Yahoo lands full on TV Widgets

Yahoo has re-emerged with yet another strategically important partnership in the TV space, as it announced that it will be offering a TV Widget service in partnership with Samsung.

It was revealed that the service will be offered on Samsung’s new internet-connected HDTVs with content feeds from Yahoo! news channels and Flickr, where viewers will be able to browse news and photos on a large screen. The widget service will provide updates on localised content such as weather forecasts, the stock market and shares information.

With the emergence of large HDTVs, services like this will help content providers to push both existing and new content through easily accessible widgets in real time. However, whilst TV widgets can’t be interacted with in the same way as a PC or lap top, they will give new media content providers a great opportunity to tie the widget, or application, more closely to the content.

The real value of widget technology can be achieved when it’s extended to multiple devices from games consoles, to set-top boxes and mobile phones further enabling end-to-end peer interaction. Here at ANT we’ve already experimented with similar services on the STB and will be launching more in the future so watch this space!