Bringing the Internet to Your TV
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Samsung and Yahoo introduced new technology that will bring the internet into your TV.
I think this is a game changer. This initiative and others like it will have a profound impact on television, and the people that make TV, in the near future.
Boo-Keun Yoon, one Samsung’s executive vice-presidents, said: “It’s frankly way beyond just passively watching broadcasts and is no doubt the future of TV.”
The technology allows users to overlay Yahoo widgets on their television screens. Essentially it allows you to control what you see on the screen, beyond just changing channels. So for instance you could be watching Jeopardy while getting streaming stock quotes, hockey scores, or weather updates overlaid beside Alex Trebek.
This approach sidesteps one of the biggest problems that has been delaying the advent of the internet on televisions. The problem is that the internet is not by nature a broadcaster. It’s built to delivers millions of different web pages to billions of different people. But if the if tries to deliver the same web page to billions of people, it crashes. Think of 9/11 when everyone had to turn to TV to get their updates because all the online news sites crashed.
Using Yahoo widgets (a widget is a software module that you can customize and install on many different devices such as iPods, televisions or web pages) sidesteps the this problem because there are thousands of widgets that deliver niche content from different sources. Combine the niche content of internet widgets with the mass appeal of television broadcasts and you’ve got the best of both worlds.
“Yahoo has combined key attributes of the Internet, including openness, community, and personalization, with the power of television,” Patrick Barry, VP of Connected TV Yahoo, said in a yesterday.
It allows television to do what television is good at – simultaneously broadcasting to millions of people – while pairing that content with what the internet is good at – narrow, focused, niche interests. Think CNN but where you get to pick what goes in the ticker, or watching a hockey game with a fan chat room, or Jamie Oliver with the recipes displayed on the side of the screen. It’s clearly much more engaging than present day television.
Yahoo’s own developers and those from eBay, MySpace, CBS, The New York Times, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, Showtime, USA TODAY, and Twitter, among others, are involved in the effort.
What do you think of this new technology? Is this something the CBC should be getting involved in?
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Did you notice Peter Mansbridge in the HD Internet TV Jeopardy Mockup Picture? Look to the right at the top and you’ll see him.
I like the idea of integrating Internet with TV but I don’t think this is the right way to do it… If I want to know the weather, I’ll look it up WHILE I’m watching, instead of having it stream.
Also, I watch prime time shows to get away from the news/real world. Why would I want streaming headlines?
PLUS, What would happen to the scrolls outputted by the networks? How’s the graphics person supposed to determine where to put that super so everyone can see it? Will there be blocked out zones where widgets can’t be displayed?
Sheesh. It’s bad enough that we get all these stupid crawlers, network icons in the corners, flashing “YOU’RE WATCHING XXX. UP NEXT YYY” overlays.
Leave my screen alone. Let me watch the content of the program I tuned in to see.
I think that if such information is required while watching TV, it is better accessed on the laptop you have on the coffee table, or on the smartphone you have in your hand.
Of course, that’s assuming that you’re not watching TV on a computer in the first place…
Seems like a natural progression of content aggregation giving first adopters and net savy web heads a way of finally moving the internet onto the television screen and into their ‘real’ lives.
I love Samsung for taking the initiative with this. The possibilities are endless and I surely think networks would take interest in what ways they might integrate their content for web enabled televisions.
While this is an exciting announcement, I question whether people will want to check the weather or financial stocks while watching an episode of their favourite program.
It seems to me that the real story is that the Internet is coming to TV. Given the growing popularity of online video, I think this announcement signals a threat to satellite and cable companies and the position they have enjoyed for decades.
Read more: http://cbcdrb.blogspot.com/
[...] and personalization with the power of television.” CBC’s Paul McGrath’s post, Bringing the Internet to Your TV, illustrates the excitement this announcement has [...]