Some three million Adobe Flash developers will soon have the chance to build TV Apps using Adobe Air 2.5 since Samsung and Adobe announced this week that Samsung's Smart TV platform will be the first to integrate support for Air for TV, making it easy for coders to build, distribute and monetize standalone applications through Samsung's TV app platform.
The integration of AIR for TV with Samsung's Smart TV platform will create new opportunities for a enormous community of developers who can use Adobe Creative Suite 5 to author content for AIR for TV. All of Samsung's 2011 Smart TVs and Smart Blu-ray players will include support for Adobe AIR for TV.
"Together, Samsung and Adobe are transforming the ways in which consumers interact with devices and content, providing rich, interactive applications built with industry-leading, cross platform tools."
Samsung also announced plans to bring Adobe Flash Player 10.1 to its Smart TV browser, extending the company's current support for Flash Player 10.1 on Samsung smartphones and tablets. With the addition of Flash Player 10.1, users will enjoy a more complete web browsing experience on the TV, with access to millions of websites with rich videos, games and other multimedia content.
"Adobe is a key partner for Samsung and we are thrilled to be the first TV manufacturer to support Adobe AIR across the Samsung Smart TV platform," said Boo-Keun Yoon, President of Samsung's Visual Display Business. "Together, Samsung and Adobe are transforming the ways in which consumers interact with devices and content, providing rich, interactive applications built with industry-leading, cross platform tools."
"Content publishers want to extend their reach from smartphones to the largest screen in the home – all without sacrificing the unique context and experience of each screen," said Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe. "Samsung is the first device manufacturer to embrace Adobe AIR for TV, and together we will enable developers to extend media applications, social games and other forms of rich content to televisions and a wide range of Samsung devices."
With Samsung's Smart TV platform and Adobe AIR for TV, developers are able to leverage existing code to create and deliver standalone applications across devices and platforms. The Samsung Smart TV platform was built with the developer in mind, enabling content creators to develop applications on an open platform, using common web standards like Javascript and XML and now support for Adobe AIR. The platform uses a single Software Developer Kit (SDK) for Apps that runs across HDTVs, Blu-ray players and Blu-ray Home Theater systems so developers can write once and deploy apps across several platforms. This gives developers the opportunity for more versatile monetization and enables a consistent and intuitive experience for consumers.
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DirecTVand Samsung have announced they have partnered to present the world's first RVU-compatible production televisions, which will provide more than 19.1 million DirecTVsubscribers with the ability to watch live broadcast and stored content from their DVR on Samsung smart TVs, without the need for additional set-top boxes. As founding members of the RVU Alliance, Samsung and DirecTVare committed to providing a more seamless entertainment experience for consumers across multiple rooms and a variety of screens, through the use of standardized Remote User Interface (RUI) technology.
"The CES demonstration of the first RVU compliant television is exciting news for the industry and consumers who want a consistent, superior user experience throughout the home"
The RVU protocol will be supported on Samsung's LED D6000, LED D6400 and LED 6420 TV products that reflect the company's commitment to delivering consumers high-quality, visually enhanced and connected entertainment experiences in their home. A RUI technology based on industry standards such as DLNA and UPnP, RVU allows a set-top box server to provide a multi-room, complete viewing experience that includes DVR services, without the need for additional set-top boxes in homes that have more than one connected TV.
"We are very happy to be working with an esteemed satellite provider like DirecTVand provide the world first RVU service to consumers with Samsung TV," said Boo-Keun Yoon, president of Samsung's Visual Display Business. "Products developed on RVU standards, one of the major RUI standards, will help accelerate the development of features and applications that can provide our customers with a truly customizable, immersive entertainment experience that can be enjoyed from the comfort of the home."
"The CES demonstration of the first RVU compliant television is exciting news for the industry and consumers who want a consistent, superior user experience throughout the home," said Romulo Pontual, CTO of DIRECTV. "Making DirecTVfeatures and content available to Samsung's televisions through the RVU server allows consumers to enjoy our innovative service without the need for additional set-top boxes. We are pleased to see our successful partnership with Samsung expand to include support for RVU in their 2011 model range."
Capable of supporting multiple connected televisions, DIRECTV's RVU server enables the UI and features to be displayed directly on those connected TVs. Under this partnership, Samsung will embed support for RVU in their smart TVs and provide its customers with the full DirecTVexperience, including DVR services, live pause abilities on all screens in the home, 200 hours worth of shared storage, picture-in-picture capabilities and the power to record up to five shows at once. Samsung's RVU-compatible TVs will be available in March 2011.
