Turn on your TV and a mix of icons appears on
the bottom of the screen which includes family photos, Facebook portal,
and web cam of your home entrance. These TV icons may provide valuable
(and potentially billable) services to viewers, but who controls them?
What happens when they interact in unexpected ways. Should TV widgets be
standardized or should they follow the more typical evolution of the
Internet, try it, fix it, and sell it! If you
are in the cable TV industry, you may know that a lot of work has gone
into the enhanced TV binary interchange format (eBIF) TV widget standard.
This specification details all sorts of details about TV widgets including
their operation (display, buttons, forms, and video), the use of styles,
and how they operate and interact with each other. |
If you are in the Internet services
industry, you may know that companies such as Yahoo, Samsung, TiVO,
and Intel are developing TV widget capable programs and devices that
already provide TV widgets for popular services such as Facebook,
Flickr, and NetFlix.
Resources:
CableLabs eBIF Widget Industry Standard
Yahoo TV Widget Developer Program
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