Linked List: July 27, 2015

Monday, 27 July 2015

Vizio IPO Plan Shows How Its TVs Track Whatever You’re Watching ★

Richard Lawler, writing for Engadget on Vizio’s IPO filing:

Vizio has made its name with impressive value-priced TVs that don’t skimp on features (it’s also a leader in the soundbar market, and has made attempts at selling tablets and phones too). According to the filing, Vizio has sold more than 15 million smart TVs, with about 61 percent of them connected as of the end of June. While viewers are benefiting from those connections, streaming over 3 billion hours of content, Vizio says it’s watching them too, with Inscape software embedded in the screens that can track anything you’re playing on it — even if it’s from cable TV, videogame systems and streaming devices.

We’ve never heard of Inscape before, but as explained in the S-1 Vizio filed today, it’s based on ACR (automatic content recognition) software licensed from a third party, and viewers can opt-out of participating in it while maintaining other connected features. That’s actually fairly common in modern TVs, and others like LG and Samsung have already rolled out features based on the tech to do things like integrate with TV shows, or display ads based on what the TV is showing. ACR software recognizes the video being displayed, matches it up and phones home the data. According to Vizio, its Inscape platform can pull some 100 billion anonymized datapoints from 8 million of its connected TVs every day. That kind of data can be used for ratings, and is valuable to both advertisers and content providers.

Note to self: never buy anything from Vizio.

The End of the TV Industry as We Know It ★

Amol Sharma, writing for The WSJ:

Why would Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal unit be hunting for new media deals, and talking to companies like Vice Media, BuzzFeed and Business Insider, as The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday?

One explanation is that the cable giant is chasing young consumers who aren’t watching TV as much as past generations did. This chart illustrates the situation.

According to these numbers from Nielsen, among those 18-24 years old, TV viewing has dropped 32 percent since 2010. That’s the youngest group in the chart, but judging by my 11-year-old son’s habits, this trend is even more striking for kids. He hardly watches any traditional TV at all. Just YouTube, Netflix, and movies.

Kids React to the First iPod ★

These videos are always funny, and always make me feel old. Very old. But this one also seems to suggest that a hunch I’ve had for the last few years is going to prove true: that the word phone — just plain un-prefixed, unmodified “phone” — is evolving to mean “a pocket-sized touch screen computer with a cellular network connection”. And for these kids, phone really just means “pocket-sized computer”, because they just presume the use of a touch screen and wireless networking.

Hugh MacLeod’s Illustrated Guide to Life Inside Microsoft ★

A couple of these caught my eye, but none more so than “It’s more fun being the underdog.” The Churchill quote, too.