No more an Idiot Box
TVs are getting smart and mimicking smartphones, says Debjit Saha
Though dismissed as Idiot Boxes for long, TVs are becoming smart, thanks to the latest innovations in internet and mobile technologies. If you have heard about Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) or used it, you already are familiar with them. IPTV happens to be one of the functionalities, which a Smart TV offers.
As you know in IPTV your regular TV content and programs are delivered over the internet or any other network connection instead of the traditional satellite or cable formats. A few unique features offered by IPTV include Video on Demand, ability to pause your TV programs and watch them at a later time. IPTV is becoming popular among metro users and being offered by players like Airtel and MTNL.
Although IPTVs have been around for quite some time now, as they do not support much user interaction with the internet, they are not ‘Smart’ in a true sense. To see what a Smart TV can do, let us compare it with a smart phone. Like a Smart Phone, which has applications to let you manage your work and life, Smart TVs also have applications and internet-related services that offer you various functionalities -- Facebook, Twitter, media streaming, web browsing, games, IPTV, for example -- which normal TVs cannot provide you with.
These TVs have a small computer-equivalent chip built into them to run the amazing apps and services, which you traditionally have not associated with the Idiot Box..
Smart TVs require a full-time connection to the internet if you want to enjoy all of its features. If you do not have an always-on internet connection, you would still be able to watch your favourite shows on the TV. Bbut you will not be able to use its smart features. They have a system called DLNA, with which you can directly watch (or stream) your music, videos and photos from your phones on your TVs.
If you are someone, who downloads or streams a lot of movies or videos from the internet using Netflix or Youtube, your life becomes easier with the Smart TV. It can connect to these services directly and save you the labour of copying them from a hard drive to play on a video player.
Connecting your Smart TV to the internet is very easy. You can do it either through a Lan / Ethernet cable or home Wi-Fi network. If you use a smart phone, there is a good chance that it may be running on an operating system such as Android, iOS (iPhone) or BlackBerry OS. In a similar way, Smart TVs also run using an operating system which may vary from one manufacturer to another.
Android and Boxee are two of the most used operating systems on Smart TVs. However. companies like LG and Philips have their own operating systems such as the LG Smart TV and Philips NetTV.
SmartTVs have intuitive remote control devices. Some of them have gesture-based remote control systems that enable you to control them by just pointing at objects on the screen. You can also turn your mobile phone into a remote control for SmartTVs by simply installing a companion SmartTV app on your mobile phone. There are innumerable ways to use a Smart TV. Just sample a few possibilities here.
Watch, chat cricket
Many like to watch an interesting cricket or a football match at their home and simultaneously use a laptop to discuss the proceedings with their on friends on Facebook. With Smart TV the two devices collapse into one as you can do both with it. You can also use Skype to talk about the match with your friends in real time video.
Entertainment on demand
Whenever you want to watch a particular music video or a movie on your Smart TV just open Youtube or other free video applications and just search for the video. You will be watching your video in no time at all.
Go Social
In a recent Tata Sky commercial, Aamir Khan comes to know what his friend is watching on TV and teases him. This is yet another feature offered by Smart TVs. They let you share the current program you are watching with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.
The SmartTV concept in India is new and there only a few models in the market. LG and Samsung have launched a SmartTV range each. These televisions support full HD 1080p content and have very high dynamic contrast ratio.
LG’s SmartTVs is available in the price range of ~40,000 to ~1,70,000 depending on the screen size. Samsung TVs are available in a price range of ~58,000 to ~2,50,000. However, you can also get all the goodness of a SmartTV without having to buy the full TV set.
There are several companies in the market that offer set-top boxes with built-in smart features such as the ones we mentioned above. Just buy one of these Set-Top boxes and connect it to your existing LCD TVs and in no time you will be using all the smart features.
Smart TVs are definitely a new concept in India, but we have reason to believe that it is here to stay. Samsung recently announced that it has globally sold over two million Smart TV units within just three months of launch. Although these figures are from US and European countries, where internet penetration is very high, it indicates a trend that will transform your Idiot Box.
(Debjit, a web-developer, writes on gadgets and new technologies.)
