Interactivity: Is the technology up to speed?

“STBs are very stripped down products,” Burke said. “They run Linux and do what they need to do. They do it reliably and with lower power. They can do some limited interactivity, but if that interactivity wants to mirror what is capable on a PC, you have to have a lot more power.”

STB’S LIFE EXPECTANCY

Most STBs are built with at least a three-year life expectancy, and any legacy STB older than six or seven years is not likely equipped to support interactive apps, agreed Jayant Dasari, research analyst at Parks Associates. Approximately half of the STBs on the market are at least this old, he said. Because of this, deploying interactive apps may also be a function of deploying new STBs – an expensive proposition for most pay TV providers.

“Existing boxes, to a certain extent, can have interactivity, but anything beyond simple widgets and basic voting and polling apps will require a newer generation of boxes,” Dasari said.

This lowest-common denominator mindset Burke and Dasari illustrated can get the STB manufacturer into trouble, according to Michael Greeson, president of The Diffusion Group. Any CE device or TV that wants to enable interactivity must be equipped to handle rapidly evolving usage scenarios. Much like Apple’s App Store, which now houses more than 25,000 apps, the number and variety of TV-based widgets is likely to expand as well and will outstrip the ability of today’s low-end hardware to support them.

“Imagine you just went out and bought a new HDTV because the widgets attracted you, only to find out that it can’t expand for the widgets that pop up in the next two years,” he said. “That means you have to buy a secondary box, and that will piss you off. Consumer demand will expand rapidly, and the types of widgets desired will require a lot more horsepower. You want a set-top box in the field for four to five years; you don’t want to pull it back because of hardware inefficiencies.”

GETTING PAST THE MIDDLE

While the hardware may be the limiting factor, the software for providing interactivity remains challenged as well. Microsoft’s Mediaroom has brought continued innovation to AT&T’s U-Verse IPTV service, but Entone CEO Steve McKay pointed out that the proprietary nature of platforms – and all the other moving parts in the TV space – is holding back interactivity. From a technical perspective, having to hardwire the STB, software, backend commerce engines and accommodate all the participants in the commerce chain has gotten in the way, he said.