In the category of “not dead yet,” Engadget has caught word from the Yahoo Advertising blog that the Yahoo Connected TV platform still has life left in it. According to a post from last week, the Yahoo platform will be embedded in TVs from Sony and Toshiba by the end of this year, along with a D-Link media player. More hardware from Samsung, LG, Vizio, and others will hit in 2012, and the former search giant also says it will “soon” roll out its own app store for the TV, a plan that was delayed back in March. Apps will range from 99 cents to $99 (?!).
As I said at CES, I’m fascinated by Yahoo’s “broadcast interactivity” technology that it’s planning to use in its Connected TV platform to enable interactive advertising. I’m not entirely convinced Yahoo can be successful with it, but clearly the company has hit on a valuable concept: the idea of “listening” in on a TV program and providing relevant commercial information. Shazam is working on the same thing, although it has raised money for a platform that centers on the mobile phone, which you can use to “Shazam” content on your TV for more info. The whole idea is far more interesting to me than just another app store for the connected TV. It’s something the cable industry has been trying to get off the ground for more than a decade, with little success. Perhaps Yahoo and others can succeed with platforms that are over the top, and over the air.
Dave – what do you think about that NY Times article that talks about DVRs taking up as much power as a refigerator?
Yeah, I saw that story a week or so ago – may have even retweeted it. Was meaning to get my FiOS DVR and Premiere on the Kill-a-watt to see what the numbers are. I believe the Premiere to be less than the S3 and HD which I previously documented here. Not sure what my fridge consumes, but it looks pretty intimidating. Perhaps I can look up the model online to get the intel.
*yawn* Yahoo has been talking about this for so long, it’s not even funny. Wake me up when their partners release some products.
In re @steve’s question, here’s the relevant quote from the study:
“Also, one high definition cable box and one high definition DVR use about 446 kilowatt-hours per year, which is 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot refrigerator that is energy efficient. ”
(see http://www.dailytech.com/Study+US+Cable+BoxesDVRs+Fail+at+Energy+Efficiency+/article22007.htm)
I’m not sure Yahoo! can pull off something like this. However, I definitely can see how Amazon would (should?) be interested in playing in this space. I can imagine a scenario where you are viewing a commercial (perhaps a little less so with a television show or movie) and decide you have an interest in learning more about, or purchasing a product, and you do so through your Amazon embedded app which is tied to your Amazon account.
….on the other hand, do we really want it to be that easy to purchase products!?
WRT Yahoo… yawn. I generally have to go find my TV’s remote to do anything like this, which isn’t very often. Sorry, but the TV is just a display for my DVR, at least on Input 1.
On the power consumption thread, I just recently put a Kill A Watt on my main desktop, which is apparently costing me about $40/month to run. I’m going to switch most of the services I need running full time (Tivo Desktop, Subsonic, Air Video, iTunes…) to a Mac Mini and put the desktop into a much lower power state without all that stuff. Maybe like Dave I’ll put the K-A-W on my Tivo’s as well and think about what that means and what I should do about it. I recently put a digital appliance timer:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IKQRTU
on my home router so it would be rebooted once a day. Has cured most of my remote access issues. I might consider putting one of these on say the Tivo in the back bedroom so it is only powered on for 4 hours a weekday say when I might be inclined to use it…