Will viewers come to accept a camera on their TV?

Sky recently unveiled Sky Live, an interactive camera for owners of its Sky Glass TV set.

The use cases foregrounded in the press release are a grab bag of camera-enabled functionality we’ve seen elsewhere.

Watch Together promises a communal viewing experience similar to the pandemic-friendly Teleparty (ne. Netflix Party), Disney+’s GroupWatch and Apple’s SharePlay.

The Mvmnt fitness app and hands-free immersive games owe a debt to the Xbox Kinect.

Video calling with Auto-Tracking is familiar from the now discontinued Meta Portal TV (a great piece of kit, but the worst possible company to try and sell a camera in your living room).

The release also trails a forthcoming developer portal for third-parties to develop experiences for Sky Live, although Sky are clear that won’t include paid-for apps.

Sky have a track record of delivering slick consumer products and there’s no reason to think Sky Live will be anything other than well executed.

How many Sky Glass owners (of which there aren’t loads) will be willing to shell out £290 for this add-on is one question (I suspect not many).

A more interesting macro question is whether viewers will, in time, come to accept having a camera on their TV.

Most of us have accepted front-facing cameras on our smartphones and many of us unlock them using our face dozens, if not hundreds, of times a day.

But there’s something about the intimacy of our living rooms (even more so bedrooms) that makes a camera atop our TV feel harder to embrace.

Anxieties around the camera always being on are one contributing factor (and got Microsoft in a pickle with the Kinect).

There is a button on top of the Sky Live to turn off the camera and mic but - unlike Meta’s Portal TV and Amazon’s Echo Show - no physical lens cover, which feels like a miss.

Whilst Sky haven’t indicated that they plan to use the camera to gather viewing insights, that’s certainly a tantalising prospect for broadcasters, streaming services and TV platform owners who have all hit a wall in their understanding of who is watching at any given moment.

Using facial/body recognition to tell not just who is in the room, but who is actively looking at the TV screen, would be gold for companies currently stitching together a patchwork of panel-based sampling and polluted user profiles to try and get a picture of who’s watching what.

Having the camera integrated into the TV set rather than an optional add-on would help with uptake (and is presumably in Sky’s plans for Glass v2).

However, TV manufacturers have tried integrating cameras before and it’s not proven a strong selling point or become a must have feature for margin conscious manufacturers.

One company that’s having a crack is new-entrant Telly, who are betting that viewers will accept a fair amount of intrusion in return for a free TV set. In addition to a second screen dedicated to advertising, the unit includes a camera.

Although Telly insist they won’t use it for anything nefarious, I can see it being a potential pivot (free TV in return for tracking your household’s viewing using the camera).

My guess is that most viewers will remain resistant to a camera on or in their TV, with the more affordable third or forth generation descendants of the Apple Vision Pro being the most likely path for more cameras into our living rooms.