Last week at the Intel Developer Forum, it was announced that Intel and Yahoo are developing a new widget service to access via your TV.
Yahoo would manage a widget library for services ranging from social and informational, to personalised add-ons. Yahoo and Intel have already been running an interactive TV service for the last two years – a fantasy football widget from Yahoo Sports that can be accessed on your TV via Intel’s Viiv Technology. The widget can be viewed whilst still watching the live match, with real-time updates. The companies believe this will help to take the consumer market a step closer to fully-interactive TV. AT&T currently offer a similar service for their IPTV customers, where you can get sport scores, a stock ticker, and Flickr integration (to name a few) on an interactive bar on your TV.
So what would these distinct companies have to gain from this partnership? Intel are pushing into the consumer electronics space, in the belief that it is currently built around limited processors with little or no internet connectivity. With the success of Yahoo on mobile devices (with the Yahoo widgets and Go portal client software) they’re hoping to repeat their success with TV, and expand their market.
An interesting point highlighted on NewTeeVee is that the companies will set a ground rule that any original electronics manufacturer which sign up to include the widget channel on their set top boxes will not be allowed to block access to any of the widget services. In turn, the widget gallery (managed by Yahoo) will offer services by any companies which use the platform. So for example, you could be watching something on your Sky+ box and still access Virgin Media’s widgets. This would be a great bonus to any third party web services, as they’ll gain broader distribution.
But do the consumer’s want fully interactive TV? It’s been interesting to read feedback on other Tech blogs, with a mixture of consumers being enthusiastic and excited about this advance in their TV experiences, whilst some have reported that they prefer to come home, sit back, and not have to interact with the box, but to just enjoy the entertainment. As it is, many of us use our PCs, laptops, and mobiles whilst watching TV, will users be over-stimulated? Should all these services be homogenised into one place?
What do you think? Is this a service you’d readily bring into your home, or would you rather widgets stayed on your computer screen?
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