The Multi-Stream Widget Based Thingy

This blog post is more about getting prior art for an idea I've had onto a publicly searchable space than anything else. It's about the merging of PC desktop widgets onto live TV broadcasts. I'd hate to think some corporate employee would stumble across my idea and patent it as their own only to lock the possibility up from the consumer. The idea itself is not novel, it's not unique, like any other ideas, it's just a slight twist on something already in existence. In this case by merging two concepts to form a new one.

I'd love to see this idea being explored by people. I have no interest in developing it myself. To my knowledge nobody has thought of it before. I'd love this to be an open source idea, hence the post for prior art sake. Simply merging these two ideas into one seems so obvious to me, I can't believe nobody else has thought of it. Then again, for every great inventor, there are 1,000,000 people who say "I could have thought of that"....but they didn't. Just because it's obvious to me, does not mean it's obvious to others.

Desktop Widgets

Many people now use widgets of some sort on their PC desktop. These are little applets which do simple things like show CPU use, bandwidth usage, sports score updates, or weather updates etc. My examples are rather weak here as I don't use them myself. These applets are all made by different people, to serve different functions. Yet they can conform to a standard code base to be a plugin an end user can choose to install and place on their desktop. The widget gets an updated signal from somewhere to refresh it's output.

TV Broadcast Streams

For years now we've had subtitle streams running alongside regular TV broadcasts, so you can switch them on or off with a button. Now we have digital TV and a lot more bandwidth per channel we should have a signing overlay for deaf people as an additional button to switch on or off if required. This is all one channel sending the various signals that the user can choose to enable or disable depending on their needs.

The Multi-Stream Widget Based Thingy (AKA My Idea)

Now that we're merging our technical lifestyles by watching more TV on our PCs, and using our TVs to stream internet content etc it seems like a natural blend to add the widget functionality to the regular TV broadcast. The idea is that you can have say a sports score updates widget set to display on top of whatever channel you're watching. This allows you to position the widget where you want, even pay to subscribe to the update service, and have it autohide when there's no action, but slide into the bottom corner of the screen when a goal is scored etc. You should be able to customise the output too. This would be an independent stream from the TV channel you're watching underneath it. You could also have it work while playing video games too, so you didn't need to pause to switch channels, or have a radio on at the same time. You'd get your updates onscreen on top of your game display.

It'd be great to see this as a standard TV manufacturers could agree on and include on all new TVs. A standard implementation could be a new revenue stream for developers who make useful TV widgets that people actually use. Imagine being able to keep your partner happy by letting them watch their favourite show, knowing you'll get on screen updates about stock prices etc. This allows you some extra quality time as a family, while keeping informed.

I can see broadcasters making their own widgets to tempt people to use branded Sky Sports update widgets etc. I can see a lot of people wanting to use the channel branded widgets too. It'd open up ideas on how to integrate widgets in to put across that information in a way that's not aggressive in attracting the eyeballs. A stock market ticker with a list of game scores moving from left to right along the top of the screen may suit people better than a column sliding in from the top right etc.

This idea would also work great on projects like MythTV where you're already watching TV on a PC with software designed for TV. Surely addon modules would be capable of adding an onscreen widget display over your playback. On something like MythTV the source for the updates would be the internet, my original idea was over the airwaves, like a teletext signal that can be enabled automatically when a widget is enabled.

You could also have different presets for different family members, where mom's preset widgets can be switched on with a single touch when she needs them, and switched over to dad's when he needs them, without having to set them up every time.

Today is Thursday 5th November 2009. The time is 1.45am GMT.