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CES has seen LG release an industry-first with what they are calling a 'Smart TV Upgrader' which will allow for the transformation of a traditional TV into a smart TV. They say the device will turn regular televisions into Internet-enabled sets with access to premium online content, shows, Web sites, and LG apps and owners of older TVs will also be able to find shows, movies, language classes, and games, and access sites including Netflix, YouTube, Vudu, and Pandora Internet radio, as well as run Yahoo TV widgets. But it also puts them into direct competition with companies such as Roku, TiVo and Boxee Box in the US market.
"The market for smart TVs is set to take off this year, and the ST600 offers a perfect entry point," said Havis Kwon, president and CEO of LG Home Entertainment Co., in a statement. "With the LG Smart TV Upgrader, we're taking the excitement and convenience of smart TV and adding in LG's trademark ease of use because we see a significant audience who are interested, but not interested enough to buy a whole new TV."
The device comes with a BCM7615 processor, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) connectivity to transfer content from compatible PCs; 384 MB of RAM; 1 GB of flash storage; a Web browser; finger-touch RCU input device; and USB. It also has an LG add-on architecture.
The Seoul-based consumer electronics maker did not release pricing for the ST600 but said it would be "an affordable price," and that it would be available in the second quarter of 2011.
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I've been paying a closer look at Bianor, creators of iMediaShare for a while now. They've been winning awards and believe in their endeavor to create a simple non-technical experience to bring content on any screen via any device.
This week, Bianor introduces iMediaShare 3.0, a free mobile app that transforms your Android smartphone into a remote control, allowing you to seamlessly stream and watch online media on the big screen. Unlike the many set-top box solutions available in the marketplace, iMediaShare 3.0 requires no additional hardware and no cables. The mobile solution ensures that your favorite content is portable, so you can play it at any time on any connected TV. iMediaShare 3.0 also supports connected audio systems and blu-ray players, as well as PS3 and Xbox 360 game consoles.
Bianor's Managing Director, Metodi Filipov, said:
"The latest Android version of iMediaShare comes with a complete redesign, which provides a much improved user-experience, and a new scalable back-end infrastructure to support on-demand video streaming from the cloud. The online TV channels featured on iMediaShare 3.0 include TEDTalks and NASA TV. Users can expect to see many more channels in the near future."
Download the free mobile app iMediaShare from ims.bianor.com/dl
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Congratulations to the Movl.com team with WeDraw in winning the American Free the TV Challenge for the best Samsung Apps at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
“The key to a successful TV app is its relevance to the TV,” said Samsung’s David Steele at a press conference at CES. “It’s not a race to get the most apps, but setting the path to get the right apps.”
There was a total of 14 finalists in the Free the TV Challenge and out of these four winners were selected.
The winners, Movl.com who created the WeDraw app, said the app works in conjunction with a smartphone and your Smart TV set. The player draws a picture on the smarphone and the other players have to guess what they are drawing by what appears on the TV set.
Second place was awarded to TheGymbox LLC for the app named TheGymbox. This app give on demand workouts each week. These are full-length exercise routines that include step aerobics, yoga, pilates, core and strength training, kickboxing, treadmill, cycline, and stretching.
Third place was given to the Armchair Astronaut app created by Artifact LLC. This app lets you journey around the solar system all in the comfort of your living room. The app developers used 3D content to give you the feeling of being out in space.
People's Choice or fourth place was awarded by the most votes received by consumers that participated in voting. The app that won this recognition is called Numote. This app is developed around social TV sharing that showed trends for TV listings and badges for finding out more about the shows.
Currently Samsung has around 300 apps available at their HDTV app store and they say that there are now over 1.5 million downloads of the apps since it launched in March 2010.
Samsung says it’s approaching 1.5 million app downloads with 300 TV apps on its global market and in 2011, two-thirds of Samsung’s TV models on the market will be connected sets.
In related news, Samsung in Europe has announced it's closing dates for Smart TV Challenge. Entries for the Samsung Smart TV Challenge, a prize pool of €500,000, Will close on the 14th January 2011. For further details regarding the European competition visit www.samsungsmarttvchallenge.eu
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Trident Microsystems, a leading provider of set-top box and TV semiconductor solutions, has announced that it has ported a cinema version of the Yahoo! Connected TV experience onto the Trident DTV platform that will be powering top-brand Cinema TVs scheduled to begin shipping in early 2011. These new Cinema TVs deliver a TV viewing experience previously found only on the big screen in movie theaters. Combined with access to the best of the Web, including more than 50,000 TV shows and movies on demand and thousands of Internet content sources specifically created for the TV, Cinema TVs deliver the ultimate home viewing platform.
