Rating: YuMe joins Smart TV Alliance, though
An announcement made by LG Electronics at the beginning of this week [August 27th 2012], about a new Smart TV game portal called Game World has caused real confusion here at GoMobile Towers. The company appears to have ‘launched’ without actually providing access to the public until next month [September 2012]. Every time GoMobile News tried to find a definite product it evaporated in front of us. Hopefully, some of the confusion will disappear as four more companies have joined the Smart TV Alliance founded by LG along with Philips and Toshiba. The Alliance is working towards version 2.0 of its SDK.The aim is to enable software houses to develop apps (many of which are games) which will run on a range of enhanced TVs – not just those from a specific manufacturer.
Included in the original SDK are aspects of HTML5 – which is where the cross-over between the mobile world and the smart TV apps world will come.
But LG is all over the place with its web site links. Take this one, for example, here.
It very definitely takes you to a page with information about LG’s Smart TVs but when you clink on the graphic which says, “Visit LG Smart TV app Store”, nothing happens.
We worked out that LG must have a site for supplying its TV apps to consumers somewhere and therefore found this one here.
It’s called LG TV Apps and offers games but seems to have no connexion with the announced ‘Game World’.
It gets worse. In order to play LG’s latest 3D games, consumers can equip themselves with an LG Magic Remote.
The company also claims that there are Magic remote emulators for iPhone and Android. Just you try to find them.
We tried and this is what we found this for Android here. Something called the ‘LG TV Remote’.
The listing says, “Application (‘LG Magic’) for smart TV Models released in 2012 (not listed in supported models) has been uploaded.” Not quite sure what that means really.
Luckily, the announcement that four new companies including Qualcomm have joined the Smart TV Alliance – made at the IFA show – was pretty straightforward.
One of the new members is YuMe which is described as a provider of video advertising software and services which should deliver its knowledge and experience of the advertising community to the Alliance.
Incidentally, version two of the Alliance’s SDK is set for release by Q1 2013. Watch the web site here for more details.
