AT&T’s Foundry* recently released a study on what the future of entertainment could look like.

My summary:

Consumers will (finally!) get to choose what is top and what is not (Predictions 1-3)

Artists and other content creators will (finally!) be fairly compensated and everybody is a content creator (Predictions 1 + 4)

Entertainment will (almost!) be consumed in a seamless and personalized experience across many devices and media (Predictions 5-10)

What I wholeheartedly agree with is the prediction that smartphones will become our personal remote controls to navigate the entertainment experience (Prediction 7).

What did I miss from the report? The lack of addressing the user experience in complete seamlessness between devices and places: If my autonomous car shows me the beginning of the latest episode of my favorite TV series while driving me home, why can’t the screen on my fridge continue to play the same episode while I cook dinner? After all, my fridge knows that I just  helped myself to ingredients. And my personal media gateway (Prediction 5) knows about my TV series watching and should propose the continuation at home, on the screen closest to the fridge! I have been saying for years that the key to a sticky killer application is seamlessness: Make the content follow me, instead of me having to chase the same content from device to device to device. In this sense I found the report too focused on technologies and products instead of the user experience.

Insightful also the visualization of which technologies are most discussed in media in the context of the future of entertainment. Most striking is the comparatively low attention that VR is getting:

The full report can be downloaded here.

* Together with Ericsson and RocketSpace.