DirecTV to Launch "TV Apps" App Store Later This Month

During a conference call with financial analysts last week, following the company's release of its second-quarter earnings, DirecTV's interim CEO, Larry D. Hunter, confirmed that the satellite-TV provider will later this month launch a new, App Store-type service, called "TV Apps," that will allow subscribers to download interactive TV widget applications, and apparently also upload their own apps (presumably after some kind of review process): "Later this month, we'll launch a new service called TV Apps, which is analogous to Yahoo! Widgets or Google Gadgets," Hunter stated. "Like the iPhone, we'll have an app store where customers can download pre-selected apps or even create their own apps for the big screen. Not only will this new service provide DirecTV customers with a wealth of information, it will, for the first time, create a real community among DirecTV customers."

The TV Apps service's widgets will be offered to DirecTV subscribes at no additional cost--though those subscribers will have to be equipped with a broadband-connected DirecTV Plus or DirecTV Plus HD DVR (note: subscribers will be able to manage their TV Apps widgets via the Web as well as the TV). It has been in public beta since June, and, as of Sunday night, contained 14 apps, including what appear to be apps developed by third parties: 5-Day Weather Forecast, Your Biorhythm, Calendar, Digital Clock, Firmware, Flickr, Horoscope, iStinkAtDevotions.com, MyMLBTeam, ScoreGuide, Twitter, Weather Forecast from NOAA, Weather Radar by NOAA, and What's Hot. More information on TV Apps (including a video demo that shows the service's user interface) is available at http://tvapps.directv.com/index.do (Note: Verizon's FiOS TV service also offers an app/widget store--the Widget Bazaar--and the company recently announced plans to "invite open development" of new apps for the service--see the articles published on itvt.com, July 15th, August 3rd and August 5th.)

In other DirecTV news: According to a report in AdvertisingAge last week, the company is in talks with cable programmers to launch its own TV Everywhere service (note: the "TV Everywhere" model, which has long been championed by Time Warner and its chairman and CEO, Jeff Bewkes, seeks to make programming that pay-TV customers have already paid for through their cable, satellite or IPTV subscriptions available to those customers on multiple platforms, and thus aims to head off the threat posed to pay-TV services by the increasing availability of over-the-top programming--for more background, see the articles published on itvt.com, April 30th, May 14th, June 25th and July 15th). "We've been in active discussions with an array of programmers for some time now," DirecTV spokesman, Robert Mercer, told the publication.