ces 203 report

CES 2013: how the TV game changed –

and nobody noticed.

A report for the BBC from the Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, January 2013

By

Mark Harrison, Controller of Production, BBC North Ali Shah, Head of Technology Direction, BBC Technology

14 January 2013

The views expressed in this report are the personal views of the authors and

should not be taken as the views or policies of the BBC.

CES 2013 Mark Harrison & Ali Shah 2

This is a report on the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show 2013. It highlights:

• key trends and themes in the technology coming to the high street this year • what they could mean for the BBC and other broadcasters • some of the significant products and manufacturers that are setting – or

slowing – the pace We have provided a significance rating for the BBC of the various trends and developments. We have scored it from 1 to 5 – with 5 as of greatest significance.

Introduction CES is the only trade show that is widely reported in the UK media. So at first it’s exciting to be attending a show that all your family and colleagues are hearing about each morning. However the excitement quickly turns to embarrassment when they ask why you needed to fly half way around the world to attend the launch of synchronised miniature helicopters, a fork that tells you how fast you’re eating, and the iPotty.

But that’s the paradox of CES. The cacophony of 20,000 product launches in four days ensures almost no insight from the press. Yet CES is a far more significant trade show for broadcasters than the two bespoke broadcast technology shows, NAB and IBC. Why? Because CES is about the audience. It’s about how people spend their time and money; how they consume media; and how manufacturers are shaping those experiences. It’s worth the effort of joining the 150,000 delegates who shuffle across the mind-‐boggling two million square feet of exhibition space while being bombarded by all those attention-‐seeking product launches. That’s because at the heart of this huge show there are always important trends to emerge in the relationship between media producers and their audiences.


So what are the key trends in this year’s show? We believe there are three:

3D didn’t matter: but 4K does

TV’s biggest competitor is no longer other TV

Smart TV just got scary In the report that follows we will unpack these three trends in detail. We’ll also take a look at some of the other trends we spotted this year – as well some that didn’t happen. We’ll run our eye over a few of the best and worst of this year’s gadgets. And finally we’ll give our overall summary of what CES2013 really meant. But before deciding whether you want to pay attention to what we have to say about CES 2013, you might want to assess our judgment last time around – at CES 2012.

The CES 2012 Report: seers or schmucks? Here are some of the developments we highlighted last year.

In 2012 we claimed.. Because.. And in fact..

Windows 8 (above): a game changer.

It had a beautiful interface for a combined tablet/PC operating system. But under its pretty bonnet was the ugly face of MS Office.

It didn’t launch til late in the year, and has been making slow progress. Hardly a game changer just yet. Perhaps because it’s so ugly underneath…


3D is everywhere – but it’s an empty promise.

It was a technology in search of content

The Olympics were many things – but not 3D

Few knew what to do with the tablet computer.

They had no content to give the device purpose.

Compelling second screen content has proved slow to emerge.

The laptop is on its last legs.

The ultrabook was ultra fit.

Apple haven’t quite dropped the MacBook yet. But ultrabooks and dockable tablets rule.

Blackberry is crumbling. A work-‐based smartphone and a gaming-‐based tablet was not a recipe for success.

Blackberry’s share of mobile web browsing in the USA is now one (that’s 1) per cent.

Point and shoot cameras are history.

They’ve been squeezed out by camera phones and DSLRs

Shipments of compact digital cameras from Japan fell 48% between Sept 11 and Sept 12.

User-‐generated content could really start to matter.

Consumer video cameras had become of such good quality – and to hand in every smartphone.

A whole programme of Hurricane Sandy footage shot by the victims was commissioned by BBC3.

The Three Top Trends for 2013 1. 3D didn’t matter; but 4K does History will relate that CES 2012 was the last show to come at us in 3D. Last year manufacturers like LG tried to will the format into existence by designing their entire stand only to be viewable in 3D glasses. It was bold; but their lack of 3D content made it unconvincing. A year later and CES has lost a dimension and gained some credibility. You still enter the LG stand through a wall of 3D, wearing your obligatory glasses. But from that moment on they’re of little use to you: even LG have consigned 3D to the periphery. Finally there is consistency across the various manufacturers: 3D is great for gaming and sometimes good for movies. But it’s not a good look for TV.


