Smart TV? What about content?

This week is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) week.  Because of its timing, it marks the beginning of new year and showcases lot of upcoming products which will set the tone for the electronic gadget trend for the year.  This year I'm hearing a lot about Smart TV.

It is not news that people are watching videos online more and more.  Because of rising popularity of internet-enabled mobile phone and tablet, and more contents getting uploaded to YouTube and other alternate internet sites, we are going to see even more people consuming video content online.

Samsung Smart TV that responds to hand gesture/voice;
But will it be smart enough to serve me the right content?

It looks like TV manufacturers are catching up to this shifting consumer behavior and getting ready to bring the viewer back to TV set by introducing new ways to interact with TV, such as TV that that understands hand motions to voice commands and even viewer's face.  Idea is to make it easier to interact with TV, but I think this feature-level competition among TV manufacturers is going to be ineffective in differentiating TV viewing experience from mobile devices viewing.

Real problem with TV is that it's difficult to find content that YOU want to watch.  Most of the time you are finding your content through people sharing YouTube links or pirated video sites, and watching them right on your computer.  It's easy because links to those content are in your Facebook news feed, in your email and in favorite folder on your browser.  Plus add the fact that you always has access to other devices (thanks to smartphones and iPad/Kindle Fire), you are less likely to sit in front of stationary machine to watch something that you cannot curate.

Instead of competing with other TVs at feature level, what TV industry needs is the competition with mobile devices and ease of access to personalized content.  What customer needs is an easy integrated experience from finding personalized content and viewing the content with unique experience that you cannot get from your mobile viewer.

TV's real competitor is viral content on mobile device.  Until TV has the right content for you and offers different experience than mobile device, it will continue to lose its viewers.