Comment area丨Smart TV "Smart" is charging? Making life better is the ultimate value of technology products

Do you still watch TV? At the beginning of 2023, the topic of "watching TV is too difficult" appeared on the hot search. Some netizens sent videos to complain about the high charge of smart TV video App, buy a few members, spend nearly 1,000 yuan a year, and some smart TV service providers' built-in membership system is too complicated, and the TV side, mobile phone end, etc. are not compatible with each other, "nesting doll-style charging membership" makes consumers troublesome. "Today's televisions are becoming more and more thin and three-dimensional, but what is the use? It is more difficult to find a platform than for Tang monks to go to the West Heaven to obtain scriptures. Many netizens said that "I miss the original TV, but now it has changed." People often say that technology changes life, but the resonance of netizens can't help but ask: Why is watching TV more troublesome in the era of smart TV?

Making life better is the ultimate value of technology products

□ guest commentator Gao Cunling

How long have you not turned on the TV? Once upon a time, the TV that occupied the C position in the living room was the center of entertainment for the whole family after dinner. Nowadays, TV is increasingly "losing momentum", and even young couples get married and do not buy TV. As one of the "three big things" of home appliances, TV should not be reduced to this.

The reason is that in addition to the impact of the mobile Internet, the unreliable operation of the TV industry has also become the straw that crushed itself. At present, smart TVs that can download apps, connect with mobile phones, and realize free on-demand have become the outlet of the TV industry. Smart TVs with larger screens, more functions, and a sense of technology should have brought users a better experience. However, various charging "routines" and payment thresholds make how many people can only hold the remote control and look at the screen and sigh. "It's too hard to watch TV" has also appeared on Weibo's hot search, becoming a topic of much concern after entering 2023.

For a family, the value of television is not only for the functional purposes of broadcasting programs and providing information. Many times, television brings families together, is a medium to share common times, and is the basis for exchanging feelings. How many people miss the scene of a family sitting around watching the same show? Many times, the TV also constitutes the background of the audio and video in the living room, and is an electronic companion for daily chores such as housework.

In the environment of sharp decline in ratings and loss of users, there are factors behind the various charging thresholds of smart TVs that are self-adjustment and profit model adjustment factors in the TV industry. However, if TV companies only focus on short-term interests and ignore user experience, it will only prompt people to vote with their feet, and various paid "routines" will only accelerate the loss of TV in daily life, making the already declining future even bleaker.

Looking back on the past, countless enterprises rushed day and night to the sea of stars of science and technology to make human life better. For enterprises, the "outlet" is not only an opportunity for capital appreciation, but also an opportunity to serve mankind. IBM launches personal computers, Tesla opens the trend of new energy vehicles, Apple subverts traditional functional machines... Every technological advancement and innovative exploration has opened up infinite possibilities for mankind and changed the daily lives of hundreds of millions of individuals on this planet. Let human beings live a more convenient, more comfortable and faster life, and make life better should be the ultimate value of technology products. In the smart TV industry, this seems to have been forgotten for a long time.

(The author is an associate professor and master tutor of the School of Literature and Journalism and Communication of Qingdao University)

Chaos has long existed, and supervision must be made in a timely manner

□ contributing commentator Wu Lichuan

In the era when cable TV was still the "king", people took the remote control to choose each TV channel. This sense of freedom and casualness is now being replaced by an increasingly skinny "choice embarrassment". Obviously, when people pay a monthly fee, the possibility of jumping out of an app is virtually reduced.

In the era of smart TV popularity, "smart" certainly exists, but in the increasingly utilitarian trend of the platform, the consumer's sense of experience is greatly sacrificed. Worryingly, this loss is not taken seriously by the platform. Whether it is high fees or incompatibility between the two ends, it is a manifestation of video apps wantonly "harvesting" consumer wallets. When almost all platforms do this, people have to switch from one platform to another, so there is little value in consumers voting with their feet — unless they never watch TV.

