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【House Secret】As one of the three must-have items for marriage in the 1990s, the television is experiencing an unprecedented crisis after decades of evolution…
Today, TVs have evolved into smart TVs. With larger screens, more diverse functions, and better display quality, they are still a must-have item in many families' living rooms. Of course, they may not be placed at home for viewing, but may be just for decoration or habit. This situation has become more and more common in recent years. Under the impact of home projectors, the market position of smart TVs is also facing unprecedented pressure.
Putting aside the product competition crisis, the fatal problem currently faced by smart TVs may also be software problems, as well as the time squeeze caused by the continuous enrichment of the functions of mobile phones, tablets and other products. Recently, the topic of #smart TV usage routines# has also become a hot search, sparking heated discussions among netizens. Problems such as power on and off ads, membership nesting doll-style charges, inconvenient use, and unfriendly to the elderly have become common problems faced by smart TVs today, and even stubborn problems that are difficult to eradicate.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk to you about my views on smart TVs. It is worth thinking about whether the pain in the TV market will be long-term or short-term.
Television should be something people want to watch
When I was a child, I often heard my parents talk about their life in the village. Television is a very special memory point, and this memory is not because of the possession, but because everyone is willing to watch it. At that time, someone bought the first TV in the village, and the whole village would gather around to watch it after dinner. Although there were not many channels and the TV screen was only a dozen inches, the feeling of the whole village “watching” has become the memory of a generation. Similar scenes are also shown in the recently popular TV series “Our Days”, which has become the memory of a generation.
After I was born, my family's conditions improved a little, and we bought our first TV. The 21-inch black-and-white TV was considered very fashionable at the time. It was placed at home, and my parents rarely let me touch it, for fear of breaking it. At that time, there was only one channel on TV – Hebei Economic Channel, which played fixed content at a fixed time every day. There would be no channels on Tuesdays and late at night, so getting up in the morning and watching TV in bed became a luxury. Although this kind of life without content to watch was difficult to endure at the time, looking back now, I find that the memories are also worth remembering.
Later, my family got a big color TV and installed a satellite dish, which could receive more than 7 channels. At that time, a group of children sat together and enjoyed the fun of changing channels. There were more things to watch, and the TV became color. It felt like life had suddenly become petty bourgeoisie, and it was so wonderful that it was hard to describe. When I went to primary school in another city, a group of primary school students and the teacher who ran the apartment sat together in the evening to watch popular TV series such as “The Great Song Dynasty Judge” and “Storm 2”, which has long been deeply engraved in my heart.
It may be because there were not many electronic products available at that time, and mobile phones and tablets were not as popular as they are now. Television was the best medium for family and group entertainment at that time. It is also because of this that sitting together to watch TV is easily associated with idioms such as “all happy and harmonious”.
TVs are smarter, but fewer people actually watch them
Intelligence is an unstoppable trend. Smart phones, smart TVs, smart rice cookers, smart refrigerators, etc., our lives are surrounded by a variety of smart products. From the perspective of experience, intelligence does bring us many different ways of playing and feelings. When faced with the impact of the intelligent wave, most people will choose to embrace intelligence. However, along with intelligence, there are also various additional capital logics, such as membership, advertising, interaction, etc., which can easily make consumers become leeks of capital.
Let's talk about advertising and membership first. They seem to be a pair of twin brothers. In the past, they could “grow while the other declines”, but now they are “the higher the virtue, the higher the evil”, which drives countless consumers crazy. On current video platforms, whether it is a smartphone or a smart TV, you basically need a membership to watch videos. The logic is this:Without membership, you have to watch advertisements on almost all videos. Some works can only be watched by members. If you become a member, you can watch them without ads, but you still have to watch member-exclusive ads. Some works require payment for advance viewing, and after paying, you even have to watch exclusive ads for advance viewing.Moreover, startup ads were everywhere in the past few years. In recent years, due to the promotion of Huawei and Honor's entry into the smart screen market, there has been some improvement. Many TVs can manually turn off startup ads, but there are still cases where the prompts are not obvious.
Back to the smart TV itself, I went back to my hometown during the Spring Festival this year and bought a smart TV for my parents. The 55-inch large screen is really nice to put at home, but facing the various buttons on the remote control and the pictures and channels that need to be constantly switched on the TV, the two elders were also in a dilemma. How to use it? My mother asked me a simple question, “How can I watch satellite TV on this TV?” In the impression of my parents' generation, TV should be able to be watched by turning it on, and different channels can be watched by switching up, down, left, and right. However, what is now in front of them is a “Huarong Road” that may be difficult to get out of.
When I avoided this problem and taught them how to watch Internet content on the Internet, I encountered a new problem, that is, it is difficult for the elderly to remember the layer-by-layer onion-peeling interaction. After operating it once, they even need to do it a second or third time. At this moment, patience becomes extremely important. Of course, more patience is still to come. When parents are fascinated by a certain content, the next episode suddenly requires membership, otherwise they can't watch it. As TV screens become larger, payment QR codes are also unprecedentedly large. I believe this will become a beautiful landscape in the era of smart TVs.
Of course, regarding the issue of video platform membership, there are also many practices that make consumers call it “ugly”. The most typical one is that if you open a small-screen membership, you cannot watch on the large screen. You must open a large-screen membership. If you open a large-screen membership, you can cover the small screen. The underlying logic behind this practice is actually a psychological game between manufacturers and consumers. What users think in their hearts is what if they want to watch on the large screen after opening a small screen? So some people will directly open a large-screen membership to cover the small screen, which means they spend more money. In fact, it is the same as the current popular online car selection principle. The question is whether to choose a large family SUV that is not used several times a year, or a medium-sized SUV that is used more frequently in daily life.
The pain of smart TV may cost you your life
According to a 2022 global smart TV shipment report released by TrendForce, the total global TV shipments in 2022 will be 202 million units, a decrease of 3.9% compared to 2021, setting a new low for TV shipments in the past decade. The reason is that on the one hand, the epidemic has affected the supply chain and consumer market, and on the other hand, the rise of alternatives such as projection, smartphones, and tablets has caused the smart TV market to shrink. In addition, is there no problem with smart TVs themselves? Presumably, the advertising, membership, and cumbersome operations mentioned in the article are the most practical problems.
Manufacturers are also actively promoting solutions to the problem of cumbersome operations and adapting to the needs of the elderly, but there is still a long way to go. As for the issue of advertising and membership, this is actually something that TV manufacturers are powerless to do. The current video platform market is like this. If you want to change, it is not a matter of time, but a thorough reform is needed. Although netizens have been arguing over the current situation again and again, the video platform does not seem to be moved. Even after becoming a member, logging in on multiple devices has become a problem.
In a sense, it may not be consumers who have abandoned smart TVs, but smart TVs that have abandoned consumers. Facing the wave of intelligence, product evolution is inevitable, but in the process of evolution, how to be consumer-oriented is difficult to be deeply understood. Instead, profit-oriented is the kingly way.
Last words
Each generation has its own empathy points. Perhaps the era of television has ended. What is the empathy point for the post-00s and post-10s? I don’t think it’s smart TV, but membership? Advertising? It’s intriguing…
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