News Desk

Yahoo's Widgets have been through several generations of development for several platforms. Soon they will be available in HDTVs from Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio. If you're familiar with Yahoo's web portal, you may already depend on services like Yahoo's News, Weather, Video, Finance, and Flickr. But there will also be Widgets for eBay, MySpace, CBS, The New York Times, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, Showtime, USA Today, and Twitter.

The widgets can be scrolled along the bottom of the screen. Open one and it deploys a vertical rectangle at left while resizing the video image at right so you don't miss anything in the program you're simultaneously watching. There is also a full-screen mode that should work well for video services. The TV remote operates everything and includes a dedicated button (with the Yahoo logo in some cases) that sends you into widget mode.

This is part of a wave of internet-enabled features now flooding into higher-end TVs, a wave that may usher in a new set of viewing habits, moving television from a primarily passive experience to a more active one. Do viewers want to become more active? Will people prefer doing widgets on their TVs, versus their phones and PDAs? That's for you to decide.

For more information see Yahoo! Connected TV.