Designing multimedia solutions for television widget channel and beyond

With technology advancements (such as silicon, networking, and digital signal processing) and widespread adoption of high speed Internet, consumer electronics (CE) companies are re-defining what it means to take the center seat in consumer's living rooms. The arrival of new Internet enabled CE products (also known as Smart TV products) provide consumers access to networked and Internet based content on their television (TV) screens. In doing so, Internet enabled products - with varying degrees of success - are merging two distinct but well-established models; the Lean-Back model of traditional broadcast TV, and the Lean-Forward model of traditional PC based broadband content. This paper examines Intel Corporation's earliest foray into designing a full-featured software framework for TV, the Intel/Yahoo!+ collaboration on Widget Channel. In this paper, we outline the process and lessons from this first instantiation of Internet/TV convergence and how it shapes the current research and development efforts for Smart TV products.