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Verizon Getting Closer To Blending TV With Web

Tribune photo by RICHARD MULLINS

Verizon plans to open up its cable TV boxes to outside developers, just like Apple did with its iPhone. This is an image of the Twitter application as it will run on the Verizon FiOS cable TV system.

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By RICHARD MULLINS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 11, 2009

Ever wish your cable TV box could do more fun things – like run your Facebook page or track Jack Bauer on a map during episodes of "24"? Maybe find every Bucs video on YouTube.

Verizon Communications Inc. is taking a big step in that direction in hopes of further merging TV to the Web.

Borrowing a page from the Apple Inc. playbook, Verizon will soon open up its cable TV box to just about any outside inventor who wants to make mini-programs called "Widgets" that run on the TV screen.

By autumn, Verizon hopes to launch a "Widget Bazaar," and foster a creative bonanza, as Apple did with its iPhone "App Store," which has thousands of innovative and quirky programs made by outside programmers.

Verizon thus becomes the first cable TV company to jump on a bandwagon of mobile phone backers that are opening up their gadgets, including Google, Microsoft and BlackBerry maker RIM.

"We're already talking to a range of major Internet companies about how they can get their programs on this platform," said Joseph Ambeault, Verizon's director of consumer television product development. "We've yet to hear anything but 'Yes' from them."

Already, Verizon engineers are testing things like a Facebook application that blends what you're watching on TV with your social media profile, updating a viewer's profile with what show you're watching. Flikr and Kodak Picture Gallery test applications will pull in photos from a customer's photo account for an on-TV slideshow. A Twitter test application brings up a user's Twitter profile and displays any of short messages (or "Tweets") by anyone who mentions a show the user is watching.

Verizon's move represents a major shift in how cable TV companies think about the TV experience.

Typically, cable companies considered the cable TV box near-sacred space. Customers could change channels, but as for how the box worked, that was only up to the cable company.

"It's fascinating that they're trying this," said Phil Leigh, president of the research company Inside Digital Media. "After Apple opened up their iPhone, a lot of people started trying this."

Verizon still has a relatively small cable TV customer base, Leigh notes, with just 1.9 million customers at the end of 2008. But that is growing.

"It will be interesting to see how much leeway they give developers do to things like use TV shows within their programs. … Ultimately, customers will want their TV to do just about anything on the Internet."

Within the next few months, Verizon plans to offer up a software developer's kit for potential programmers to explore and devise their own ideas for a widget, including widgets that generate them revenue.

Among other Verizon cable TV changes that could come soon:

• Easier Internet video on the TV screen. The new Verizon system lets viewers search for videos that reside on their home PCs or on YouTube, DailyMotion, Break.com, Blip.tv and Veoh.com and display them on the TV screen. (Network TV sites like Hulu aren't on the system, and likely won't be, because that content is already in high resolution on the Fios lineup, Ambeault said.)

• Better links between Verizon Wireless phones and cable TV boxes, including a way to program your DVR from your Verizon phone.

• Easier searches for video-on-demand content like movies, including lists of the most popular shows within a specific area, like Tampa or St. Petersburg.

• Community forum areas where groups could add information about their schools, events and other activities.

• Commercials that run before video-on-demand shows and movies, which Verizon said would help attract far more titles to the company's library, which now stands at more than 12,000 titles.

Beyond those, Verizon is pondering a range of applications, Ambeault said, including ways viewers could trade their DVR schedules, "so anything that your friend Joe thinks is cool enough to record – your box would record that, too."

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919.

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