PANASONIC IS launching a European IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) service in May, its first foray in the battle for a piece of the converging worlds of web and TV entertainment.
Viera Cast will be available across a range of Panasonic TVs and Blu-ray players, a free service enabled by an Ethernet connection which uses broadband to deliver a “walled garden” of websites to the television screen.
Details were unveiled in Amsterdam this week when the Japanese manufacturer confirmed that YouTube, Google’s Picasa, Eurosport and Bloomberg had signed up to the service.
Content deals have also been agreed with broadcasters in Germany and the Czech Republic.
The plan is to forge similar alliances in different countries, increasing the content and localising the service.
With no browser, the limited web content is accessed via a TV remote with a dedicated button that lets users switch seamlessly between the sites and traditional TV programming. Panasonic says a 2MB broadband connection is the minimum requirement for an acceptable quality of streaming video.
Similar IPTV strategies have been unveiled by Samsung, Philips and Sony, consumer electronics companies that have been looking to deliver the web to the television as a user-friendly experience. They are not alone on this mission.
In the IT camp, Microsoft and hardware partners like HP are trying to muscle into the home entertainment market with internet television via Media Center PCs.
Although they deliver the full browser-based web experience, the growth of this segment has been painfully slow with consumers reluctant to bring the perceived complexity of computers into their living rooms.
Bob Raikes, a research analyst in display technologies at Meko, says that PC-based home entertainment is too complicated for mass market adoption, which has left the way open for TV manufacturers to fill the gap.
“With internet TV there is no quality of service and it’s not secure or reliable, whereas people trust their televisions.”
Mr Raikes believes that the Viera Cast is a significant first step that will engage with users who are less familiar with the internet.
He says that the younger social networking generation would continue to use their laptops and netbooks, surfing the web with the TV in the background.
The new range of Panasonic TVs also features DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) connectivity, a standard that lets multiple devices share disparate digital content across a home network.
Mr Raikes says the networked home will happen, and the television will become part of a wired and wireless infrastructure that can be shared seamlessly throughout the home, but it could still take a decade to move into the mainstream.
In a separate announcement, Panasonic says it will have a 3D HDTV available to launch in 2010.
Impressive demos of the technology on a 103in plasma TV were backed up by a claim that the only obstacle to putting product in the shops was industry-wide ratification of 3D standards.
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