AUSTIN, Texas -- Pay-TV companies aren't
particularly known for innovation, even the ones that launch satellites
and beam TV signals to space and back. DirecTV is hoping to change this
by bringing its research lab to the south side of Austin and throwing
open the doors to designers and engineers flocking here for South by
Southwest.
For DirecTV, the future includes: NFL games in virtual
reality, a lamp that can turn a coffee table into an interactive screen,
and a refrigerator that suggests what cooking show you should be
watching. Some of the projects had the taped-together feel of a
high
school science project; others looked pretty ready for prime time.
The audience here at SXSW isn't potential DirecTV
subscribers; it's designers and engineers, who DirecTV would like to
lure to its headquarters in El Segundo, California. "Our primary
objective here is less brand and more recruiting," said Senior Vice
President Tony Gonsalves. "This is a hotbed for young designers, young
coders, so we're trying to build a little excitement around a fairly
traditional company."
So DirecTV let its engineers -- hackers, really -- out of
the lab, gave them Lone Star beers and smoky brisket sandwiches, and let
them show off what they've been working on.
Drawing the most attention were two virtual reality
demonstrations, one with a product available today -- Samsung Gear --
and one with Oculus Rift prototypes. Samsung Gear VR goggles are
available today for $199 and basically serve as a holster for a Samsung
Note 4 on your face. Oculus is a higher-quality VR experience, but that
company, acquired by Facebook in a $1.2 billion deal last year, hasn't
shipped anything to consumers yet.
Will people watch DirecTV through VR goggles? Probably.
"We're trying to take the entertainment experience a little farther
out," Gonsalves said. "No one is really sure how that is going to
manifest."
The Samsung goggles showed a demo of what it might be like
to watch a 3D movie inside a simulated movie theater. Then it showed a
demonstration of an NFL game where you're sitting in a seat at the
stadium. Gonsalves said perhaps people will be able to choose their seat
(50-yard line or Jerry Jones' luxury box?) for those looking for an
almost-there experience. Where this starts to get interesting is when
DirecTV, soon to be acquired by AT&T if the feds permit it, pipes TV
directly to the phone, and into the heads of subscribers wearing these
goggles.
The Oculus goggles were even more immersive. Using
PlayStation controllers, viewers were allowed to walk around what looked
like a Tuscan villa with huge screens placed in the gardens and in
several rooms. The perception of movement is so real, it can generate
seasickness for the unacclimated. While the scenario was contrived,
Gonsalves said it could be applied to, say, a travel show that could
actually take viewers to Tuscany or anywhere else.
From there, the experiments got a bit more far out and
rough around the edges. One engineer, Harry Porudominsky, built a
cardboard representation of a refrigerator, which had sensors to tell
what kind of food was inside. The TV could then recommend the Gordon
Ramsay show that demonstrated recipes with those ingredients.
Another had "kluged-together" -- Gonsalves' description -- a
lamp that projected interactive screens on a wood tabletop. The idea
here is that projectors have become small and powerful enough to be
integrated into everyday household items and used to project video,
images or games onto random surfaces in the house. This particular
coffee table turns on when you set a can of beer on it.
None of these are today or even this-year products, but all
represent various potential futures for an industry undergoing radical
transformation. As far-fetched as TV service on your phone seems today,
AT&T and Verizon are busy acquiring the spectrum to make that
feasible. With the likes of Apple and Sony getting into the TV business,
and competing with DirecTV, the video landscape is going to look
entirely different this time next year. Even the TV part of "TV" could
go away, leaving us with projectors on coffee tables or VR goggles. Stay
tuned.
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