... new NPD research has found that consumers want more access to online video services like HBO Go rather than "smart" features like social networking access on their TVs. ...
Well hey! Look who just caught up!
Big Problem #1
The living room TV is a family resource. Unless you live alone.
But "social" and most internet communication in general, is personal. Nobody else cares.
Hogging the big, expensive, shared resource for your social activities is, well, anti-social in a home setting.
... NPD said that a big problem is that TV owners are confused because too much choice is creating a complex user experience. ...
The home TV experience is completely different than the personal computer / pad computer / smart phone experience. Yes, it is possible to jam the personal computer experience (round peg) onto a big-screen television (square hole.) But no, consumers won't like it one bit. They didn't like it in the past. They don't like it now. They won't like it in the future.
WebTV tried it with standard-def TVs and dial-up modems (the past) Google TV tried it with HDTV screens and broadband internet access (the present). Same difference. Neither caught on. WebTV and Google TV are both dead. Why, exactly?
Big Problem #2
Your physical distance from the screen (or computer controls) directly affects your ability to deal with complexity. iPhone -> in your palm. iPad -> in your hands or on the desk/table right in front of you. Laptop -> right in front of you on your lap or desk. Desktop -> right in front of you on your desk. You can instantly tap, swipe, pinch, click, select, cut/copy/paste, drag 'n drop, etc. to complete tasks on all of these devices. You instantly touch their screen to control them or touch the keyboard and mouse that control them.
Then there's your living room TV. It's over there. Across the room, against the wall. You never touch it. It's at least 8 feet away from your favorite couch. It could be controlled by touch if you walked up to it, but that would be terribly inconvenient (and would lead to "Gorilla Arm" - look it up in Wikipedia). It could be controlled by a touchscreen controller (iPhone / iPad / iPod touch) but that raises the cost by that of the touchscreen device.
Controlling your living room TV with a conventional remote is like torture. (First world problem, I know.) But it's a torture we're accustomed to, because we've been trained since birth to accept it. 19th century people used horses every day for transportation, and they accepted all the manure (and the occasional dead horse) in the streets. No way to avoid it. It's just the way things were.
The more computer-like features your TV has, the more controlling it becomes like building a ship in a bottle. And that's true even if you have a wireless keyboard and mouse. Sheer torture. Ever try balancing a keyboard on your lap and trying to compose an email message on your TV? Or typing a 63-character URL? Or filling out a form on a web page? I have. It sucks.
So let's pretend that Apple can eliminate the need for any physical controller. Now that there's Siri, your big-screen TV could be controlled by voice. And maybe later, an iSight camera could detect faces and gestures too. No remote to lose. No extra iPhone / iPad / iPod touch to buy if your family members happen to not be fully equipped already. You'd launch apps, compose tweets, check power tool prices on Amazon, just by speaking and gesturing. Seems like it might work, but...
Nope. Even if it were possible to instantly compose emails, tweets, and Facebook scribbles, we run smack into Big Problem #1. The anti-social nature of hogging the big-screen family TV for your own boring, irrelevant internet stuff. And even if you live alone and have the big-screen TV all to yourself 24/7, the novelty of using it as a super big monitor will wear off after 15 minutes. You'll just use your iPad as a 2nd screen for all that internet stuff anyway.
One screen just isn't enough any more. But that's another thread entirely.