It is often claimed 3D was pursued so desperately because manufacturers needed a reason to sell people new TV’s. If that’s true then perhaps the reason they have abandoned 3D so easily is because they have a new selling point: 4K, or Ultra HD.

Broadcasters are years away from being able to make and transmit in 4K: HD is hard enough, let alone something four times the size. Yet 4K matters far more than 3D ever did: it enables the manufacturers to focus on making bigger, better, normal TVs. And there are two reasons why that matters for us broadcasters. First, we are losing control of our images: Broadcasters serving anyone with a 4K set might as well forget about quality control -‐ the final picture will be warped, scaled, squeezed, and stretched by the electronics in the TV itself. Makes you wonder why you bothered. Several of the big players offered pretty convincing demonstrations that the upconverters they have designed into their 4K TVs also make ordinary HD look better. But these are demonstrations performed on their own terms – and almost entirely with static video images. They give no sense of how real broadcast images will look. So, full marks to LG for showing us their upconverted version of Ben-‐Hur. But maybe on balance it wasn’t such a good idea: we’ve always found chariot racing to be a bumpy ride, but we swear all that judder and smear wasn’t just Charlton Heston’s driving. The second reason why 4K matters to us is – oddly -‐ that the manufacturers aren’t that bothered that we can’t provide TV content in 4K. They’re convinced that consumers want a big screen (and who doesn’t need a 110” TV in a living room of the same width?) and will be happy for it to be filled with hi-‐res home photos, 4K movies, and up-‐res-‐ed HD TV programmes. They may be right – but if the sets on which our content is viewed are of a higher resolution than the broadcast itself, the pressure to originate pictures of the highest possible quality will increase. At one point a few years ago it appeared that the technical costs of production would steadily decrease. In fact the reverse is happening: the need to make high quality, digital output that can hold its own on a screen beside 4k movies on demand will ensure production remains both ambitious and expensive.


And when we do finally stagger exhausted over the line in several years time with 4k broadcasting, guess what these guys already have up their sleeve? 8k. Nice. Significance for the BBC: 4. The next generation of picture quality now always seems to be around the corner, and ensures that production costs never really fall. The lack of a ‘steady state’ will always make it challenging to meet budget efficiencies. On the other hand, quality is in our DNA: we welcome it. 2. TV’s biggest competitor is no longer other TV The second CES key trend is that gadget innovation now more often sits in software than hardware. There seemed barely a new device that didn’t require the download of an accompanying app – from toys to TVs. This in turn links those devices to tablets and smartphones. The net effect is to multiply the number of information activities people can do on their devices. TV increasingly has competition that isn’t other TV. This trend towards new app-‐driven devices is most evident in toys: children’s toys, and grown up toys around and health and fitness. Tablet based children’s toys made a striking appearance this year. They take one of two approaches. The first encases the tablet within a game product, and then uses an app to make the two work together. This approach feels much like buying a paint brush and then tying it to a stick. Why build an art set around a tablet with arts apps, when tablet art apps are perfectly good on their own?

Disclaimers on boxes used to say ‘batteries not included.’ Now they say ‘iPad not included.’ The second, more compelling, approach is to put a child proof protective cover on the tablet, create some special apps, and then empower the tablet with sophisticated parental controls which determine which child can access which apps, networks and search tools, and for how long. The best of these was Android based Kurio 7 which has shot to best-‐seller status at Toys R Us USA.


These kinds of products offer both an opportunity and a challenge to Children’s Broadcasters. On the one hand they provide an invitation to create apps around trusted programme brands that will then be taken by parents within the walled garden of the kid’s tablet. On the other it provides a new distraction that could draw children away from TV. Something similar may happen for adults with the creation of many grown up toys around health and fitness. ‘Keep taking the tablets’ is gaining a very different meaning. These devices have leapt in one year from a niche offering to a football-‐pitch’s worth of CES stands. This is what happens when apps meet the human senses: they just cant stop measuring, displaying and comparing them. Take the Lark Life Wristband (no, please, take it): a 24/7 activity tracker that monitors your movement, sleep, nutrition, and mood by prompting you with questions throughout the day. We think we know what our answers might be.


