Source: Facebook is building a hybrid video chat/TV set-top box, internally called Ripley, which it plans to announce in Spring 2019
Facebook is developing hardware for the TV, Cheddar has learned. — The world's largest social network is building a camera-equipped device that sits atop …
Context & Ripple Effects
Ripley is the next step in a hardware arc that has been visible for over a year: Facebook first showed up in sourcing around a wide-angle video chat device with a large touchscreen in mid-2017, then firmed those plans into Portal, an Echo Show-style device slated for F8 at $499. What changes today is the destination — instead of a countertop screen, the same camera-and-calling stack is being aimed at the television itself.
The move also closes a loop on distribution: back in early 2017 Facebook was reportedly building a video app for other companies' set-top boxes like Apple TV as part of its original-programming push, and by late 2018 it was in talks with HBO, Showtime, and Starz to sell their streaming services on its own platform. Owning the box is the logical endgame of both threads.
First-order effects
- Facebook shifts from renting space on rivals' hardware to shipping its own living-room endpoint, putting its Portal-derived camera and calling tech directly on the TV ahead of a planned Spring 2019 announcement.
- Pay TV channels weighing Facebook's platform pitch gain a dedicated device surface, making the HBO, Showtime, and Starz distribution talks more concrete than an app-on-someone-else's-box arrangement.
Second-order effects
- Amazon's Echo Show line and incumbent streamers like Apple TV face a competitor whose wedge is video calling tied to the social graph rather than content libraries or commerce alone.
- Streaming services get added leverage in carriage negotiations: a Facebook box hungry for content raises the price of exclusivity and gives networks another bidder alongside existing platforms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the living room splits between content-first boxes and identity-first ones, with camera-equipped social devices carving out a calling-and-presence niche that pure streamers don't occupy.
- A Facebook camera pointed at the family TV raises the privacy stakes for connected-home hardware generally, likely drawing regulatory and consumer scrutiny that countertop devices only previewed.
The trend: Social platforms are extending their hardware from personal screens into the television, using video calling and the social graph as the entry point while courting streamers for content.