Telly, a startup led by a co-founder of Pluto TV, is taking a novel tack in promoting its dual-screen smart TV sets. After emerging from a 24-month stealth period, the company says it will offer it…
and have advertising more completely fund the device itself. “TVs have become a commodity,” Pozin said. “When a category becomes a commodity, what happens? It’s a race to the bottom on price. There’s very little margin to be made on the hardware.” Over time, he went on, smart TVs became “drastically under-powered. They’re the largest screen in our home, but they are as dumb as an ATM machine.” Instead of setting out to make a bargain-priced TV, Telly has targeted the higher end of the market.
Mindful of the challenging economics in the hardware business, smart-TV players like Samsung, Vizio and LG have pivoted toward free, ad supported streaming television [FAST]. Telly’s strategy differs from theirs in that it is not promoting its own streaming ecosystem. Instead, it is meant to be a living-room hub for thousands of apps — video streaming, of course, but also videoconferencing, music, fitness, gaming and other categories.
Of course, there will be tradeoffs made by those signing up for a free Telly in terms of agreeing to surrender certain data, but Pozin said the company has made an effort to prioritize consumer privacy. The smart-TV sector has seen other violations over the years Vizio in 2017 was fined $2.2 million after federal regulators found the company’s data practices were deceptive. TV data firm Alphonso also was reported to be accessing viewers’ audio inputs without sufficient disclosure.
Any cable or satellite TV input can be connected to Telly via its three HDMI ports. The set ships with a 4K Android TV streaming stick. Users can also plug in a connected device from Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV or other providers .
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