traditional conferences can be. I have seen panel discussions be very engaging when the chemistry of panelists gels amongst themselves (including heated debates) and with their moderator. Unfortunately, a lot of what I witnessed at Digital Hollywood this week just felt like going through the motions and circling around the same topics as before, but in different form factors. Instead of Napster vs. RIAA, we have BitTorrent vs. MPAA, proprietary systems vs. open, etc. Everyone pretty much is still discussing things from the old framework and only tap-dancing around the really hard questions.
That said, I do think this first panel I witnessed raised a couple of key concepts ailing the American digital living room today.
The first set of concepts involves the primary factors in dragging down the complete, anytime/anywhere/any device media utopia. These factors are not unique to the US market, but are uniquely American and are as follows:
1. Technology
2. Network Infrastructure
3. Business Models
Technology
Regarding the technology factor, we are challenged by the ever-increasing quality of video. What is becoming the "mainstream standard" is continually evolving. Depending upon the delivery of media to the home, the consumer's hardware purchases, high quality can mean HD or MPEG-4 or perhaps some other evolutionary format currently under wraps. Either way, the container is subject to Moore's law, which points to more evolution, decreasing the likelihood of multiple devices, manufacturers, content providers and services playing well with each other.
Network Infrastructure
Even If media delivery were standardized across products and services, the consumer still has their own home network to contend with. This may eventually come down to home infrastructure, simplifying network installation, configuration and administration, as well as quite simply bridging the gap in generational perceptions. This is a tough one but it doesn't have to be.
I remember configuring my TCP/IP control panel on my old Macs to hook up to the net. I'd get everything just right, according to ISP and Apple specs and it still seemed like a combination of magic, karma and pure luck when I succeeded. Thankfully, it wasn't a long period of time before Apple applied their plug-n-play ideology to this procedure as well. The same thing needs to happen for the home network. Cisco, are you paying attention here? We love what you've done for the backbone; now do your magic and greatly simplify the experience for the consumer.
Business Models
The factors tripping up our personal media utopia are the collision and confluence of old and new media. As consumer behaviors adapt evolve to the ever-changing landscape of media consumption, old media loses market share and in some cases bleeds revenue. Just as new media has not quite figured out business models for enabling content production and distribution while maintaining a consistent, let alone increasing profit margin. In a sense, both parts need each other to sort it out. Meanwhile the consumer doesn't care, and is demanding everything, all the time, no matter how, like a child having a tantrum. Clearly, some business models have gained traction (iTunes, Netflix, etc.) but their profit margin is questionable, the platforms that they rely on are closed, and their stability is also susceptible to 'the next big thing' that comes along.
The Open Platform
This brings us to the final point, my final take-away from this session that confirmed my initial thinking about early "living room" systems in the marketplace. The next big thing in the connected living room is not a closed, proprietary system, wholly owned by its inventors. Instead, as William O. Leszinkse, Jr. (GM of Intel's Consumer Electronics Group) alluded to on the Panel, it's a single-box, enabling a multitude of services and options that is open to all developers, and plays well with other systems and devices. It's the open-source box, to be modeled and molded to each and every possible desire by not just "pro-sumers" or early adopters but all consumers. The above sketch I did during another session, illustrates this open/one unit/facilitating many services.
This is the holy grail of the living room. That is, if we can make the user experience intuitive and invisible. Still, this experience must transgress earlier half-baked, closed attempts at keeping the consumer confined within a walled garden, be it online or in their own living room. The consumer experience must be transformative, whereby the level of engagement incites the emotional connection people already feel to their media.
