Dishing WebTV
WebTV, which never quite caught on (I do have one 80-year-old neighbor who doesn’t have a computer and uses it in its currrent incarnation as MSN TV), rears its ugly tube again. Bloomberg reports DirecTV will test allowing subscribers to access computer applications via their televisions.
The company (DirecTV) will test the feature with as many as 20,000 customers starting June 19, Eric Shanks, executive vice president of entertainment, said in a phone interview today. If the trial is successful, DirecTV will make the applications available to all its OnDemand subscribers as of Aug. 1, he said.
The full but still very short story is here. It goes on to say that the test will start with five applications available, but could eventually expand to many more; it did not specify what the apps would be, other than Flickr.
Since Flickr is named as an app in the news story, it’s not clear whether this means five applications or five websites. I wasn’t able to find a press release or other independent confirmation of Bloomberg’s report.