Samsung Wants to Evolve Your TV Each Year

Samsung said it is taking a new approach to selling televisions. Americans, on average, buy a new one every 6.7 years. From Samsung’s point of view, that is too long. It wants you to upgrade your TV every year. Its new televisions, unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday, have a replaceable box on the back that will allow an upgrade of the TV’s picture and hardware at a price far below that of a new set. The box is called the Evolution Kit.Owners might upgrade more often than they would buy an entire new television. Samsung explained the concept as “you can buy a new television every year.” In this year’s model, the first screen that viewers will see includes TV shows, video on demand, streaming content and social networks that are tailored to a viewer’s preferences through what Samsung calls S Recommendation. The improvement brings universal search to all entertainment, rather than searching each provider or service separately. Of course, the idea of your television making recommendations based on your viewing habits isn’t new. Even the earliest TiVo digital video recorders saved shows it thought the owner might like, sometimes with inaccurate results. Search could get better as software improves, but some improvements have gone beyond that. Samsung’s new televisions have faster processors that improve their pictures and have been added to improve the quality of streamed shows. The changes make a TV purchase more like a yearly subscription service than a big-ticket purchase made every few years.