New TV sets that come with networking connections built directly into them require no additional set-top boxes to get online. At the same time, many viewers are finding more attractive entertainment and information choices on the Internet -- and have already set up home networks for their PCs and laptops that can also move video and other multimedia content to their TV sets.
For starters, Netflix's online-video service will be available on a new line of high-definition TVs from LG Electronics. Netflix just announced a deal with Korea's LG Electronics Inc., that will make a Netflix online-video service available on a new line of high-definition TV sets from LG due out this spring. The online service offers 12,000 movie and television titles.
Amid other developments pegged to the just concluded Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo Inc. and Intel Corp. also announced support from several major consumer-electronics companies to sell TV sets that come with software, dubbed widgets, that make it easier to call up Web content on TV sets using ordinary remote controls rather than computer keyboards.
"You are going to see very broad adoption of this open technology by the best brands in the TV industry -- not just for specialty products but deeply penetrated in their product lines," said Patrick Barry, Yahoo's vice president of connected TV in Vegas.
While similarly optimistic statements have been made by industry executives since the mid-1990s, the topic remains a hot one in high-tech circles because of the potential impact on existing business models in the entertainment industry. Instead of the often expensive packages of video content from cable and satellite providers, the Internet could theoretically deliver a much wider array of entertainment and information choices -- many of them free.
Intel, Apple, and others have promoted specially tailored PCs, set-top boxes, and other new devices to bring video from the Internet to living-room TV sets. Computer makers now believe we will be more receptive, as Internet connections become a standard feature on TV sets, high-definition movie players and videogame consoles.
"The number of people who watch an entire TV show on their laptops has tripled," says Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist who is director of the user experience group in Intel's digital-home group. But Ms. Bell says research by the company also suggests that many people also have extremely strong bonds to their TV sets. So any effort to add Internet content needs to be just as simple and not interfere with the experiences and behavior patterns the users enjoy. That means, she says, using a conventional remote control -- not some kind of computer keyboard, or a PC-style Web browser of the sort that emerged as a TV option in the 1990s.
These findings are one reason why Intel -- which in 2007 abandoned an effort to promote multimedia PCs under Viiv -- became a supporter of what Yahoo calls the Widget Channel. Their collaboration is designed to create a standard way for Web services to be unobtrusively offered up on TV sets.
The widget displays a strip of icons for Web offerings on the bottom of a TV screen, while traditional programming plays above. Click on one of the icons with the remote and it opens a larger window on the left side of the screen. Click again and the window will take up the entire screen. You could pull up an Internet weather report, for example, or photos stored on Yahoo's Flickr service.
Yahoo and its hardware partners initially will act as gatekeepers in overseeing such offerings -- a bit like Apple does with its store for iPhone software, but they plan to keep the process open and non-discriminatory. Intel plans to offer chips to manage the widget software in Internet-equipped TV sets and set-top boxes, but its hardware will not be required.
However, there is a downside...
The technology required to include Internet capabilities in TV sets does add about $300 more than comparably-sized sets without online capabilities.
Are YOU willing to fork over that much money in this recession? And if not now, when?
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