Cablevision Systems was showing off an app built using HTML5 and JavaScript technologies running on Internet-connected TVs from Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics that provides full access to live TV and an on-screen guide -- without any set-top required.
The smart TV demo uses the same interface as the one the MSO deployed earlier this year for its Optimum App for Laptop, which allows access to live TV and guide listings on PCs and Macs. A Cablevision spokesman said there is "no consumer deployment timetable yet" for the connected-TV apps.
According to Sam Chang, general manager of LG's Innovation Development Group in San Jose, Calif., the app demo with Cablevision was developed in just a few weeks.
The Cablevision app "uses common Web technologies to deliver a new user interface, full EPG [electronic program guide] and secure streaming of live linear TV to the LG Smart TV, needing only a single authorized cable modem," Chang said.
Cablevision currently offers customers in its New York footprint access to live TV apps for PCs and Macs, as well as iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. To use the software, a customer must have a subscription to iO TV and a Cablevision-supplied modem. (If a customer is not an Optimum Online customer, Cablevision will provide a specialized modem that allows access to the streaming TV apps but not the Internet.)
LG also is showing a new "App 2 App" software development kit, designed to enable interactions from MSO applications on Android and iOS-based tablets.
Elsewhere at the Cable Show, in the CableNEXT section of CableLabs' CableNet pavilion, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications are showing various TV apps for tablets, PCs and game consoles. In its demo, TWC connected an iPad running its TWC TV app to two HDTVs via an HDMI cable.
