Yahoo! Connected TV Business Opportunity

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

Technology Overview

The Yahoo! Connected TV Platform is available in a variety of consumer electronic devices, including flat panel TVs from Samsung®, Sony®, VIZIO®, Toshiba®, and Hisense® with others coming soon! With Yahoo! TV Apps, 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 Yahoo! Connected TV 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 Apps are extremely easy to develop. The TVs run Linux and use a specially modified version of the Yahoo! Connected TV Platform, a fifth generation application platform derived from the legendary Konfabulator desktop widget platform. We have further extended and simplified app development by building a JavaScript framework which abstracts most of the complexity from Konfabulator.

TV App Views: Bookmark, Sidebar, and Fullscreen.

TV Apps have three basic views available to build from: Bookmark, Sidebar, and Fullscreen.

Bookmark - live data, or shortcuts to content

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

Yahoo! Connected TV Bookmarks

Sidebar - access web APIs for data, photos and videos

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

Yahoo! Connected TV Sidebar

Fullscreen - play videos, photos, or overlay live TV

The third view is a Fullscreen view. The Fullscreen view comes in two forms: one form where you replace broadcast TV content with your content, for example showing a game or web video, and one form where your content is overlaid on top of broadcast TV content, for example showing live sports scores or a stock ticker.

In each of these views, you have many standard controls like text elements, images, grids, buttons, and transport overlays. Yahoo! Connected TV's framework follows a classical inheritance model similar to what is used by the MOOtools browser JavaScript 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);

You can run and test your TV Apps using the App Development Kit (ADK). With the provided Simulator, you have full debugging capability to see how your TV App will look and feel on the TV. Once you have a feel for how your TV App works, you can then put your TV in developer mode. Now you have the ability to install your app via the Yahoo! Connected TV Store onto your TV. This lets you test the experience before submitting your app for approval.

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

Worldwide Distribution

Reach millions of Sony®, Vizio®, Samsung®, Toshiba® and Hisense® TV owners

With Yahoo! Connected TV, app 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! Connected TV Platform is available in a variety of consumer electronic devices, including flat panel TVs from Samsung®, Sony®, Toshiba®, Hisense®, and VIZIO®, with others coming soon!

For information about your specific country, visit http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/

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

The possibilities are endless for app 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 Apps 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 App consumers 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 Apps 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 yctvsupport@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 App.
  • 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 App 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 yctvsupport@yahoo-inc.com.

Business FAQ