Creating Hosted TV Widgets Allow Television Broadcasters to Offer New Applications and Services without Major System Changes

The creation of TV Widgets allows TV system operators to develop new revenue producing services while increasing value offered to the customer (creating sticky customers). Lino Silva from WIT Software explained to me that broadcasters want to be able to compete against new competitors such as Google TV among other IPTV/OTT players. Broadcasters can benefit from being able to deliver over-the-top TV applications (Widgets) that do not require the downloading of software apps to viewing devices. Hosted TV applications run on top of the IPTV middleware (e.g. Microsoft Mediaroom, Netgem, OpenTV) without having to do changes to the broadcast system. Hosted TV applications allow broadcasters to create a TV app marketplace (walled garden). Some of the most popular widgets include Facebook, Picasa, Google News, YouTube, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, Content Discovery on EPG/VOD/Internet and convergence of voice and messaging communication services with the television interface.