3 Screens & The Cloud

Just got ourselves a new Samsung 3D TV - one of the many features it has is intrinsic app support.

The experience is quite compelling and certainly justifies Microsofts approach, while not reflecting their technical position in this market (I am not aware of any TVs that currently support Silverlight in the box).

I would defnitely like to see a Silverlight marketplace in this domain. 

Lets hope Microsoft doesn't miss the boat ..

http://www.samsungfuturetv.co.uk/

PS Yes, the 3D is awesome - & games on the PS3 look absolutrely stunning - the experience is very imersive .. role on 3d support for the 360 guys!

personally, I could see having windows phone 7 os on tvs being pretty damn awesome. I reckon metro would be extreamly suitable for use on tv screens, much more than apple or googles UI efforts for tvs, possibly due to the high contrast style of metro.

I've seen a quite a few tv channels that use that use design languages for their identities that aren't a million miles away from the metro language even:

http://www.channel4.com/about_c4/styleguide/downloads/C4StyleGuide1.1.pdf

Yes, I get the impression that while MS have done a stirling job with the WP7 O/S they just don't have it ready for other platforms when they really need it! (Svelt Tablets and TVs being the most obvious candidates).  I really hope that there is a great team somewhere in MS that is working on this and is able to deliver ...

@battlebottle: Metro is... entirely designed around touch. Why would that work on a TV?

Wait, wasn't Metro inspired by the Windows Media Center UI to begin with?

@Bas: Metro is the name of the design language. It's the look and feel of the interface. I don't see any reason it can't be adapted to be used with a remote control and maybe a keyboard. I feel like it would look great on tv. Some reasons for that is that it's very high contrast and will be very easy to read on bright screens. It's very minimalist and doesn't put anything on the screen that doesn't need to be there. It's mostly designed around content, to present content and not get in the way of that content visually. I think this is a problem with apple's UI for tv's. The "shiney" style apple has for it's UI competes with the video for your attention. That's my humble opinion about it anyways.

@Ian2:  I also would like to see Silverlight apps run on these TVs.  Earlier this year Microsoft entered into a partnership with Intel and Broadcom to build Silverlight into their system on chip solutions for connected tv, settop boxes, etc.  Its unclear to me how this would work if the TV platform is built with Linux underpinnings like Yahoo Connected TV.

As some who primarily uses Windows 7 Media Center on my TV, I can say that MS already has the perfect UI for TVs. All MS needs to do is to trim off the fat so it can fit in and be performant on a TV.

I really can't see the WP7 UI on a TV. It's not designed for a big screen, and without the touch capabilities it would just feel clunky.

Yep, Media Centre UI baked in to the TV with Apps that run in Silverlight hanging off a Marketplace like menu.  Boom Baby.

@Ian2: I've just brought one of the Samsung series 8 3D TV's and it is indeed awesome*.  The iPlayer app is wonderful.  I have to admit my first thought after watch all the 3D I could get my hands on, was how do I write apps for this!

* My one very minor niggle with it is in a dark room when the display is black apart from something in the middle of the screen (e.g. end-credits) you can see bleed through in the corners of the screen from the edge LED backlight, was wondering if it's just me or have you noticed this.

I think Xbox running custom SL apps would be suffecient enough, I want my TV just a TV and do well on resolution, response time, view angle, contrast, and etc. But seeing phone is no longer a phone and that's the future, I think MS should at least put some efforts on TV gimmics.

@PerfectPhase:I havn't noticed but what I have noticed is a little bleed across my own (side by side) 3d videos - nothing to spoil the wow factor though.

I gave my iPhone to my nephew so havn't been able to try using that as a remote - hopefully they will do something along similar lines for WP7 ..