Networking options: TVs vs. computers

In the battle for customers manufacturers are no longer limited to the ability of the device matrix to convey the signal – display the colors correctly and without jumps to reproduce the moving image. The naturalness of the transfer is often positioned as “as the director intended”, i.e. e. As if to give the viewer the opportunity to touch a masterpiece in its original form. So it was with the 24p function ability to display video at 24 frames per second , and with many other tricks, bearing the traces of marketing. I remember when plasma TV sets from the Pioneer Kuro series had the function of black color correction – another fetish of movie-lovers and, consequently, of marketing specialists if not the other way around – I wondered what to do with the director’s intention – the TV set doesn’t know what the soldier of the “dream factory” was up to, what if it the TV set corrects black color wrong, because night and black velvet differ..

One can’t help but think of Damien Hirst’s shark? Recall that this creation of English artist, a shark in formalin, was sold for $ 12 million, but after some time began to deteriorate – apparently, the production process was violated. When Hirst decided to restore the masterpiece, a debate ensued – whether the recreated shark would be the same piece or different not “what the director intended” ?

But here’s a picture quality, more or less all manufacturers have coped successfully – top models, almost all major companies show the video without criticism – the word is for functionality.

A primitive interpretation of a business law – “he who is late is late” – best characterizes the desire of corporations to please the desires of users. While there are still debates about whether or not it is legal to download content from the World Wide Web in the fall, American programmers are threatening to provide technology to block torrents , ordinary users i.e., those who don’t know how to use the.e. You and I continue to add to our video library, filling our hard drives and NAS. And that means that TVs have to have rich networking capabilities, connecting to the latter – otherwise the customer will buy a competitor’s TV or media player.

So. Smart TV, smart TV, is to the user roughly what, at the dawn of the transition from modems to dedicated networks, was the “mirror” Internet – there was such a concept. The provider provided a package of the most visited sites, you could download and use the information as much as you wanted – the subscription fee did not change.

If you wanted something exotic, for example, to learn about the structure of the wings of tropical butterflies, you went on the Internet and paid for the traffic. This did not last long, transforming into local networks.

Smart TV manufacturers offer roughly the same thing: the user has access to a limited set of sites, the most common being YouTube, Last.fm, Flikr and Picasa, social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.

It is clear that Smart TV in TVs is about the same as the camera in a cell phone, which is a nice thing, but does not replace the camera, in our case – the computer.

Of course, if you take photos on the run and do not catch shadows, the camera in your phone is enough.

Similarly, the capabilities of interactive smart TV can be seen as the Internet for unpretentious users – you can find out the weather, information about traffic jams, chat on social networks and call on Skype, watching the interlocutor’s face in full screen.

Using computer terminology, a TV with Smart TV functionality is nothing more than a computer with a big monitor and a good video card. So it is natural that most of the services are focused precisely on the visual perception.

Besides the aforementioned features, the manufacturers add something of their own, which should distinguish them from their competitors – or at least be not worse.

In addition to possible technical difficulties, for the full implementation of their projects companies have to deal with copyright issues, which, as you know, is not always easy.

For example, LG and Philips equip their devices with movie access features – NetCast Entertainment and Net TV, respectively.

Recall that five years ago in 2006 Apple introduced the concept of “the latecomer is the latecomer” to satisfy their customers’ needs. introduced its first set-top box Apple TV, allowing you to stream multimedia. The company plans to “conquer the world” today in the form of the latest version of the set-top box without a hard drive, which can be connected via HDMI to a TV or projector, watching the content downloaded to your computer.

The console connects to your computer via Wi-Fi. The main format for it, of course, m4v – still it is a product of Apple, but with the help of firmware it is possible “agree” to view more common formats, and in the Network “apple” files enough, so fans of computers Apple this media player from Steve Jobs is so fond of.

And a few more words about streaming video. American and Canadian viewers pay service Netflix costs 7.99 dollars a month – an amount similar to what cable TV providers ask for in America. If Netflix comes to America, who would you choose??

And if you think about the fact that the massive emergence of pirate on-line services can not be ruled out, the ability of TVs to access the Web is becoming more and more important every day.