clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile
ecosystem lead 1020
ecosystem lead 1020

Filed under:

A week on the front lines: inside the battle for TV, the living room, and your attention

We’ve spent the last week and a half digging into the players, companies, and history of the ongoing battle for the living room. To see where television could go next — and why it’s been stuck for so long — we spoke to to everyone from the Boxee CEO Avner Ronan and Vizio CTO Matt McRae to The New Yorker’s TV critic Emily Nussbaum and former FCC Chairman Michael Powell.

Almost every major player in the tech space is competing to disrupt the space, but even the best minds at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony, and Amazon haven’t been able to figure it out. None have been able to offer the perfect mix of live television, premium shows, and sports that the cable industry has locked down. Things are hardly settling down, with sources confirming confirming that Microsoft’s planning a set-top box in 2013, and there's always the ever-present rumor of a TV from Apple on the horizon.

Below, we've gathered up a week of living in every ecosystem, interviews with seven key voices in the industry, and in-depth reports on everything from ESPN's lock on the future of live sports to international perspectives on the state of TV in the UK and Japan.