Up until now, movies designed for the big screen needed to be altered in order to be displayed on home digital televisions since these TVs use a 16:9 aspect ratio. With a Cinema TV, which uses a 21:9 aspect ratio, the movie can — for the first time — be displayed on the TV exactly as it appears on the movie screen. This means that all the vivid details, picture quality and realism that consumers go to the movie theatre to experience, can now be achieved at home. Furthermore, these new TVs also deliver an Internet-connected platform, enabling consumers to view a wide variety of Web content from leading publishers by scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen and clicking a remote control to access TV Apps for streaming video, movies, gaming, weather, sports, news, stock quotes, social networking and much more.
"Trident technology is once again at the forefront of enabling a fully-immersive and connected platform that provides access — right from your living room — to TV shows, 3D content, movies, music, games, photos, videos and extensive Internet content," said Christos Lagomichos, president of Trident Microsystems. "We not only deliver the underlying semiconductor technology for the world's leading TVs and STBs, but we also partner with global leaders such as Yahoo! to build the entire ecosystem around the next generation connected home multimedia system."
"We are extremely pleased to see Yahoo! Connected TV featured on Trident's platform solutions designed to enhance the Connected Home," said Ron Jacoby, vice president of Yahoo! Connected TV. "The availability of our extensive selection of TV Apps on the first Cinema TV will deliver a whole new level of interactivity and television viewing experiences to users across the country."
Trident also has plans to incorporate the Yahoo! Connected TV broadcast interactivity feature into its SXL platform. With the broadcast interactivity feature, TV viewers will be able to interact with broadcast programming in new ways, such as voting for a reality TV participant, accessing information about characters, or making ecommerce purchases of merchandise such as clothing, music, and more.
Trident: The Underlying Technology
As the only company in the world with leadership positions in both set-top box and TV semiconductor solutions, Trident is driving technologies for the extended, connected home, where any content can be enjoyed on any display, from any device at any time. From spectacular 2D and 3D picture quality, stereo-sound audio, Internet-ready connectivity platforms, to the most advanced features on your television or set-top box, Trident is the driving force and underlying technology behind these exciting new capabilities.
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Brier Dudley from the Seattle Times pretty much had to dig into some sealed-off meeting rooms, to find them, but apparently there were a whole stack of TV boxes and a flat-screen TV with a new Microsoft TV system built in - luckily proving Dudley's prediction that Microsoft would be coming out into the connected TV space, aside from the Xbox gaming angle.
The set-top boxes shown ranged from a paperback-book-sized Acer Revo prototype to a Gateway set-top box with six digital tuners, based on a new tuner card from Kirkland's Ceton.
...Reycom's REC 100 will work as a digital video recorder and stream video around the home to PCs, Xbox 360 consoles and home servers. It can be controlled with a remote control or with a Windows Phone 7 device.
Apparently and interestingly, Microsoft decided not to open up like Google TV with a browser in the basic software, but manufacturers can add one to their products.
Haier's TV included a browser that could be used to access websites such as CBS.com to watch online video on the big screen. Pendergrast also showed how the system works with Windows Phone 7. Using an LG phone that has media streaming capability and a "play to" button on the menu, he selected media on the phone and clicked to stream it to the set-top boxes so that it appeared on the big TV displays.
Opportunities for third party apps and developers? Not likely. I doubt they will be shipping with an SDK or API.
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At the Samsung keynote speech at CES 2011 in Los Vegas this week, the company announced a number of new partnerships that will pull content from companies like Hulu, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Adobe to Samsung Internet-connected devices.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable announced that their cable content – including live TV – will be available on the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Samsung Smart TVs by year's end. Hulu also said that the Hulu Plus subscription service will soon be available on Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S, while Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was on hand to announce that Samsung TVs will support Flash.
"Together, TWC and Samsung will give our customers all the channels they enjoy now as well as full navigation experience on Samsung smart TVs, without need for set-top box, and we'll do it this year," said TWC chief Glenn Britt.
"We have the technology framework in place to deliver new features to Comcast customers faster than ever, including on connected TVs, tablets and multiple devices, which is core to our strategy and a key facet of the future of television," said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. "We're radically changing how consumers interact with their televisions, whether they are watching on a big screen or small screen."
