Bob Browning's blog

Answer.  It is a gadget that appears on your TV screen that allows you to show internet content on your TV.  You control it with your remote.

• Provided your TV is connected to the Internet
• Provided your TV supports them.

Which your TV will do both pretty soon.  More here: http://connectedtv.yahoo.com including a demo which makes it all much clearer.  Yahoo is the leader in this and it has deals with Samsung, Sony and LG. 

Is this the end of the rented DVD, when you can download and watch direct from the rental company?  Share photos from Flickr directly on your TV. 

However as Mary Lojkine points out in regard to the Sony Internet Video Link (which is a sort of preliminary version of this):

“So it’s the Internet, on your TV, with no need for a PC. Except it’s not the Internet, it’s just on-demand video from selected providers. And it’s not on your current TV, because it only works with the new models. And let’s be honest, you do have a computer, and it isn’t hard to connect a PC to a modern LCD or plasma, so you could quite easily have the actual Internet on your actual TV.”

I take her point, but Idon’t know about you but when I am in couch-potatoe mode it is as much as I can do to lift the remote, let alone start messing with my PC.  Personally I think the future is a set-top box that is a real computer, but which doubles as a Blu ray player, PVR and Internet access device.  It will have an advanced controller that includes a small qwerty keypad – the size and shape of a blackberry.  That way you can do all this from your sofa without having to find a place for the keyboard and mouse along with your six-pack.