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I am sitting, for the second year running, at the The Connected TV Summit at the RIBA in London. Something has just occurred to me, everyone is saying pretty much what they did last year (apart from very little mention of 3DTV, what does that tell you?).

What does this mean.

Probably that it didn’t really happen last year and so we have just moved forward in time and not really in progress. The common theme to why this might be seems to be that the fragmentation that exists in terms of Content provision, Technical offerings, supply chain and infrastructure is it’s biggest barrier, again this was the same as last year.

So what is the solution to this?

Maybe we need a Tim Berners Lee type televisionary (apologies to Ross for stealing his word) who can create a ubiquitous platform that will level the playing field enabling Smart TV pioneers to work their magic by creating numerous killer apps that make the platform viable. (EDIT: Phillips might just prove me wrong here)

More likely we will have an iPhone scenario where one CE manufacturer will create a killer device that whilst might not corner the market in sales, will corner the market in impression, imagination and invention. This will lead to lots of me too type products and a sort of standard will happen. (Apple are strongly rumoured to be working on their TV so watch this space)

The final scenario is one where a service is developed that so captures the imagination of consumers that demand for that kind of thing will force the platforms and manufacturers into action .
Whilst unlikely I would love for this to be the case, if we can get under the skin of what people actually want from SmartTV (and remember that asking them isn’t going to get you the answer) we could do this. Something smart, something game changing, something disruptive, something no one has though of yet(certainly not here) this could become the Google of the smart TV world. I for one am trying to think of this idea!

It’s a shame that conversation here is dominated by talk of business models, ad revenue platforms and payment systems. Yes, all this stuff is vital for it to work but where is the inspiration, where is the passion, where is the genius?

Let’s hope that next year we see some of that.