You can already access the web on your TV through devices like the Apple TV and so forth, but this requires hooking up devices external to your TV. Now it looks like web-enbabled televisions are on the horizon, as Yahoo, TV Makers Unveil Deals to Webify the Tube:
TV and the Web are converging, but until recently most of the movement has come at the Internet end. Broadcast channels are increasingly putting current episodes online, and U.S. audiences for Web video were up 34% in November 2008 over the previous year, according to new metrics from comScore.
Now the other side of the equation is starting to move, with the announcement by Yahoo that it has lined up manufacturing partners who will build high-definition TVs that will let viewers access Yahoo online services directly from their big home screens.
At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday Yahoo revealed that it would work with Samsung electronics, Sony, LG Electronics and Vizio to build TV sets that can access the Yahoo Widget Channel.
The new service will use factory-installed software and the Ethernet connections used to provide cable TV to connect viewers with Yahoo TV widgets, small applications they can click while watching programming to get news, weather and finance reports from Yahoo.
Another widget will let users browse through photo’s they’ve stored on Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing portal.
Among non-Yahoo content, TV audiences will also be able to click on widgets that access eBay, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix, Blockbuster, music service Rhapsody and the Web sites for CBS, the New York Times, USA Today and Showtime.