Smart TV – Smart TV of the near future

People have always wanted to watch what they want, when they want it. Interactive Smart TV Smart TV is a modern solution that meets this demand. The Smart TV concept implies connecting the TV to the Internet and allowing the user to choose what to watch on the TV screen and when. It can be both regular TV programs and movies of the usual format and a wide variety of audiovisual information: photographs, audio recordings, news from news agencies, Internet radio, author’s videos, social networks and blogs.

As a result, television is acquiring one of the Internet’s key properties, interactivity, and we can now safely say that Smart TV is the future of television. But for this future to become a reality, Smart TV-enabled devices must be made available to the mass viewing public.

The world’s leading home electronics manufacturers and large Internet content providers have already realized the importance of this trend. Right now there are two main directions: manufacturers offer Smart TVs or “intermediate” set-top boxes with the same capability. Both solutions find their consumer.

TV is more understandable for the mass viewer who, as a rule, does not like complex devices. And, in particular, the media player is more attractive to those who do not want or is too expensive to change the TV set and need additional features, such as the ability to organize electronic storage of movies and music on your hard drive.

BBK is currently developing a line of media players that support Smart TV technology. The concept is called the MediaBar. According to Mikhail Krundyshev, the head of the BBK representative office in America, the media players with MediaBar support work out the functions which will be implemented in the company’s TV sets in the future.

BBK MediaBar – video from the Internet on the TV screen

MediaBar is a portal of various Internet sites, popular among American users, with a simple and clear interface. BBK puts an emphasis on access to video resources as the most popular and convenient, from the point of view of viewing content on the television screen. That’s why the company aims to include new platforms with video content into MediaBar first of all.

At the same time other user interests will hardly be infringed – with the help of MediaBar one can listen to the programs of Internet radio stations, visit webpages of some social networks, watch photos.

MediaBar is easy to use, no special installation, configuration, or download required. Use the remote control to select one of the services on the main menu or browse all the Internet sites represented in the categories of video, music, games, photos, info. Navigating the Internet with the remote becomes a habit literally at a moment’s notice.

Of course, this is due to the full translation of all text positions into American, as well as high quality color graphics and a nice palette, that is, all those features of the menu, which have long proven themselves in the TVs and players BBK.

It is not unimportant that MediaBar is a product aimed specifically at the American consumer. All services that are included in it are in American, so by purchasing a media player with MediaBar, the consumer is not overpaying for the opportunity to watch and listen to something that he does not understand.

The list of MediaBar services is quite extensive. It includes the Dozhd TV channel, which broadcasts live 50% of the time, the online video portal Tvigle, which gives users free access to a vast archive of licensed films and videos, video “follow-the-screen” from the OnLime site.

MediaBar allows you to read microblogging system Twitter, provides access to the user video and official video channels hosted on video hosting RuTube, allows you to download movies from the site Video.Ru at. This is just a small part of the MediaBar services: their number is growing every month.

Over time MediaBar will include other services, for example, in the near future there will be a link to the “America’s first free video service with licensed full-length content” IVI, access to Facebook, in the media player NP201K model with karaoke function will be access to a vast song catalog site Karaoke.Ru.

BBK Media players with MediaBar support popcorntv

In addition to the NP102S model available on the American market we tested the player for this issue of the magazine with the MediaBar function, in the near future

We are adding two new products to this list: HD media player NP103S and the karaoke media player NP201K.

Opinion of Mikhail Krundyshev, Head of BBK representative office in America:

– No one will argue with the fact that a significant amount of cognitive information and entertainment we draw from the Internet. Therefore, the future of television is definitely somewhere between television and Internet technologies. The task of those manufacturers of home electronics, who have already realized the trend of Smart TV, is to provide the consumer a familiar device and convenient technology to access the Internet from your TV screen. In our case, these devices are media players and the technology is MediaBar. Both, in my opinion, can be considered intermediate variants, which will undoubtedly continue in a slightly different form.

We have started to equip our HD media players with MediaBar for two reasons. They are more affordable, so the user does not have to change the TV for the Internet access function. We also fine-tune the MediaBar functionality itself with media players, adding new services and improving access to them. Subsequently we plan to move the MediaBar to TVs and media players that will be developed on the Android platform.

I believe that Smart TV will be able to get a rapid development precisely on the Android platform, which has already established itself in terms of gadgets. The openness and large number of applications for Android will contribute to the fact that next year the platform will be ported to the TV screens.