Netflix’s Hastings touts TV Web browsers

Remotes with pointers are key to online video explosion

By Danny King -- Video Business, 11/13/2008

NOV. 13 | Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said TV remotes with pointer-like devices are the key to a jump in Web-video streaming through TVs and estimated that such devices might be available to the public as soon as next year.

Speaking today at the NewTeeVee Live conference in San Francisco, Hastings said pointers will allow people to use Web browsers on TVs just as they use them on personal computers. The alternative would be to wait for electronic-components makers to agree upon a single Web-navigation standard for TVs, which Hastings estimated could take decades.

“Letting go of the tab keys and going to the mouse was incredibly revolutionary 20 years ago,” said Hastings. “The real breakthrough will be in the remote. The videogame generation is very comfortable with a pointer on the screen.”

Netflix, Apple, Amazon.com and Blockbuster are among content distributors counting on technological advancements that allow consumers to download or video-stream movies or TV shows directly to TVs to unleash a flood of demand for digital content as demand for packaged media flattens. Some analysts have said annual revenue from digital content could more than double over the next five years, as DVD sales remain in the $25 billion range.

“Everyone’s going to have to do customer interfaces for each device” if the Web-browser solution isn’t adopted, Hastings said. “It’s slowing down the market tremendously.”

Netflix in particular has been trying to create a broader market for its video-streaming product by recently reaching agreements allowing owners of LG Electronics and Samsung Blu-ray Disc players, TiVo digital video recorders and Microsoft Xbox videogame consoles to use the components to stream Netflix's digital content directly to TVs.

Web interface through the TV within the next few years will require customers to have Internet-capable set-top boxes such as Apple TV and Netflix Player by Roku, which Netflix launched in May, because TV makers won’t be quick to build Web capability into their sets, Hastings said. He estimated that TV makers will start regularly integrating Web capability two or three years from now.

Additionally, cable companies are the multi-channel service operators most likely to benefit from the projected jump in Web-video consumption through TVs, Hastings said.

“People who have the biggest pipes are going to do great,” Hastings said. “Cable has by far the best architecture.”