CES 2013 is preparing to open its door. In this new season, the Smart TV Alliance, an organization formed by LG Electronics, TP Vision and Toshiba in June 2012, will see five new members joining it. The new entrants are Panasonic, ABOX42 and TechniSat, IBM and Specific Media. This move will bring in additional strength to the Alliance. It is certainly a good news for developers already eyeing the smart TV space.
The basic idea behind is to set some standards that will allow developers to write on-screen applications which can work across a variety of TVs, instead of writing separately for each manufacturer.
Last summer LG initiated the effort along with TP Vision, that makes Philips-branded TVs in Europe. Later Toshiba, Qualcomm and MStar also got added up. IBM also joined this week. Panasonic perhaps became the biggest name in TVs from its lot.
The Alliance says its looking to create a “non-proprietary ecosystem for application developers to create attractive, platform-independent services.” It’s also due to release a new version of its software development kit at a press event Wednesday at the International CES in Las Vegas, it said in a statement.
The new SDK will have an updated digital rights management technologies, that will allow to access a wider variety of content, and MPEG-DASH support, which will provide fluent audio and video playback. It also supports updated HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript specifications.
The smart TV market is still an emerging one, with a number of players coming in and a series of alliances happening. Samsung is also offering its own development kit, which is also due for a refresh at CES this week. Beside Yahoo, Google and Intel have also pursued connected TV efforts.
Intel is also reported to be planning to launch its own TV service and set-top box. But Wall Street Journal reported last week that the company is struggling to build content partnerships. A source told the paper that it’s now planning to launch the offering mid-year.
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