Yahoo Smart TV

Key takeaways

Yahoo Smart TV belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Yahoo Smart TV to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Yahoo Smart TV from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Yahoo! Smart TV (formerly Yahoo! Connected TV) was a Smart TV platform developed by Yahoo! based upon the Yahoo! Desktop Widgets (Konfabulator) platform. Yahoo! Connected TV announced on August 20, 2008, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco as the Widget Channel, it integrated the Yahoo! Widgets Engine with a new television oriented user interface to enable Internet connected applications to run and display on a 10-foot user interface. The platform was quickly dropped by most of its manufacturers after model year 2012. New apps that were based on Konfabulator stopped being added effective March 30, 2018, but existing apps could still be updated and installed, and HTML5 based apps were not affected by this. Yahoo! Smart TV finally shut down on September 30, 2025, and all apps running on it stopped functioning after that date.

Development Yahoo began porting the Konfabulator Widget Engine to an embedded Linux platform in 2007 as part of a joint venture with Intel corporation that resulted in an announcement of the Widget Channel in August 2008.

On January 4, 2009, Yahoo! And Samsung announced that select models of Samsung's new flat panel HDTVs would support the new TV Widget service. On January 7, 2009, Yahoo! followed up with a broader announcement of distribution partnerships with major television manufacturers Samsung, Sony, LG Electronics, and Vizio, with only a peripheral reference to Intel. The following year, January 6, 2010, additional partnerships with Hisense, ViewSonic, MIPS Technologies, and Sigma Designs were announced at CES 2011 bringing the Yahoo! Widget Engine to more televisions and consumer electronics platforms. In September 2010, Yahoo! and the Vestel Group announced a partnership to deliver the platform that was now renamed to Yahoo Smart TV, to Europe. Also later in September, Toshiba announced Yahoo! Smart TV support on several models of their televisions. On November 2, 2011, Yahoo! launched the Yahoo! Smart TV Store with Sony and Toshiba. The Yahoo! Smart TV Store allows developers to offer paid TV apps from 99 cents to $99. The Yahoo! Smart TV Store expanded to VIZIO in late 2012, and, as a part of this, the term "Widgets" was phased out and replaced with "Apps." On January 9, 2012, Yahoo! and Sony announced Broadcast Interactivity technology available in 2012 Sony BRAVIA televisions. On March 2, 2012, it was announced that Yahoo would be closing down support for the Yahoo Desktop Widget Engine. Yahoo's reason for closure was twofold: The cost of replacing the older servers that supported the gallery, and the refocusing of human resources on the development of the Yahoo! Smart TV widget platform. On November 5, 2012, Yahoo! and Samsung announced an expanded partnership with the addition of support for Broadcast Interactivity. From 2013 onwards, Vizio became the only manufacturer to use Yahoo! on its TVs. Following Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo! in 2017, Vizio began to phase out Yahoo! on their TVs in favor of its then-new SmartCast platform, and by 2018 they stopped releasing TVs with the platform, which was not reflected on Yahoo's website until October 2020. In 2025, Yahoo updated the website to announce that the platform would be discontinued after September 30.

ADK Development of TV Apps were enabled via the Yahoo! App Development Kit or ADK, available for download from the Yahoo! Smart TV website. The App Development kit required Ubuntu Linux as the default operating system, Windows developers must run the Ubuntu operating system on a virtual machine. Only Ubuntu 10.10 was supported although it runs on other derivatives and versions of Ubuntu successfully.

Widget Distribution TV Widgets were distributed post sale of the television, via the Yahoo! Smart TV Store, scheduled for launch in Fall 2011. The store claimed to reach 135 countries, and enables widget distribution to millions of TVs from Samsung, Sony, Vizio, and Toshiba. All transactions were processed by Yahoo!, and widget prices range from 99 cents to 99 dollars, with developers getting 70% of the revenue after taxes and currency exchange. All widgets must have gone through the Yahoo! approval process before they were accepted for distribution.

Technology TV Widgets were developed using a combination of HTML, XML and JavaScript. The code is then executed on the Yahoo TV Widget engine running on TV embedded Linux.

See also Apple TV Boxee Google TV Hillcrest Labs Home theater PC Interactive television Internet television Kylo Roku Smart TV Tivoization TV Genius WebTV XBMC Media Center

Notes and references

External links Yahoo! Smart TV Official Website Yahoo! Smart TV Developer Site

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Yahoo Smart TV

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Yahoo Smart TV claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Yahoo Smart TV before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Yahoo Smart TV ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Yahoo Smart TV

In research: Yahoo Smart TV appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Yahoo Smart TV in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Yahoo Smart TV is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Discontinued Yahoo! services, Interactive television, Products introduced in 2008, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Yahoo Smart TV outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Yahoo Smart TV in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Yahoo Smart TV means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Yahoo Smart TV out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Yahoo Smart TV in simple terms?

Yahoo! Smart TV (formerly Yahoo!

Why does Yahoo Smart TV matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Yahoo Smart TV?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Yahoo Smart TV.