Television 1.2

I remember – it was a weekend in 2005 and I was in India – reading a news story about Videocon (a consumer durable major in India). It was about the company launching the first Internet TV in India. I also remember the media and expert noise around this launch. They were all talking about how innovations like Internet Television and (large screen) computers, with high-speed broadband access, would ultimately replace the ‘classic’ television.
It has been almost 4 years now. Desktop computers have traversed a journey from standard CRTs, to large size flat screen CRTs, to slim LCDs. And the laptops have traveled from 12” micro sized notebooks to large 17” machines and now super small and ultra light Netbooks.

The computer has become faster, more graphic rich etc etc. but the size of the display unit (screen/monitor if you like) despite moving in all directions – size wise - has remained more or less the same - average size in the neighbourhood of 15” (based on my personal observation).
While the computer screens have remained more or less the same size – the Television screens have been expanding in size. We might need to check this empirically – but the average size of a television screen is definitely much more than the erstwhile average of 21”.
If I were to hazard a guess on the average size today– it could be anywhere in the neighbourhood of 25” to 27”. Why so?
Other than the fact that television companies want us to buy larger, flatter, slimmer, clearer TV sets (because that’s where the margins are!)– the unifying force behind TV buying is family viewing. Members of a household still tend to converge around the television. It is easier to justify purchase of a big and expensive television perhaps because it is a ‘household item’, as compared to an expensive computer – which can be seen to be more personal.
While a lot of people, especially young and single individual households have started using their laptop or desktop as their entertainment hub (Movies, Music, Communication etc), those living in a family, continue to converge around the TV.

Given this - it does not surprise me when I see Television in yet another light. I understand that a company like Cisco finds an entirely new meaning for the classic TV! (Cisco is staking a claim in the consumer electronics space, with its new line or products based on home networking technology).
With its newly acquired companies, Cisco is now in a position to offer videophone service that has the Television at the heart of it. For example when a Flip video camera is connected to a set-top-box, the cable connection and the Television – one can get the videophone experience that we used to see in Startekesq Sci-Fi TV serials.
However – what amazes me even more than the home videophone technology– is the fact hat this experience is being visualized around the TV screen instead of the computer screen.
To me this is almost as if Television were now offering a unique experience in the communication space – just the way it has classically offered a unique experience in the entertainment space.
The stereotypes that come to our mind when we think of web chats viz. – a man peeping into a computer monitor while video chatting with his parents /girlfriend on his computer screen, might just be about to make way for the same happening on TV and with a larger number of people doing this together.

In my view – if we humans as a community continue to derive greater meaning from our interactions with other people than we do with things – then I foresee newer a much wider application for the Television in the future.If video telephony catches up I can foresee our Televisions becoming still bigger in size and even more important than before. The entertainment equivalent of pod casts might upstage broadcast, or other forms of personalized entertainment-on-demand, but the TV set does not seem to tuning off anytime soon. We seem to be heading into the world of Television 1.2.
Keep watching!