We have spoken in length about innovations in your bog standard tv set, that will turn it into a multimedia entertainment hub. The humble television set will soon be no longer be just a vehicle for tv broadcasts and recorded video or a console display. Your TV is morphing into a Internet enabled computer that happens to show tv shows. Its becoming like your PC and smart phone, delivering on demand news, streams, information, entertainment and games. The driving force behind this is software platforms from companies like Yahoo Widgets, Adobe and Roku that are encouraging developers to build apps that can run on multiple TVs.
It’s not the first time companies have hoped to bring the Internet to televisions – remember WebTV? – but many of the leading players feel like they’re finally touching on the formula to get it right. And they feel that apps and widgets – programs designed for a large screen without some of the clutter of a traditional Web browser – are the answer.
“This is a major transition happening with TVs,” said Matthew McRae, vice president and general manager of product group at Vizio, the No. 1 LCD TV-maker in the United States. “TVs have moved from black and white to color and then to flat panel. This is the next evolution, from a display that sits on the wall to a product you interact with.”
Some televisions have had direct Internet connections for a few years, and companies such as Panasonic and Sony have tried to pack in programs that take advantage of the connectivity. Game consoles, Blu-ray DVD players and set-top boxes have also brought connectivity to TVs in recent years.
However, now we have software platforms like the Yahoo Widget Engine, developers can now write programs for a wide number of TVs that can pull Internet data and provide users with some of the customized Web experience they get from iPhone apps. Yahoo’s software platform boasts about 20 apps now that are being bundled with new TVs from Sony, Samsung, LG and Vizio.
There are a few hurdles to cross first though, including the fact that many current televisions cannot display widgets or connect to the net. And the fact that the current price of these new age tv sets is around $1000 which makes a set-top box like Roku seem a bargain as it delivers the same kind of experience.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/23/BUJP1AJVJ6.DTL#ixzz0XsxzvrOl
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