YouTube has said it has introduced some new APIs to make the service accessible on a number of other devices including television sets, game consoles and the TiVo set-top box.TiVo is the first company to showcase the possibility to access the video website on a regular TV set.
TiVo announced in a press release that it will offer access to YouTube videos directly from the TV via a TiVo PVR. The service will be available later this year to broadband-connected subscribers with TiVo Series3 PVRs, including the new TiVo HD. Upon launch of the TiVo-YouTube service, users will be able to search, browse and watch these videos directly on their television sets through their broadband connection.
“The combination of having the YouTube experience with the convenience and familiarity of TiVo’s intuitive user interface will provide TiVo subscribers with the ability to discover and enjoy the most shared and most discussed web videos in the world on their televisions. Importantly, users will be able to log into their YouTube accounts directly from their TiVo boxes,” the release said.
According to the YouTube blog this is just the beginning: “For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device.”
“The number of possible new applications is endless. Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube. Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube.”
