How Smart TVs are Reshaping the Future of IoT

By Marcus Jensen

Posted on December 21, 2016

The age of single-purpose items is ripe for history textbooks. Today, we enjoy living in the era of hyper-connectivity where all of our devices exist only as parts of a larger entity known as Internet of Things (IoT). Just few decades ago, a thought of physical items being connected in the virtual environment would seem as a science fiction material, but today it is a part of our everyday lives. While modern mobile devices may be the most obvious example, it is perhaps better to observe this global phenomenon from the angle of Smart TVs. So, without further ado, here are few ways in which smart TVs are reshaping the future of IoT.

Going Online

During its first years (even decades), the Internet was more or less the computer-exclusive feature. To a lot of people, it must have appeared that it was going to stay that way. To everyone’s surprise, in the early 2015, the number of Google searches via phones exceeded the number of those made via desktop setups. According to most att u verse providers, this also made it very clear that going online is an inevitability for all devices in the nearest future. To back this up, there is a stat claiming that in 2015, the majority of internet users from the US also have a connected TV.

Better Watching Experience

When it first appeared, a lot of people compared television to its predecessor, the radio. Unfortunately, both of these mediums had a great problem with continuously streaming programs which could not be paused. This meant that if you wanted to go to the toilet you had to wait for the commercials. Also, if your doorbell or phone rang, you knew you were going to miss out on at least several minutes of your favorite show. This is why the appearance of TIVO was such a revolution back in the days and why some even go as far as to prophesize its return.

Now, imagine if your Smart TV could freeze the picture as soon as you got a phone call or once you leave the room. Sure, this may seem as something quite abstract, but with Internet of Things and modern sensor technology, it doesn’t have to be so. For comparison, in 2015, there were almost 5 billion things connected to the IoT and these numbers keep skyrocketing. This way your TV watching experience can become closer to what you get through streaming services. Needless to say, this improved TV watching experience may result in people returning to this medium in flocks.

Why Now?

Finally, it is inevitable to discuss the reason why this phenomenon of IoT is gaining such a momentum at this very moment. While the answer to this question may seem oversimplified, it is still far from inaccurate. Today, the internet service is at its apex when it comes to speed and reliability. To make things even better, these two aspects are looking up as we speak. Most analysts speculate that during Seoul Winter Olympics in 2018 we may come to see the premiere of 5G. This incredible telecommunication standard is expected to provide over 100 megabits per second of data rates in metropolitan area. Needless to say, this may be just what IoT needs in order to unleash its full potential.

Conclusion

In the past, a lot of people rushed to dismiss television as a thing of the past. What they didn’t count on is that this colossus of global entertainment won’t go down without a fight. In fact, instead of suppressing it, these newly emerging trends helped it grow (even evolve) into something quite different, although somehow familiar. In this way, it advances towards its users on two fronts and while giving them convenient mean of entertainment, it also plays hard on the nostalgia card.

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