- New Smart TVs to Stream Live TV to Nearby Tablets & Smartphones
- Smart Hub Offers Full Browser, Content Recommendations, Media Search on TV, Internet & Home Network
One of the new Samsung smart TVs, coupled with its Galaxy Tab tablet and a Samsung Android-based smartphone, is the first to offer direct competition to Apple’s iOS-based unified ecosystem for the iPad, iPhone, Apple TV and iPod touch.
Samsung says its next smart TVs, the D7000 or D8000 models, will come with a second tuner and a transmitter, allowing them to stream another channel of live TV directly to nearby mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. It’s called TwinView and will be like having a mobile TV in the home. The portable devices can be used to browse channels and perform searches via the TV set.
The new Samsung smart TVs have more features than Apple TV, including a browser, the three searches (broadcast, Internet and home network), a recommendation engine and the lack of a separate adapter box. Apple TV has the advantage of working with any HD TV set but the Apple product has fallen far behind similar adapters such as D-Link’s Boxee Box in numbers of Internet services being provided.
The new Samsung smart TVs sound as if they are based on Google TV technology with features such as a full browser and the ability to search broadcast networks, the Internet and the home network for content. Samsung last year promised TV sets based on Google TV, but it made no reference to Google TV in this announcement. It could be that Samsung is using the Android OS and the Chrome browser like the company People of Lava in Sweden claims to have done. It’s unlikely that Samsung has done its own OS and browser.
It’s not known if it will stream only to Samsung devices or to any Android device. Existing Samsung smartphones and tablets will get an upgrade for the TwinView service.
TwinView TV sets and the upgrade are expected in the UK in April. Pricing and US availability have not been announced.
Samsung said that TwinView video can only be streamed to the newer Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy S2. It does not work with older Tabs or other smartphones. The 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab uses the honeycomb version of Android and has a 10.1-inch display. It has a dual-core Tegra 2 processor and comes with either 16GB or 32GB of storage.
The company said at CES that the D8000 and D9000 would come with a Second TV Smart Touch TV remote that could receive a video stream. The Android app for the two smart TV series will perform the same function on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy S2. The Android app is expected in March and the Second TV Smart Touch TV remote has been delayed until April.
Samsung also announced new and expanded European content distribution deals with the BBC, France Telecom and LoveFilm. The BBC’s very popular iPlayer is already available on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.
The sets come with a Smart Hub that allows users to access information sources, channels, recordings, the Web and content.
The Smart Hub has four offerings:
- A “Search All” feature allows search for and access to content on not only a TV, but also on the Internet and on any connected storage, PC or mobile device within the home network. Content can include 3D VoD, older TV shows, movies and sports scores.
- “Your Video” offers content recommendations that are based on a user’s viewing history.
- A “Web Browser” offers full Web browsing on the TV.
- “Samsung Apps,” Samsung said, is the world’s first
HDTV-based application store and offers more apps than anyone else for sports, entertainment, information, games and social networking.
Samsung also said this week it captured 60% of the market for 3D TV sets in 2010. It sold about 2 million of them.
Seok-pil Kim, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics Europe said, “This new era of technology design will enable products that make consumers smarter, happier, and bring us all closer together. In this new era, the TV will once again become the center of our living room, and the dominant piece of technology that connects, enables, empowers, and entertains us all.”
And where, pray tell, is one-time, TV-king Sony with new Internet-connected TV features like TwinView, browsing and search plus new content deals?
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