What is speechless is that although the "matryoshka charging membership" has been very annoying for consumers, video apps still frequently make "no profit" or even "loss" sounds, and it seems that the benefits obtained by consumers are still very limited. This is really an absurd perceptual "contrast". In this way, the contradiction between consumers and video apps can only become more and more obvious. And the "button" to solve this problem is not in the hands of consumers, and the self-consciousness of video apps is not reliable - how can you expect a platform that complains all day about not making money to "cede" benefits?

In fact, consumers' voice is relatively weak, and their bargaining power and bargaining space are also limited. To improve the consumer experience and make watching TV a comfortable form of entertainment for the masses, the power of regulation must keep up in time. In December 2019, the Consumer Protection Commission of Jiangsu Province released the "App Paid Membership Consumption Survey Report", which showed that 73.51% of consumers said that there were many ways to pay (renew) fees for apps, and hoped that relevant departments would intervene to urge enterprises to improve and strengthen supervision. But the grim truth is that regulatory intervention has not been put in place for problems that have already arisen, so much so that the masses have complained for a long time but have not changed.

Video apps have set traps and added barriers, which have violated laws and regulations such as the Consumer Rights Protection Law and have become a "public nuisance" in a certain sense. In the long run, not only will the public's sense of "screen reading" experience be greatly reduced, but the market order will also be disrupted. The hidden worry is that when winning in the "chaos" of video apps becomes a habit and a shortcut, their awareness of self-innovation and improvement will be sharply reduced, and the breadth and depth of market competition will also change negatively, which will further aggravate the chaos. To this end, supervision should be strengthened, chaos should be resolutely curbed, stop when it should be called, punish when it should be punished, and restore peace to the audience.

(The author is a media person and columnist)

Audiovisual media urgently need to strengthen ecological governance

□ contributing commentator Song Shoushan

Any medium will continue to evolve driven by technological development, and the same is true of television. Driven by digital technology, the current TV has evolved from a single video carrier to a smart terminal, which is a development trend. However, in the process, the "matryoshka doll" charging and the "unfriendly" in the operation process also show the urgency of ecological governance of audiovisual media represented by television.

The change of digital technology to television media will change three times in terms of the logic of forwardness. First, from the user's point of view, this media will become more and more convenient and more humane. Second, from the perspective of profit model, more and more respect for intellectual property rights, charging is inevitable, but with the fierce competition, the profit model of TV will be adjusted, according to the law of survival of the fittest, this adjustment will be more and more conducive to the use of users. Third, with the strengthening of platformization, as the aggregation of smart terminals continues to increase, smart TV will no longer be a simple entertainment tool, may become a family's intelligent life terminal. In short, the user awareness of TV will be further strengthened.

However, the current development of smart TVs presents a different state. For example, TV has become intelligent media and platform media, then "smart" means convenient use and humanized operation, but more and more people feel that they will not watch TV. Sometimes the two remote controls in front of you, which one to use and how to use it, may have to think about it for half a day. It doesn't matter if it's troublesome to use, what makes users miserable is all kinds of "routines", such as making you buy various memberships. If you don't buy it, sorry, some TV series can only watch two episodes; If you buy it, sorry, it may only update two episodes a day. If you want to see more, "take the remote control into your own hands", then, pay again ... In this era of user experience, the boot rate of TV is getting lower and lower, which seems to be an economic problem, but it will essentially have a very bad impact on the entire media ecology.

Television has never been a mere entertainment vehicle. From the moment television "occupies the living room", it has become an important information transmission channel, and so does the country's emphasis on television. For example, the purpose of TV "starding" is mainly based on the consideration of mainstream values and information transmission, rather than pure economic interests. Then, if the boot rate of TV is reduced, it will inevitably affect the current media ecological pattern. Of course, this does not seem to prevent young people from accessing information, after all, they have completed the transition from "big screen" to "small screen". However, if the media ecology of smart TV is not governed, forming a situation of resonance of large and small screens, its problems will continue to aggravate. At present, digital technology has led to profound changes in the TV ecology, which requires relevant departments to carry out systematic ecological governance, rather than allowing it to grow wildly.

(The author is an associate professor and head of the Research Center for Media and Social Development, Qingdao University of Science and Technology)