Not interested in a Smart TV? Looks like they will be mainstream by 2015 (1 Viewer)

[Kevin Collins]

David Hsieh, vice president of the Greater China market at research firm NPD DisplaySearch, forecast that smart displays will account for 70%-80% of global LCD shipments in 2015, up from an estimated 40% this year.

This year, 37% of worldwide LCD TVs will be smart TVs — televisions with integrated internet capabilities — and the ratio will grow to 50% in 2016, he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Taipei on the touch industry organized by NPD DisplaySearch.

Anyone going to need a new HDTV by 2015? Maybe you will be a cord-cutter by then?

 

[JoeDoakes]

I wish 3D were more common. There still is a very significant price difference with 3D sets.

 

[Type A]

Currently running Cat5 to my first ever Smart TV I purchased yesterday. As far as the streaming services, I actually use, it will be my fourth Pandora device, my third Netflix device and my second internet browser. Alas I am running cable for no other reason than for the wife's benefit and providing her with a more seamless experience. Now maybe its from a home theater enthusiast's perspective but until they start including an HDD with DVR functions and an optical drive for blu ray (both TV features with a very dubious history) I see smart features merely increasing convenience but little in the way of increased functionality. Like video processing in an AVR these smart features will remain woefully redundant and nothing more than a marketing feature that allows for only a slightly more seamless experience over a disk player and DVR. I dont see smart TVs affecting cord-cutting any more than smart blu ray players have.

 

[schan1269]

What annoys me greatly(and why, for me, smart features...no matter where they reside, are useless) is that apps are always Hulu Plus.Have to use a computer(not even the ipad) for plain Jane Hulu.

 

[Ejanss]

Currently running Cat5 to my first ever Smart TV I purchased yesterday. As far as the streaming services, I actually use, it will be my fourth Pandora device, my third Netflix device and my second internet browser. Alas I am running cable for no other reason than for the wife's benefit and providing her with a more seamless experience. Now maybe its from a home theater enthusiast's perspective but until they start including an HDD with DVR functions and an optical drive for blu ray (both TV features with a very dubious history) I see smart features merely increasing convenience but little in the way of increased functionality. Like video processing in an AVR these smart features will remain woefully redundant and nothing more than a marketing feature that allows for only a slightly more seamless experience over a disk player and DVR. I dont see smart TVs affecting cord-cutting any more than smart blu ray players have.

I'd have gushed over the "convenience" of Smart-TV's years ago, if I hadn't already gotten a PS3 at the dawn of Blu-ray.
(Only this week, with all the discussions, I've begun exploring the wild, woolly, occasionally bottom-feeding and Tower-of-Babel foreign wilderness that are my Panasonic Viera apps--Up till now, only used the YouTube app, Netflix in case of emergencies, and the AccuWeather screen, but now I've discovered a Crunchyroll streaming-anime app, and I've just spend the last few days having fun with the TuneIn Internet-radio surfer. )

As it is, smart-TV's now being "standard" will make streaming-TV considered standard, and not a techie luxury--People will just naturally get used to having freedom-of-choice Netflix and Hulu in the house as they once got used to watching cable programming because it was "on".
It's not revolutionary cord-cutting, it's just following the basic path of evolution: Networks stopped showing local-station old movies and reruns, so we watched cable. Cable networks stopped showing old movies and reruns, so we all discovered Instant Netflix. Now Netflix and Hulu want to create original series, where will we ever go from there??