This increasingly dense appmosphere (copyright Harrison and Shah) with which modern technology surrounds modern lifestyles – from music, to networking, to personal wellbeing, to the very act of personal data management – is generating a form of datatainment (copyright Harrison and Shah) that could begin to offer a significant challenge to TV viewing. Admittedly those who engage in such activities are unlikely to regard them as mutually exclusive. But if TV has been accused of becoming attention seeking in an attempt to get noticed in the multichannel universe, heavens knows what it has to become to stand out in the home data hub. More positively, there is an invitation here for broadcasters – especially public service ones -‐ to engage with this data driven world. There could be clues here about how science, health and lifestyle programming – not to mention entertainment and sport – might evolve in this world. Significance for the BBC: 3. The increase in such devices is underpinned by the maturing (but not matured) state of sensors and data analytics. This market segment more then any other at CES gave a glimpse into how the connected smart world will be driven by personal user data. It’s difficult to be sure how this will impact us. But to be disengaged from it feels unwise. 3. Smart TV just got scary Which takes us to the final, and most compelling key trend of CES 2013: ‘Smart TV’ is no longer stupid: it’s scary.


For years the manufacturers have been developing horrible interfaces to splatter across their vast TV screens on proprietary platforms. But at last they’ve found an altogether appier solution. The TV screen now takes on the clean simple interface of the tablet. Several companies have attractive offers – notably Sony, Samsung and Panasonic. But the game changer is Google TV – an open platform for whichever manufacturer wants it (and Korean giant LG is one that does). Imagine the full power of Google search, Android apps and YouTube. Now add Google’s voice search via your remote or smartphone.

It is quite hard to overstate the significance of Google, with all their scale, influence and money, entering this space. In previous years TV and tablet manufacturers have painted a complex, ugly, unintuitive world where the TV display is used variously to offer a big computer screen, a proprietary IPTV interface, and a tablet controller. Now Google has brought all the functionality together in a unified interface optimized for the TV display. By pressing the voice search button on the remote, you can name a specific programme or channel, and the TV will search for it. But you can also give more vague instructions like ‘making a chocolate cake’ or ‘that drama about TV in the fifties’ and it will search for all relevant programmes (in the programme guide), or video (on YouTube for example) or text (via the web) – with the results served in an appropriate interface. So what? It’s just a TV interface isn’t it? Not when the likes of Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and Amazon video are a single click. Not when shows like X Factor have their own app on the home screen. Not when preferences are offered rather than channels. Not when the smartphone, tablet and TV become one. Google TV is brilliant for audiences and producers – but scary for broadcasters.


The concept of button 1 on the remote being BBC1 is already dead for all but the most entrenched. But now in this new app-‐based world even keying in a number on your remote is dead. You simply say you want News and the TV serves it up – prioritized by its own ranking engine!

So is the shape of TV consumption now defined? Well not quite. Not until Apple plays its hand. Will we see an Apple television this year – complete with an Apple user interface and platform? If so, the competition will quicken. The gimmicks of CES 2013 will soon be forgotten. But this single development at this year’s show could shape not only the broadcasting industry but the lives of our audiences for years. Significance for the BBC: 5. Broadcasters need to adapt to a world where TV is not TV but just a connected display. When channel numbers are obsolete, and presence is gatekeepered by the platform owner, there is even less opportunity to stand out. Imagine a Google Smart TV with access to a million apps. Those were the three most significant trends at CES2013, in our view. But here are three others that might be of interest: 1. Technology gets dressed up Technology is getting bigger. That’s partly because TV’s are now huge and mobiles are no longer miniaturized. But it’s also because gadgets are getting clothed. As technology becomes a fabric of our lives, at our side both in public and private, it was perhaps inevitable that we would start to express ourselves not simply through the brands we chose (‘I’m Apple. And I’m PC’) but even the brands we wrap around the brands.


As ever at CES there were phone and tablet cases (well, iPhone and iPad, and Galaxy and Note cases) as far as the eye could see. But those cases are getting increasingly outlandish and/or bulky. Cloth, leather and wood were all prominent coverings. An Aston Martin iPhone case in leather when driving during the week? Of course. And maybe a Ferrari iPhone case in wood for the weekend? Naturally. Nowhere is this trend more evident than with headphones – and specifically great big, bulky over-‐ear headphones. Headphones dominated the show and picked up an extraordinary, bewildering and pointless seventeen awards at the CES Innovation Awards. Dr Dre (Beats), 50 Cent (SMS) and Rohan Marley (House of Marley) are well known (come on, keep up); Carla Bruni and Parrot perhaps less so.

