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Verizon Thinking Outside The Cable Box

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By RICHARD MULLINS

rmullins@tampatrib.com

Published: March 13, 2009

Updated: 03/13/2009 12:23 am

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 and 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 fall, 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 such as 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 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."

Although growing Verizon ranks as the seventh-largest cable company, it still has a relatively small customer base, Leigh notes, with 1.9 million customers at the end of 2008 - compared with the 24.2 million cable customers at Comcast Corp. That provides less incentive for developers who want to reach a large audience quickly.

"It will be interesting to see how much leeway they give developers to do 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 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 such as 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.)

•Easier searches for video-on-demand content such as movies, including lists of the most-popular shows within a specific area, such as 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."

Not to be easily outdone, Bright House Networks officials said they're working on new applications as well.

Presently, caller ID information pops up on the TV screen of Bright House customers who also have the company's home phone service. Next, that info will pop up on PC screens as well, said spokesman Joe Durkin. That upgrade will likely come in the next few weeks, he said.

Among other projects in Bright House labs: a "wide variety" of third-party applications that merge the cable TV box, the Internet and customer PCs, Durkin said. Present thinking at the company is to avoid opening up applications to outsiders, he said, but that isn't set in stone.

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

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