Yahoo! Secures New Distribution and Content Partnerships for its Interactive TV Widget Engine Platform

Yahoo! last week announced 1) new distribution partnerships for its Yahoo! Widget Engine platform; 2) the release of a Widget Development Kit (WDK); and 3) new content partnerships for the widget platform. "Consumers are in love with their televisions, watching more TV, and demanding Internet connectivity to further enhance their viewing experience," Arlo Rose, senior director of Yahoo! Connected TV, said in a prepared statement. "Yahoo! is leading the connected TV market by bringing a rich variety of Internet content and services to the living room--incorporating video-on-demand, social networks, games, online shopping, and more--making it easy for consumers to personalize their TV viewing experience."

According to Yahoo!, its new distribution partnerships are with:

• Hisense, which plans to integrate the Yahoo! Widget Engine into connected TV's for the US and European markets.
• ViewSonic, which plans to incorporate the Widget Engine into its ViewSonic VMP80 media player. The device is slated to ship this quarter, with an MSRP of $159. (Note: ViewSonic also recently announced partnerships with DivX and Sensio--more information is available here.)
• MIPS Technologies, which plans to develop an optimized Yahoo! Widget Engine for MIPS-based digital home devices. According to Yahoo!, MIPS will "develop an optimized reference platform running the Yahoo! Widget Engine for digital TV and set-top box applications"; the reference design will enable MIPS licensees to quickly develop devices that incorporate Yahoo! TV Widgets, Yahoo! says.
• Sigma Designs, which plans to support the Widget Engine on its media processors. According to Yahoo!, this will enable manufacturers to support Yahoo! TV Widgets on a broad range of CE devices, including Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers and cable/IPTV set-top boxes. The company claims that Yahoo! TV Widgets now work on all major consumer electronic device chip architectures worldwide.

In addition, Yahoo! says, its existing distribution partner, Vizio (note: the company's other previously announced distribution partners include Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung), plans to incorporate the Yahoo! Widget Engine into its XVT Series connected HDTV's which are slated to be available at US retailers later this quarter.

The new Widget Development Kit, meanwhile, can be downloaded by anyone looking to "quickly create, deploy and monetize exciting and engaging TV Widget experiences," Yahoo! says. According to the company, it allows developers to leverage a rich set of API's in order to write widgets using simple JavaScript and XML. More information is available here.

Finally, Yahoo!'s new Widget Engine content partners include:

• CNBC, whose widget allows viewers, among other things, to interact with real-time stock quotes and create real-time watchlists to track favorite stocks.
• NBC, whose widget allows viewers to view the broadcast network's show schedule, view full-screen photo galleries, and catch up on shows via text recaps, cast bios and more.
• Napster, whose widget allows viewers to browse, search, preview and listen to the company's entire catalog of on-demand music, as well as access custom radio stations, playlists and Billboard charts.
• RadioTime, whose widget allows viewers to create a personal selection of music from up to 100,000 radio stations.
• Sky News TV, whose widget provides breaking news via text and images, and features seven news categories: top stories, UK news, sports, business, world news, showbiz news and politics.
• Dailymotion, whose widget provides access to its broadband video Web site.
• The Weather Channel, whose widget allows viewers to access information on current conditions and five-day forecasts, and to access regional radar. The widget is billed as providing the ability to look up and save multiple locations.
• Betfair, whose widget was profiled in an article published on itvt.com, January 7th.
• My-Cast Weather, whose widget provides animated Nexrad radar, hourly to seven-day forecasts, cloud information, a "StormWatch" service, and more.
• FrameChannel, whose widget is billed as providing viewers with over 1,000 content channels from the company's collection of photosharing, social networking and content partners, including BBC News, People.com, EW Picks, Deutsche Welle, Crave, Digg.com, Facebook, and Twitter.
• 1Cast, whose widget is billed as delivering up-to-the-minute news video from leading programmers and broadcasters across the Web.
• ZeeVee, whose widget for its Zinc OTT platform is billed as providing viewers with a "simple and consistent" way to browse and view over 100,000 professionally produced videos from hundreds of Web sites, including Amazon, Netflix, and the sites of the major broadcast networks.
• Brightcove, which says that its customers can now use their existing Brightcove accounts and workflow to easily design, create and operate video widgets for the Yahoo! widget platform. According to the company, this ability for its customers to distribute their video via the Yahoo! platform is made possible by the Brightcove Universal Delivery Service, which was introduced as part of the recently launched Brightcove 4 platform. With UDS, the company says, Brightcove customers can upload a single master video file, which is then transcoded into multiple formats for delivery on PC's, mobile devices, set-top boxes and connected television sets. According to Brightcove, customers already taking advantage of the ability to distribute their video via the Yahoo! widget platform include Time, Inc., Cars.com, TheStreet.com, Wine Spectator, Slate and The Hollywood Reporter.