[MatthewPhillips]

I think you missed my point. That consumers only care about their programming being available is precisely why an open platform is needed. If LG releases a smart TV that doesn't have Netflix, Hulu, MLB.tv, Amazon, etc. they look bad in the eye of the consumer. Those content providers are currently building out separate apps for each TV platform, or at least for the ones big enough to move the needle.

[mikeryan]

Pretty much all the current crop of smart tvs use HTML as their primary app platform. It's pretty consistently WebKit with a few custom integration points for TV specific functions. For all intents and purposes there is already a consistent open platform for apps on TVs

I own a small agency who builds apps for these platforms we can hit LG/Samsung/Panasonic/Sharp/Sony tvs with a single code base now. There are still a few outlier platforms like Yahoo Roku etc but HTML now gets us ~80% of the market.

[MatthewPhillips]

Awesome to hear that. I've long suspected that TV was a more appropriate for HTML5 than mobile, precisely because the remote input is much closer to traditional computing than touch. Clicker.tv made a TV-centric web-app several years ago that works wonderfully.

If you have some time to write about it, I'd love to hear more about how these systems work, are they packaged or delivered over http? Do you use <video>?

[koralatov]

So what they want is an open platform, not necessarily an open source platform -- iOS being `closed' certainly hasn't stopped these broadcasters from building apps for it. What's made it a success is the installed base of users, which has meant it's worth the broadcasters' time and money to create apps to work on these devices.

As for availability of programming, that's basically what I said in my initial reply: *``all [the viewers] want from a TV is the ability to watch $PROGRAMME with as little pain and inconvenience as possible''.

If the ultimate goal is (as it should be) to get these broadcasters' programming everywhere, on all TVs, the last thing we need is another damned platform with a tiny userbase. We need some kind of consolidation, or (ideally) interoperable standard, that allows a ``write once, run everywhere'' ability for their apps.

[MatthewPhillips]

I think we're in fierce agreement here.