Since the widespread adoption of the tablet as the content consumption platform of choice, the industry has been eagerly anticipating the rise of the Internet TV as the next disruptive platform to change the way we thing about digital content consumption.  Is it happening?  Sort of, but not as quickly or with as much innovation as we had hoped.  With the drop in price of the Logitech Google TV set-top box and the announcement by Viewsonic that it is deep-sixing its plans to build a Boxee powered TV, there is growing evidence that the marketing for this technology is softening.  Or is it just that the right forces have not yet come together to make this technology take off?  I once saw an attempt at creating a solid-body electric guitar that was build in the early 1930s.  That was the wrong time for that technology to take off.  Musical styles (content) had not evolved, manufacturing processes (technology) had not become cost efficient enough, and the demand was not there because people did not know what to do with it (user experience).  Internet TV is that same moment where the content, technology and user experience pieces have not yet come together in a moment that will drive consumer adoption.

Sure you can buy Internet TVs but as Van Baker, Vice President of research for Gartner recently observed, “In most cases consumers are buying a television with Internet connectivity as insurance. In other words, they are buying them just in case they need it in the future.”  There are also plenty of price-accessible ways to get a non-ethernet TV connected, not the least of which is my personal favorite the Sony PS3.  The problem is once you are connected, what can you do?  Or more appropriately what can your connected TV now do better than the myriad of other devices that surround us every day.  The answer is that beyond on-demand streaming the user experience is not yet fully developed.

Do consumers want to use browsers on a TV screen?  Despite the fact that the TV screen is large it does not offer a very conducive browsing experience.  But some things do work?  Have you seen the YouTube and Netflix apps designed specifically for the TV?  They have large buttons that are easy to navigate to and click.  They have a display that is almost devoid of text (hard to read on a TV) and heavy on seductive visuals (fun to look at on a big screen).  But until there are more apps and user experiences that are built specifically for the TV, the usefulness of it as digital device is somewhat limited.

However, the promise is still there.  As companies like Adobe help hash out digital rights access with its Adobe Pass offering and as more of these devices continue to end up in consumers’ homes, if for no other reason than the current crop of product is coming equipped with the technology whether consumers demand it or not, the groundwork is being laid for enterprising content providers to realize that there is a new opportunity to wrap bigger and bolder user experiences around their content and make it accessible in ways that best suit the TV as an interface.  I’m still bullish on the technology and anxious to see how this next wave of digital user experiences will evolve.  In fact, I think this is the time for publishers and media companies to take the lead and prove what this technology can be good for.