What does it all really mean? Brand matters, and being associated with the technologies that get clothed matters. Significance for the BBC: 1. We should remain immune to this – unless for some reason we found we weren’t present on the most fashionable media technologies. But if that happened we would already have lost some far bigger battles. 2. Sound is free In total there are probably more audio than video products at CES. It is evident that Radio and music – perhaps because of their flexibility and portability -‐ have a centrality to our lives that might eclipse TV. Wireless speakers have been slow to emerge. Until now. This year every audio manufacturer seemed to have an offer – either Wi-‐Fi or Bluetooth. The TV manufacturers are also stressing wireless sound. This could be for the simple reason that a wafer-‐thin TV gives little space for a loudspeaker. So a separate device that is nearby, but wireless, is the obvious solution.


But there seems also to be a general association emerging between 4K and hi-‐fi sound. Perhaps this is another product of the 3D distraction being removed. Significance for the BBC: 2. Our strong radio and music offer will benefit from the demand for music products – especially with the Radio iPlayer. Audio quality is sometimes a casualty of tight budgets in TV however, and this may become exposed by increasingly good TV audio systems. 3. Cameras are connected It’s one of the delightful paradoxes of contemporary tech lingo that ‘connected’ means wireless. So whereas one used to have to download one’s digital photos to a computer by connecting a cable from one to the other, now one instead can perform the process over Wi-‐Fi – which is, obviously, referred to as being connected. In some respects this is simply a logical additional camera functionality in a wireless world. But it has two rather more significant, if very different, dimensions. The first is that enormous emphasis is now put by camera manufacturers on the ability instantly to share photographs between camera and smartphone or tablet, with direct sharing to Facebook and Twitter. In short, the social networking of photography. Why? We suspect it’s a by-‐product of the erosion of camera sales by mobile phone cameras, which we documented last year. You can take your camera to the pub -‐ the manufacturers seem to be saying -‐ and still share your pictures immediately on Facebook, Twitter or your mates’ phones. The second significance of this development is at the professional end. The benefits to a professional photographer of a camera such as the Canon 6D offering wireless connectivity is obvious.


But these are now cameras that our television directors use for shooting HD video. Great news! The problem of how to get digital rushes safely from location to base occupies enormous time and effort for production teams, and is now solved! Bad news! The connection will rarely be good enough! Sending stills is one thing; sending HD video is another. But the cat is out of the bag. We’ll find ourselves under pressure from producers to offer the ability to connect our capture devices to a data network to send material from location. Whether that proves to be through ‘near field communication’ (NFC) or wife enabled devices remains to be seen. But at this show Wi-‐Fi was in everything, whereas NFC rarely featured. Significance for the BBC: 2. Wi-‐Fi enabled cameras is a welcome development, and may start to have a meaningful impact for those who shoot relatively small volumes of material – such as News. Once 4G (LTE) arrives in force the options for filing from the field increase significantly. There are some trends you feel sure to see at CES: ‘4k! Hi! We were expecting you!’ But there are always some no-‐show trends, and they can be revealing in their own right. The trends that never were So where was the Cloud? Last year the over-‐claiming around the Cloud was as hilarious as it was ubiquitous. In fairness to the manufacturers the lack of cloudiness this year may reflect their acknowledgement that few genuine cloud models yet exist for the consumer. Instead the emphasis is upon the creation of a domestic Wi-‐Fi hub, for multiple users making different kinds of connection on different devices – with centralized streaming. It’s an easier concept to grasp than cloud, though still only for the more technically minded. Some create utter confusion by calling this a ‘home cloud’.


Anyway, who wants one if it turns you blue and see-‐through? More sensible manufacturers refer to it as home network storage. Significantly, six products won awards this year, Seagate among them.

