Archive for Digital Appliances
Posted on Apr 28, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:53 am
Widgets are hot right now. From Internet-connected TVs to set top boxes to information appliances, everyone wants widgets. And a lot of companies are offering new ways to feed web-based content to widgets, from Windows Vista SideShow to Yahoo Widgets to proprietary versions.
Add a new heavy-hitter to the roster of widgets contenders: Adobe.
Adobe, titan of graphic design software, is also the maker of the one of the dominant web audio and video programs, Flash. Now Adobe is positioning Flash as a platform for developing web-connected widgets with its Flash Platform initiative.
Some of the big names that will be supporting the Flash Platform include Broadcom, Comcast, Disney, Intel, and Netflix. Nice to see a mix of hardware, infrastructure, and content providers there. That’s a smart strategy.
Adobe is coming to the widget game a little later than some, but if it can replicate the success of the Flash browser plug-in with the Flash Platform effort, we can expect to see Flash-based widgets popping up everywhere very soon.
Posted on Apr 24, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:37 am
With the success of Apple’s App Store for the iPhone (they’re coming up on 1 billion apps downloaded), everyone is getting in on the App Store trend. And it’s great: turning devices into platforms means that instead of being tied solely to a manufacturer’s software, users will have their choice of great, innovative, unexpected apps to expand the usefulness of their hardware.
The trend towards App Stores is starting to pop up in information appliances, too, and one of the most promising such devices, the Verizon Hub, will launch an app store later this year.
The Hub, which combines a phone with a 7-inch touchscreen and a widget-heavy operating system, has been on sale to Verizon customers since February.
The app store will open up uses for the device and, along with that, it seems that Verizon will be making the device available through channels besides its Verizon Wireless pipeline.
Of course the success of this move towards openness will be, in part, determined by Verizon’s commitment to it and the ease of development for the platform, but I’m excited to see where it leads and to see what kinds of widgets and applications get launched when the app store debuts.
Posted on Apr 18, 2009 by admin at 2:18 am
It seems nearly inevitable that connected TVs – TVs that can stream audio, video, photos, and other content from the web to the living room – are the wave of the future. New research from Parks Associates not only bears this out, but also shows that consumers are willing to pay a premium for these TVs.
The research found that nearly 2.5 million consumers in the U.S. are already eager for connected TVs. And, what’s more, they’re willing to pay as much as a US$100 premium over non-connected TVs to get the features they want. That willingness to pay a premium price could add as much as a $250 million boost to electronics company bottom lines.
Video-on-demand is the key driver that consumers are seeking according to the research, though I suspect as they move beyond that they’ll want to deliver photos, cartoons, and other information to these connected screens.
Posted on Mar 30, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:30 am
Sony’s new line of Bravia HDTVs have two features that put them in the information appliance category: first, they can connect to any DLNA-compatible device via USB to stream computer-based content, and they support on-screen, RSS-aware widgets to stream content from the web.
Though the DLNA support is interesting, the most appealing thing about the TVs to me is the AppliCast feature, which allows the TVs to pull RSS feeds from the web and display them in onscreen widgets over Ethernet. While the TVs come with a handful of widgets pre-installed (clock and, crucially, picture frame), all kinds of content can be delivered via RSS.
The new models – all tolled, 19 different units – are destined for Europe, but we should expect to see some of them, or some of the technology, in the U.S., too.
Posted on Mar 24, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:26 am
Starting in April across Europe owners of the 8000, 9000, and Cinema 21:9 series HDTVs from Philips will be able to browse the web using the company’s Net TV service.
The service, which requires an add-on box the 8000 series and employs the built-in WiFi on the other models, will give users access to specially formatted versions of sites like eBay, YouTube, and others. These sites will have larger text and revised layouts designed to make them usable on a big screen, across the living room.
Users will also be able to browse the full web, though standard sites will not be formatted for the TV.
Though I’m always a little skeptical of attempts to set up subsets of the web for certain products, this effort is interesting. There’s plentiful evidence showing that the web and HDTVs are converging and it certainly makes sense for sites and services that deliver audio, video, and photo content over the web to hook into TVs.
Posted on Mar 11, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:54 am
Information appliance maker Chumby is teaming with chipmaker Broadcom for a hardware play that will add Chumby’s widgets to living room electronics.
Broadcom is one of the leading makers of chips for all kinds of electronics and will, under this deal, add support for Chumby’s widgets to its system-on-a-chip offerings that go into HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes. As a result, users of devices with these chips will be able to view Chumby widgets onscreen. The widgets can display photos, video, podcasts, music, and other data delivered over the Internet.
Though convergence of the web and home entertainment system has been underway for a while – and covered fairly extensively at this site – this deal marks perhaps the first direct integration of an information appliance into home entertainment hardware. I suspect it won’t be the last, though.
One question I have, though, is what does this mean for Chumby? The thing that sets the company truly apart is that it offers an engaging, unusual hardware platform to display content on. With this deal, the hardware goes away. How does that change Chumby’s appeal?
Hard to say. I suppose only users will be able to tell us that, once devices with these Broadcom chips hit the market.
