Welcome to the fourth installment on AT&T U-Verse interactive applications. In the part III we talked about Uverse Caller ID, U-bar, and more. Today the focus is again on a number of features including AT&T Yahoo! Games, YP.COM TV, and Media Sharing. Let’s get started.
Yahoo! Games
What you’re probably asking right now is “are these Yahoo games really any fun?” and we’ll put it this way: If you’re a casual gamer, they’re a heck of a fun way to kill some time. If you’re a hardcore gamer, don’t sell your Xbox just yet.
The concept here is to mix some casual, friendly, accessible video games with the television experience. These games are generally pretty simple and based on themes like bowling, video poker and simple racing and platforming games. Do they stand up to the next-gen consoles in terms of graphics, depth or production values? Well, no, but that’s not really the point.
Someday, we’ll see a time when you can just switch to a certain channel, flip your remote sideways, and play the hottest new releases right on your TV with a quick download. Until then, Yahoo! Games on TV offer a glimpse into the future, and they’re really all you need if you’re not a hardcore gamer of any sort. They’re at least as fun as anything you can play on your cell phone, we’ll put it that way.
YP.COM TV
YP.COM TV is basically a Yellow Pages that you can access from your TV. Cool, right? More and more we’re moving towards what they want to call the “paperless era”, and this is just one more step. Through integration with telephone and the web, this basically allows for a full telephone system working through your television, which makes thing a lot more convenient and simple.
Media Sharing
AT&T U-Verse MediaShare is a feature that allows you to access pretty much any media on your computer through your television. So if you have home videos or some photos you want to view, you can use your HDTV to display them. If you just finished a video or movie you want to show your friends, you can play it on your TV rather than having everyone crowd around your laptop. In other words, it’s just one more step towards total integration of the full electronic experience in the twenty first century.
This level of integration has sparked its share of paranoia with people thinking we’re heading towards some sort of cyberpunk nightmare, but really, it’s just more convenient, and that’s that.
AT&T U-verse brings HD TV, high speed Internet, and voice together.