Microsoft’s Kinect made has made a big impact over the last couple of years, and we would have expected to see many more applications of this gesture-‐based technology. Samsung, LG, and Hisense did all demonstrate gesture control, and their offers had come on leaps and bounds compared to last year’s offerings. But it was striking was that these were not put front and centre on the stands. Our prediction is that at CES 2014 gesture control alongside natural voice control will be the control mechanisms of choice -‐ relegating the remote to a support capacity. The BBC will need to consider how its user interface might adapt for a touchless world. Microsoft chose to absent themselves from the show this year. A big three of Apple, Amazon and Google are always conspicuous by their absence, but if Microsoft seriously thinks that by staying away they automatically get membership of this elite group, they’re kidding themselves. While Apple, Amazon and Google are physically absent their influence is everywhere. For Microsoft this simply isn’t the case. It’s true


that most of the ultrabooks and dockable tablets were running Windows 8. But this was far less exciting than it should have been. Windows 8 has failed, so far, to follow through on its exciting combined touch/mouse user interface: it still feels clunky once you get beneath the surface. Meanwhile it was Google’s Android, rather than Windows, that dominated the show’s glass-‐based devices. And of course there was no-‐one to show off the Microsoft Surface tablet. So, Google, while absent, was everywhere; whereas Microsoft, while absent, was..er..absent. But perhaps the most strikingly absent trend was scale. Apps were in everything, but there was none with startling ambition. No one was blowing our minds with the power of big data (Google being the highly significant exception). And when the most notable Augmented Reality product comes from Fisher Price we probably needn’t expect Tom Cruise in our living room anytime soon…

Perhaps this lack of the big and bold is why much of the press has talked of CES 2013 as lacking game-‐changers. The game-‐change this year was not the dramatic intervention of a single startling technology. Google TV, in mobilizing all of the Google suite around the television set, is a game-‐changing giant creeping up on us. But it’s so big no one seems able to see it. Enough of the trends. Here are five products we enjoyed stumbling upon – followed by five we really didn’t. Five of the best 1. Kopin Golden-‐i Now this is what we expect from a show like CES: true James Bond technology, complete with a name provided by Q. This is a voice-‐controlled headset with built in GPS, a 1080P camera, and 3G/4G variants on their way. Targeted at the military and emergency services (but we can imagine News and Sport), it allows the wearer to use voice commands to access the


data they need. The built in GPS and accompanying software lets you track all other users with the headset on, along with data on their vitals signs from sensors they can wear. All that, and it streams video too. If that isn’t a license to thrill, we’re not sure what it is.

2. Cubex 3D Printer 3D Printers were surprise stars of the show. There were several, and for those who have never seen one, all are mind-‐blowing. They turn 3D designs into real 3D objects in resin ink before your very eyes. Like watching Star Trek, only slower.

3. Istabilizer mini-‐dolly. There should be no further encouragement for iPhone junkies to build disproportionate shooting rigs around their telephones. But anyone who has a child with a Micro scooter can’t help but appreciate how beautifully this little camera dolly moves. And you get to call yourself a Key iGrip.


4. Moneual Smart Café Table Order your food and drink from the touch screen surface. It monitors the progress of your order being prepared. And you can pay by inserting your card in the table. It also teaches good manners: putting your elbows on the table costs you a fortune.

5. Vivitek Qumi Q5 Pocket Projector Staggering quality from this A5 sized projector. It can project a movie onto a white wall from a USB stick at a quality that compares favourably with the top TV manufacturers. Vivitek also make a remarkable short-‐throw projector which, when used in groups, can provide wall sized projections in stunning quality from projectors that sit around a foot from the screen. Astonishing.


And Five of the Worst 1. Polaroid Z2300 I’m young and I’m modern! I want to share my digital photos with my friends the moment I take them! Why would I want to do that via a Wi-‐Fi or Bluetooth connection, or Instagram or Facebook when I can print out an appalling quality little inkless picture on a piece of sticky-‐backed paper? Hey, I can get a pack of ten sheets in the camera, so with my renowned low shooting ratios I’m set for the evening!

This may be a picture of a company about to fold. 2. The Polaroid ‘Blackberry’ But wait! Just in case the Z2300 doesn’t ensure bankruptcy, Polaroid have decided to invest in a smartphone that perfectly mimics the one smartphone company generally thought to be going down the toilet – Blackberry.


