Is internet-enabled TV not a dodo after all?

17 December 2009 | By Nigel Walley

My father phoned me this morning to say the Daily Telegraph was recommending he let Marks & Spencer insert a YouTube into his telly. Those of you who have fathers who read the Telegraph will know there comes a point in life when their pooterish sense of alarm at all things new boils over into full blown senility. This was clearly the moment for me and I set about keeping him talking while arranging for my wife to rush round and sedate him.

But no, he insisted that on page seven the consumer affairs editor, Harry Wallop, was saying exactly that. This was clearly cobblers or some sub-editor having a laugh, but I checked online and it was true. M&S, the home of the starched white Y-front, is launching an internet-enabled TV featuring specially designed versions of the BBC iPlayer and YouTube.

My father signed off at this point, clearly inflated at the idea he’d taught me a bit about new media. Internet-connected TVs were interesting when they launched but not important. I can say this with certainty because not a single salesperson I spoke to could explain them to me. However, with the inclusion of the iPlayer, the involvement of M&S and the imminence of Christmas, we have a new dawn. So as someone who earns his living forecasting media change, I’d like to declare that all bets are off. The world has clearly gone mad and I no longer have any idea of what’s going to happen.

A note of caution is required, however. Just because they’re now understandable by the masses doesn’t necessarily make internet TVs any good. And they certainly don’t represent the TV industry’s iPhone moment — that is, when a product redefines a whole industry. TVs are certainly getting cleverer, and the M&S TV is a reflection of that. Slowly, functionality like search is creeping in, but change is very incremental. There’s a new generation of boxes arriving next year from all the big players that may bring the moment, but we’ll have to wait and hope.

Until the launch of internet-connected TVs, with their downloadable widgets, we hadn’t seen anything like the app culture in the TV industry. Partly this is because the software that’s in set-top boxes tends to originate from strange, Mossad-inspired encryption projects from the early 1980s. If you ever did anything to mess around with it, the box manufacturers tended to take a rather dim view.

The other issue has been regulation. Ofcom regulates TV EPGs and decides which channels go where in the listing. The idea that I should have complete ability to personalise my TV experience has been alien to both groups. However, once you plug broadband into the back of TVs and set-top boxes, both these cultures get blown away. The idea of an Ofcom-regulated anything in TV may become difficult to sustain.

We’re clearly into ‘anything can happen in the next ten minutes’ mode and, quite frankly, I’m unprepared for it. We’ll be hearing next that Amazon is going to open high-street shops. Happy Christmas.