Yahoo Inc announced on Wednesday plans to work alongside Intel Corp to build a “Widget Channel” to run with TV shows.
The new Web-based channel will allow TV viewers to interact with and watch a set of TV widgets that will appear in the corner of their screens like a picture-in-picture window.
These widget windows will enable viewers to chat, send e-mail, watch videos, track stocks or keep up with news headlines by simply using their TV remote control.
Intel is designing the new services to run on its new CE3100 chips built for consumer electronics that enable high-definition viewing, home-theatre-quality sound, 3-D graphics, and the fusion of Internet and TV features.
The world’s largest chip maker intends to rollout the new chips during the first half of 2009.
Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable TV operator, said in a separate statement with Intel that it planned to offer TV Widgets next year that work on televisions, set-top boxes and other TV-connected devices.
“TV will fundamentally change how we talk about, imagine and experience the Internet,” Eric Kim, Intel senior vice president and general manager of its Digital Home Group, said in a joint statement with Yahoo.
Intel demonstrated its widget service using its chips at its annual developer conference in San Francisco
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Widgets can be personalized and display information from popular Web services to which viewers belong, including Yahoo Finance or Sports or eBay auctions. Viewers can choose from what promises to be hundreds or thousands of such widgets.
Among the featured services will be Twitter, a service that lets users keep friends or public spectators updated on daily activities via messages sent from a range of devices.
“This is the beginning of a number of distribution announcements that will go beyond content producers to OEMs,” Yahoo spokeswoman May Petry said referring to deals Yahoo will reveal in coming months with TV makers, known by the industry shorthand of OEMs, or original equipment manufacturers.
The Widget Channel runs on top of the fifth generation of Yahoo Widget Engine, a software platform that allows developers to deliver snippets of the Web such as video, news, or e-mail. Programmers can build widgets using popular software including Javascript, XML, HTML and Adobe Systems Inc’s Flash.
Yahoo announced ambitious plans to expand beyond computers onto mobile phones and TVs more than two-and-a-half years ago.