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A New TV Concept Aims to Redefine Television for the Internet Generation

09.08.15 | By
A New TV Concept Aims to Redefine Television for the Internet Generation

Renan Feltri, a designer in Brazil, believes television are both overly complicated and doing a poor job serving how we – the internet generation – is watching content at home today. Beyond 3D, curved, or 4K resolution features, Feltri thinks the real issue hampering the everyday viewer is discovering content.

“Current tv channels are not the right interface for content distribution anymore…Streaming services inversely rely on a library metaphor, putting thousands of contents at users disposal and presenting hundreds of them at once through algorithm generated recommendations. Despite a clearer organization, the infinite lists of content presented at the same time overwhelm users and poorly guide them on the process of choosing what to watch, feeding decision fatigue and causing them to give up on their search for entertainment.”

Fueled by this dissatisfaction, the designer decided to blue sky his own vision of what television hardware and services should look like in the Netflix/HBO Go/Amazon streaming era, where viewers don’t care so much as where something is distributed, but more concerned they have simply have access to it. Feltri’s New TV Concept simplifies channel browsing and television interface into an experience not unlike Google Now’s card-based interface, complete with the option to “pin favorites,” a one-button touch remote, gathering various content providers into a single amalgamated experience, all inside hardware that eschews the usual input glut of modern devices for a single HDMI input and power cord. He calls the entirety of his system a “storytelling machine,” and goes into great detail about his television concept both as hardware and design process.

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Feltri-TVConcept-dosanddonts

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Feltri’s vision, though idealized, isn’t so far fetched. Much news and speculation has been made about Apple’s intent to simplify the multi-distribution landscape into a singularly cohesive experience with their upcoming Apple TV (and perhaps in time an actual Apple-designed television); Microsoft, Google, Netflix and Amazon all have similar visions of creating simplified and cohesive entries points (some more walled than others).

Feltri's exploration of television hardware, distribution, and consumption habits led him to numerous interface iterations.

Feltri’s exploration of television hardware, distribution, and consumption habits led him to numerous interface iterations.

If anything, Renan Feltri’s concept is an interesting peek at how the Millennial generation may want to reshape hardware and services to relate to their own comfort, comprehension, and consumption of content, inherently different from generations prior that find comfort in analog analogies…the television as one giant smartphone instead of a dumb screen.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.