Television Applications Are Rotting In A Confusing Mess

Rankings are often accompanied by proclamations. Such was the case of Apple TV when Apple's old pastime became a full-fledged OS ship that Tim Cook proclaimed: "The future of television is applications."

Prediction has prompted skepticism for many reasons.

A year earlier, Google had its own TV application running on Android TV, which fell far largely flat with the exception of Sony's built-in sets. In fact, a number of smart television boxes and interfaces over the years has only reinforced the experience of television is on video. Of course, many of these applications have appeared for Apple TV, but are not very different from the "channels" that populate previous Roku or Apple TV. Over time, it seems that if the paradigm of demand - at least one in an application corresponds to a traditional "channel" - breaks. This has really been the case for a while when it comes to "TV everywhere" cable providers such as Time Warner Cable (now rebranding Spectrum). But access to these applications closed subscription.

Understanding the stakes of navigating a sea of ​​rectangular tiles, each of which can reveal countless hours of television shows, Apple announced "TV" application Apple TV to govern them all. The application itself has simply provided a visual interface for the type of navigation between applications that Apple has brought its small black box with Siri.

But he seemed to cross a line with Netflix, who chose to have his catalog accessible through television. On the one hand, the exclusive content Netflix seems to protect from being one of the many options to find comodizadas of content. On the other hand, the company has been more interested in presenting its content over the past few years, certifying conformity televisions for an optimal picture.

And this week has the announcement of DirecTV Now, the linear streaming service provided for AT & T targets these coyly "millenarian neon", but it represents one of the most complete outputs to the prow of cable providers. DirecTV now not only be available on Apple TV, but AT & T offers free device with a three-month prepaid subscription. (Even in the broadband era, carriers have difficulty leaving the function The future of television, in fact, may be applications, but not in the sense that we have come to understand in the context of the smartphone where there is a direct correlation between an application and the main service of your business.

For long tail players, they remain a unique channel transport as now. But with aggregators like Amazon offering 30 additional packages for niche content, such as Seeso comedy channel, they may eventually become part of the package as well as cable channels. For content providers and overhead aggregators to the broadband distribution of party through app stores and through the service entry through the user interface. But once users are on DirecTV Now, video content navigation resides in how the aggregator wants, not the application.

If they come to dominate broadband television, the idea of ​​a separate application for NBC makes as much sense as putting an over-the-air antenna on your roof when you already have a cable subscription. They can become more weblike brand experiences and sampling with extra content than a main interface to consumer video content really want.