3. VUTEC Artscreen Obviously my framed garish print of Venice is evidence enough of my cultural sophistication. But just in case you were in any doubt, look: with one touch it rises to reveal my plasma TV! Bet Alan Yentob hasn’t got one of those.

4. The Moneaul Desktop Computer We reported the desktop computer as dead two years ago. There wasn’t a single one to be seen in CES2012, let alone 2013. But Moneaul seem to have recreated one by strapping a plastic tray to a Curry’s fan heater.


Some poor child is going to get given one of those. In orange. 5. The entire The RCA Stand You thought RCA was extinct? So did I. When I last saw them they were in my parents sitting room while we watched the 1966 World Cup. Well, we’ve clearly not been paying attention. They are in fact ‘The World’s Trusted Brand for Innovation & Value.’ Not Apple, Google or Toyota. RCA. Look, it says so:

A company not so much going to the dogs as the taxidermist. CES 2013 In Summary: Bringing it all back home It was a strange show. The metrics say it was the biggest ever, yet staying away, like Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, is becoming fashionable. But what do all


those companies have in common? They are American. So the effect is to vacate CES – here in the heart of the USA – to others. Should CES stand for Chinese Electronics Show? Well the Chinese were prominent again, and Hisense, with a huge presence and a Google TV partnership, appeared from nowhere.

But we could equally rename it KES – the Korean Electronics Show – with LG and Samsung showing very strongly. Samsung is going all out to eclipse Apple. They have learnt – or rather copied – a great deal from the trend masters. Their stand is clean, white and chrome. They now have fewer products, displayed in great numbers – just like an Apple store. But above all their build quality is superb. Theirs were the nicest products to hold at this show. And the Japanese? After a terrible show last year Panasonic and Sony fought back. 4k seems to have given them a focus – especially Sony, with their entertainment arm. So let’s just call it the Eastern Electronics Show. Which means there was little to counter the old cliché: western innovation, eastern imitation. The American giants throw a stone in the pond, and at CES the ripples come back from eastern shores. Unsurprisingly this was a show in which every gadget wanted to connect to everything else. If these gadgets were people, you wouldn’t let them out on a Saturday night. But the paradox remains: could you get online at CES? Could you heck. The Koreans – who come from a country with ubiquitous and fast connectivity -‐ are developing for a world that simply doesn’t exist in the west (we have 4G phones and almost no 4G). Perhaps this is why home hubs feature so strongly. Domestic bandwidth may rarely be that electrifying, but at least one can bring all one’s gadgets together and get them all synchronized before heading back out into the connectivity desert.


Indeed, if this show boils down to one thing, it’s the home hub. The sofa is looking like the deck of the Starship Enterprise. The mobile phone was the gadget that back in the 90s no one predicted would rule the world. But it looks set to get even more powerful. It will even replace the remote control. Voice control on mobiles – like Apple’s Siri and Google Voice – has been a little-‐used gimmick so far. But apply it to environments where one wants or needs to be hands free, like the home and the car, in an app-‐rich smartphone which is paired to your TV, car (and who knows what else), and it starts to get useful.

The future is generally the present, only more so. So expect the continuing misery for the consumer as they try to work out which TV to buy, and to understand what the heck they’ve bought into. TVs need to come with CVs. Dare I enter the Samsung world? Are they strong enough for app developers to go on creating apps for them? Or do I ignore the badge on the front and just go for whoever is partnered with Google and gives me a decent picture?


But whoever eventually wins and loses in the home hub, they are battling it out in traditional BBC territory: the living room. Admittedly we got a US view of the world – one in which streaming video offers such as Pandora, Roku, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and Crackle are very strong, and the BBC inevitably isn’t. But it was still clear these are precarious times. The popular Tune-‐In Radio app has the BBC ranked 50 in its UK incarnation. TV and Radio iPlayer, BBC News and Sport all give us important app presence currently. But we will need more than that – much, much more – if we are stay strong in an interface that doesn’t discriminate between Angry Birds and Top Gear. Ah, so that’s why these TVs are called Smart..

ces 203 report

Documents

paradox of ces

introduction ces

bbc technology

key trends

various trends

important trends

bbc north ali shah

mark harrison ali shah