Watch for Web TV reruns
Technological progress, falling prices and a new approach is prompting manufacturers to introduce TVs with integrated connections to the Internet.
By Tam Harbert, Contributing editor -- EDN, December 1, 2009
Remember Web TV? Back in the mid-1990s, everyone was going to surf the Web from their living rooms. It never happened.
More than 10 years later, here comes the sequel: the Internet-enabled TV (IE TV). Technological progress, falling prices and a new approach is prompting manufacturers to introduce TVs with integrated connections to the Internet. This has a better chance of moving into the living room – as it will be just one feature in many high-end TV sets. Whether consumers actually hook them up to the Internet, however, is an open question.
That may be academic for chip companies who are targeting this market. Already, most major brands have at least one IE TV model. In fact, vendors are looking at this holiday season as a test of the market, according to Michael Inouye, digital home industry analyst at ABI Research.
ISuppli Corp estimates that there will be 14.7 million IE TVs sold this year. It projects that number will grow to 66.4 million by 2012, which would be almost a third of the total worldwide market. “The TV is really going to change substantially in the next five to 10 years,” said Randy Lawson, senior analyst of display electronics at iSuppli.
While ASPs (average selling prices) for TVs, and thus for TV chipsets, are under continual pressure, IE TVs are a sweet spot for chip vendors, said Lawson. The electronics required are more complex and this feature is being incorporated in high-end TVs, so “this [is] an area where those companies can sell a higher ASP chip and earn margin,” he noted.
Why the sequel now? First, it’s technologically easier than 10 years ago, at least from a hardware standpoint. Processors are more powerful and less expensive, making it easier and cheaper to incorporate sophisticated video decoding functions into the TV. High-speed broadband is more ubiquitous today, making transmission of video streams practicable. And streaming movies over the Internet has become not only possible, but is increasingly embraced by consumers, as services such as Netflix have proven. Finally, technologists have given up forcing the TV to act like a PC. Initial attempts like Web TV envisioned consumers using their TV screens as if they were PCs, doing things like checking e-mail. Today, it’s all about delivering video, said Lawson. “The Internet connection to TV is kind of the next-generation use of broadband service into the home,” he said. “It’s like the Internet as another source of video, just like your DVD player.”
The hardware that enables the Internet connection is fairly straightforward: an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection, an upgraded video processor and more memory to support the software. The biggest change is the video decoder, which needs to be able to handle content from the Internet that is likely to be compressed with standards like MPEG-4, VC-1, and even Adobe Flash, said Lawson. Even TVs built as recently as 2008 don’t have that level of video decoding, he said.
Companies that specialize in digital TV and set-top box chips are gearing up for this market. STMicroelectronics, one of the top suppliers of STB (set-top box) chips, is leveraging its knowledge from supporting STBs and IP (Internet Protocol) TV implementations to deliver the technology for IE TVs, said Yannick Paillard, technical marketing director for TV and monitors at ST. Because ST has supported other video compression standards required by markets in other regions of the world, its video chip already incorporates MPEG-4 compression, he noted. And the company announced in October that it will adopt the ARM Cortex A9 MPCore processor and the ARM Mali-400 graphics processor for its next generation of STB and digital TV chips. This graphics chip conforms to an industry standard API designed to deliver Web content and services, including Adobe Flash.
Enabling the chips to work with the software architecture that’s emerging for IE TVs is challenging. Much of the connectivity is implemented in the software, and that software is more mature in the STB market, according to Wen Li, chief marketing officer at Trident Microsystems. That was one of the drivers behind Trident’s recent acquisition of NXP’s TV and STB chip businesses, which is expected to close in Q1 2010, he noted. Previously, Trident focused exclusively on TV chips; now some 40% of its revenue is expected to come from the STB market. “Once we acquire the set-top box business, we will be able to migrate the software in the set-top box to the TV,” he said.
Now that manufacturers are building it, the question remains: Will consumers buy it? This holiday, vendors won’t just be watching sales, but they’ll be surveying how many of those TVs get connected, said Inouye. After all, there are other devices in the living room -- Blu-Ray players, game consoles, and of course the good old STB -- all of which are increasingly able to access the Internet and stream movies. Roku, for example, sells a box for $79 that enables full online access to the Netflix library.
And consumers still aren’t comfortable accessing the Internet on their TV, said Li. “How do you change the behavior of watching TV?” he asked. “That’s a key part. And I don’t think we are there yet.” When he bought an IE TV for his adult daughter, he said, “she connected it to the Internet, and she used it at first, but then ... nothing.”
That Internet connectivity can go anywhere, and should not necessarily be integrated into the TV, he noted, because consumers tend to keep those high-end TVs for 10 years, whereas the electronics advances to a new generation every two or three years.
And even if the technology is ready, there are business issues yet to be resolved. Who will handle technical support, for example? “Who is liable for the Internet TV that doesn’t work?” asked Li. “Is it the chip vendor? The software vendor? The service provider? Nobody knows.”
As for Trident, it can now sell SOCs with Internet connectivity into STB and TV markets. The STB and TV chips are “80% the same, so we actually like to see two separate boxes rather than one. It’s double our revenue.”
