Samsung and Yahoo! present interactive TV

Samsung Electronics and internet giant Yahoo! Have teamed up to provide the first integrated internet access service in television sets, a commodity considered the holy grail among many technology bigwigs.

InfoLive, the service that is to be offered, will provide live weather, news and financial information via Yahoo by use of a remote control and Samsung plans to rollout the service on sets in Singapore, Australia, Canada and selected European sites by the end of the year.

Samsung is the world’s biggest supplier of consumer electronics, and Yahoo! a market leader in internet services.
    

Campaign to change public taste

With tastes in what people want from a television on the move, the two hope to achieve what others have failed to do, and to encourage people to accept the previously unwanted truth that the television is for more than simply sitting and watching.

Interactive services have become familiar, rather than alien, to the public ion general, with the internet blazing a pioneering trail in changing peoples outlook, and reality TV shows giving the public the chance to vote interactively via the already available methods on handsets worldwide.
    

What the customer wants

Net and television are increasingly being seen as a compatible duo, with more people watching TV either on computer screens or in the ever-increasing number of TV ready mobile phone handsets.

Samsung has been clever in its approach, using choice for the viewer as an attraction as opposed to forcing the change onto him, and with the new system the option will be available of watching programmes while having a scrolling news headline tab on a section of the screen.

If the user wishes to access the offered news, he can do so via a connection to the internet via the television set.

In a different venture Samsung has linked with both Yahoo and chip manufacturer Intel, to provide the ‘Widget Channel’, and interactive TV channel that will give the user the opportunity to browse web sites, view photo’s and access instant messaging systems, all from their armchair in front of the television. Clearly, Samsung and its partners are paving the way for a greater level of interactive viewing that mixes both TV and the internet in a seamless transition.

Samsung intends to be first to put its interactive sets in the living rooms of the world, and knows that it has to provide the service to attract the populace in order to get there. It sees television as a growth area as the technology is banded with the internet and becomes the norm rather than the exception.