CABLE CONGRESS 2012 – BRUSSELS. Apple can teach the cable sector about the development of user interfaces, according to Nick Thexton, senior vice president R&D new initiatives, NDS.
“It is a positive thing for the industry as a whole that their interface is so good it makes us all step up,” he said. “Operators have an advantage, we want to get to the stage when we can add a much broader variety of devices to the cloud.
Thexton was sharing the panel with Liberty Global CTO Balan Nair, who expressed frustration at what he perceives as the constantly changing model design of connected TVs.
“Smart TVs will proliferate, but one of the reasons why we did Horizon was that it not only has a great interface [developed in part by NDS], but also has a great remote control. When you press widgets it’s our widgets that come up.
Stung by a smart TV development project in Latin America. Nair said his order of development was set-tops, followed by Android, smart phones and tablets, gaming devices, and finally smart TVs.