Tag: Future TV

We’re Crawling Not Leaping into the 3rd Dimension

March 1, 2011

By Lloyd Mason – March 2011

Few innovations in TVs history have caused as much divisiveness as 3D. Currently the darling of consumer electronics, manufacturers and retailers far and wide are actively demonstrating this revolutionary new form of TV. However consumers don’t seem to be buying it; either the idea or the technology itself.

So what explains the public’s apparent lack of affection for 3D?  According to What Hi-Fi? magazine, 135,000 3D screens were sold in 2010, the first year the technology has really been available to British consumers. This seems respectable until you consider that nearly 10m TVs were sold in total and set sales were bumper last year due to the boost of the football World Cup in South Africa, always a driving point for sales of new sets. 3D sets totalled 1.35% of sales.

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Digital Is Dead – Long Live TV and The Web!

July 2, 2009

Nigel Walley –  July 2009

I received a flyer in the post from the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) the other day, outlining the curriculum of their ‘Complete Digital Marketing Course’.  What was remarkable about this flyer and its grandiose claim, was just how incomplete the course was.  In a week when AudiTV launched an on-demand service on Virgin cable’s Showcase, and Honda’s webTV service moved to the front page of the BT Vision EPG, there was nothing about breakthrough digital TV marketing in it at all.  With Sky launching green button advertising on the satellite platforms, there was nothing about interactive television formats; and with both Sky and Virgin developing targeted broadcast and targeted on-demand mechanisms, there was nothing about converged marketing principles, bringing together internet techniques with broadcast content.  And it wasn’t just TV that was ignored.

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Whose Shares Wins? ITV vs Google

May 7, 2009

See Decipher discuss the Susan Boyle case on Channel 4 news here

Much was made in the press about ITV not earning any revenue from all the people watching the clip of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent on YouTube.  This has been described by various commentators as a missed revenue opportunity, and a commercial failure for ITV.  This completely misses the point.  Over 50 million people tuned into watch the Susan Boyle clip on YouTube.  It was the best two minute ad for a TV programme that has ever been distributed and ITV didn’t pay a penny for the privilege.  You have to ask how many posters a TV company would have to buy to get an equivalent, media impact.  The only statistic of interest should have been the uplift in audience, from the episode before to the episode after the YouTube explosion of Miss Boyles version of Les Miserables. There was a 2 million uplift.

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Overhead Projectors, Broadcast Channels and Other Redundant Technologies

February 25, 2009

Nigel Walley – Feb 2009

I used an overhead projector for a presentation at a conference the other day.  It was great.  You get to write on a sheet of acetate, like your teachers used to, and it shines up on the wall.  Joking aside, there was something immediate and human about presenting ideas with an overhead that is completely lost with Powerpoint.  I know that I sound like a music nut comparing vinyl to the CD, but in the rush to move into the digital age, we can sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water.   Before we got rid of overheads, someone should have stopped and questioned whether there was anything great about them that needed preserving.  In fact I think they may make a comeback

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