Connected TV Business Opportunity

Want to reach millions of TV users in North America, Europe and Asia? Take your content to TVs from Samsung®, LG®, Sony® and VIZIO® with Connected TV — TV Widgets. If you'd like to stake your claim on the leading edge of an exciting and innovative new platform, you can get started today developing TV Widgets.

Technology Overview

The Yahoo! Widget Engine platform is available in a variety of consumer electronic devices, including flat panel TVs from Samsung®, Sony®, LG Electronics®, and VIZIO®, with others coming soon! With Yahoo! TV Widgets, you can deliver new, interactive movie, TV show, and web experiences to millions of TV owners in North America, Europe, and Asia. For example, today TV Widget users can get their favorite TV show or movie on demand, check the latest news on Yahoo!, sports scores on USA Today, shop on eBay or catch up with their friends on Facebook® or Twitter®.

Yahoo! TV Widgets are extremely easy to develop. The TVs run Linux and use a specially modified version of the Yahoo! Widget Engine, a fifth generation application platform derived from the legendary Konfabulator desktop widget platform. We have further extended and simplified widget development by building a JavaScript framework which abstracts most of the complexity from Konfabulator.

TV Widgets Views: Snippet, Sidebar and Full Screen.

TV Widgets have three basic views available to build from: snippet, sidebar, and full screen.

Snippets - live data, shortcuts, or bookmarks

The Snippet is the first view a user sees for a TV Widget in their personal Widget Dock. The Widget Dock is available with one click of the remote and overlays live TV. Snippet views can be static images or can include dynamic data, like the current stock price of a certain symbol. Snippets are also shortcuts or bookmarks to specific areas of your widget. When a user selects the snippet, they are taken to that location with the TV widget. For a stock symbol, you are taken to the stock overview page within the Finance widget.

Connected TV Snippets

SideBar - access web APIs for data, photos and videos

The second view, the one you will use the most is called the Sidebar view. This view usually represents the complete functionality of your Widget application. The user should be able to access almost any web-based API feed including data, photos, and videos. Numerous example Sidebars are shown here:

Connected TV Sidebar

Fullscreen - play videos, photos, or overlay live TV

The third view is a fullscreen view. The fullscreen view also comes in two forms, one where you replace TV content with your own content, like with a game or streaming video content, and also in a form where you are overlaid on top of video content, like showing live streaming sports scores for example.

In each of these views, you have many standard controls that allow you to quickly create your views. Controls like text elements, images, grids, buttons, transport overlays, etc., which with only a couple lines of code. Our framework follows a classical inheritance model similar to what's used by the MOOtools browser JS framework. This allows you to quickly extend the basic controls and provide additional functionality with ease.

Each control exposes a consistent well defined event structure, which allows you to add your own logic with minimal effort. For example, adding a button with a handler for the click event to toggle an image on and off is as simple as the following:

this.controls.my_button = new KONtx.control.TextButton({
        label: "Toggle image visibility",
        guid: "toggle_image_visible",
        events: {
                onClick: function(event) {
                        my_image.visible = !my_image.visible;
                }
        }
}).appendTo(this);

While developing your TV Widgets, you can run and test your widgets using the TV Widget Development Kit (WDK). With the provided simulator, you have full debugging capability to see how your TV Widget will look and feel on the TV. Once you have a feel for how your TV Widget works, you can then put your TV in developer mode. Now you have the ability to install your widget via the Yahoo! Widget Gallery onto your TV. This lets you test the experience before submitting your widget for approval.

Visit http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/developer to download the WDK today.

Worldwide Distribution

Reach millions of Sony®, Vizio®, Samsung® and LG® TV users

With Yahoo! TV Widgets, developers can deliver new, interactive movie, TV show, gaming, shopping, social and other web experiences to millions of TV owners in North America, Europe, and Asia. The Yahoo! Widget Engine platform is available in a variety of consumer electronic devices, including flat panel TVs from Samsung®, Sony®, LG Electronics®, and VIZIO®, with others coming soon! These consumer electronic devices are available in 16 countries in 2009 with global expansion planned for 2010.

2009
  • North America
    • United States, Canada, and Mexico
  • Europe
    • United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain
    • The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway
  • South America
    • Chile, Columbia, and Peru
2010
  • Global expansion planned for 2010

For information about your specific country, check back here or at http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/

Everyone can be a Publisher or Developer — the possibilities are endless!

The possibilities are endless for developers, so let your imagination take you where you want to go. This is not just for businesses with professional content. Any consumer or business can be a developer for their own TV. We have already seen local TV Widgets for a wide variety of organizations and businesses, including local schools, sports clubs and non-profits.

Movies, TV Shows, and Internet Dn Demand

Today, TV Widget users can get their favorite TV shows or movies on demand from Amazon, CinemaNow, and Blockbuster, check the latest news on Yahoo!, web videos on YouTube® sports scores on USA Today, shop on eBay, or catch up with their friends on Facebook® or Twitter®.

Monetization

Web Monetization Models Work on TV

TV Widgets provide the ability to monetize these services with the same powerful business models found on the web including:

  • Subscriptions
  • Rental
  • Purchase
  • Advertising

For more information on advertising capabilities, please send an email to tvwidgets@yahoo-inc.com

Web User ID and Personalization Available on TV

The same personalization, authentication and tracking mechanisms available for tracking media usage on the web, can be used on TV. Here are a few examples:

  • Your personalized stock list on Yahoo! Finance on the web will be available to you on the Yahoo! Finance TV Widget.
  • Your personalized selection of songs on the Pandora® website can be played on TV.
  • Your eBay® user ID on the web can be used with the eBay TV Widget for tracking items, bidding and purchasing.
  • After the appropriate Consumer Privacy and Terms of Use policies are presented, user consumption of media, data, photo and other content can be tracked by each publisher using web tracking systems.

For more information, please send an email to tvwidgets@yahoo-inc.com.

Business FAQ

Ready to get started?

Use of all Yahoo! Widget Development Kit software and documentation is subject to the Yahoo! TV Widget Developer Terms of Use