The internet has become an indispensable part of everyday life: We buy goods online, watch TV online, and correspond via email or instant messaging. But, until recently, this technology was limited to the computer screen — hardly a relaxed place to enjoy a film or to browse for new music. Bringing the content to the living-room screen was an obvious next step.
Samsung groups its internet offerings under the term “Internet@TV”. If you connect a Samsung TV such as the ultra-flat Samsung UE 40 B 7000 to the internet via a router, it can access so-called Yahoo “widgets”. All you have to do is press the remote control’s “Internet@TV” button.
This calls up a set of symbols along the bottom of the screen — giving direct access to YouTube videos, news from Yahoo, and the online photo-sharing service Flickr, for example. Flickr allows you to display your own photo albums on the TV screen, as well as public albums made by other users. Yahoo news appears alongside the current TV programme, and is especially practical if you want to quickly get up to speed during an ad break, for example. YouTube videos, on the other hand, fill the screen — and don’t allow you to use a second application at the same time.
Samsung must first approve any service that will appear in the widget bar. One thing Samsung does not offer, however, is a web browser. This would allow users to access normal websites — as they can with Philips’ “Net TV”, for example.
No comments:
Post a Comment