To make sure users can access as much content as possible on these Internet-connected devices,
"Our customers want a more complete Web -browsing experience on" Smart TVs," said Boo-Keun Yoon, president of Samsung's Visual Display Business. With Flash, "consumers can access millions of sites with rich videos. It is a must-have for anyone bringing Web-based content to the living room screen."
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Panasonic, the last major CE manufacturer to hold out with a proprietary application platform has decided to open the gates and is coming out with a software development kit sometime this year, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.The bad news is they are rolling out their own code base, creating yet another platform for developers to deal with. Sony, LG, Philips, Toshiba, and Samsung all have their own TV application platforms.
Panasonic was an early proponent of connected TVs, rolling out the first models in 2008. But it has been more cautious than its rivals, keeping a tight lid on the apps available for its sets. This year it plans to take a less restrictive approach, offering a software development kit to the public for use by would-be app writers. Yet like several of its competitors, it's sticking with a custom platform that developers have to tailor their software to, further fracturing the market and delaying the introduction of new apps.
On another note, it seems that the company is also moving towards a full on two screen experience in the living room by releasing a Viera Tablet sometime later this year in Japan.
Add a comment Add a commentRather than browse the Net, the chunky Viera Tablet browses applications on a Viera Connect set. Content streams from the set to the tablet wirelessly, so it appears the tablet won't be of much use once it's out of the TV's Wi-Fi range.
The thinking behind the device, Panasonic's Peter Fannon said, is that it will serve as a second screen in the living room, enabling users to explore content related to what they're watching on the big screen. For example, they could check scores and statistics on the tablet while watching a ballgame on the TV, or read the tweets about an awards show while it's playing on their set. It also doubles as a touch-screen remote control. And for a gee-whiz effect, users can swipe the surface of the tablet toward their Viera Connect TV to move to the TV screen whatever they've been watching on the tablet.
Yahoo! is revolutionizing Internet-connected TVs once again with an innovative new consumer experience for TV, called broadcast interactivity, on its Yahoo! Connected TV platform, which brings Internet-enhanced television to millions of consumers across the world's most popular TV brands.
Unveiled today at CES, this feature launches in a pilot program with select national broadcast, cable TV leaders including ABC, CBS, HSN and Showtime, along with major brand advertisers such as Ford, Mattel and Microsoft. Yahoo! also revealed new TV apps for the Connected TV platform from traditional media and entertainment companies, including CNBC, Clear Channel Radio, NBC, QVC and mgMedia. At the show, Yahoo! is demonstrating three-screen connectivity features, which offer interactivity between external devices and the TV, including tablets and phones.
On the mobile side, Yahoo! announced a new Flickr app for Windows 7 phones and Slate tablets, which offer Flickr members a rich and seamless experience to share and discover photos and videos directly from their mobile devices.
“Our collaboration with leaders in television and brand advertising, combined with the innovative technologies we’re pioneering, signals the beginning of a new era of highly personalized, Internet-enhanced television,” said Ron Jacoby, vice president, Yahoo! Connected TV. “Imagine an immersive, real-time TV experience that brings people even closer to the programs and brands they love by enabling them to play along while they watch their favorite shows.”
With broadcast interactivity, TV programmers will be able to create TV apps that let viewers vote for a reality-TV participant, get more information about characters, or make e-commerce purchases while waching a show. For brand advertisers, broadcast interactivity will let them connect in real time with TV viewers during commercials or other branded entertainment experiences. Examples of broadcast interactivity could include:
Yahoo! is working with Connected TV distribution partners including Broadcom Corporation,
D-Link, Haier, MediaTek, Sony and Toshiba to enable the broadcast interactivity pilot on their devices in 2011.
TV apps on Yahoo! Connected TV
Today the Yahoo! Connected TV experience centers around a collection of more than 100 easy-to-use TV apps, providing deep content designed to complement TV viewing. TV apps run the gamut from social networking to music, games, news, weather, finance, and shopping, and provide access to more than 50,000 movies and TV shows on demand.
Traditional media and entertainment companies are developing some of the most compelling new TV apps available on Yahoo! Connected TV. These companies include CNBC, a recognized world leader in business news; Clear Channel Radio, a leading radio company; NBC, a leading television network; QVC, one of the largest multimedia retailers in the world; and mgMedia, developer of technology for multi-device, worldwide movies on demand distribution.
New media TV apps for the Yahoo! Connected TV platform include those from Mediafly, Virtual Nerd, Screen Dreams, and more.
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