Canonical is Demonstrating Ubuntu TV at Mobile World Congress

At the CES show in Las Vegas in January, Canonical showed off Ubuntu TV, as we reported here. It's a brand new interface that integrates television and movie content on an open source platform that Canonical hopes will win developers over. It's also part of Canonical's overall strategy to put Ubuntu on new types of devices, including tablets and smartphones. The interface for Ubuntu TV is based on Unity, the controversial environment that many Ubuntu users have wrestled with. In the days since the arrival of Ubuntu TV, some interesting hands-on reports and criticisms have arrived, but there is no question that this will be one of the big open source stories of 2012. This week, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Canonical demonstrated Ubuntu TV again, and you can watch a video of it.

Softpedia has a video demo of Ubuntu TV from the Mobile World Congres conference, and reports:

"Featuring a customized version of the Unity interface, Ubuntu TV has the ability to stream media across other compatible devices, supporting iOS and Android. Intelligent search and enhanced viewing is also available."

Canonical's Ubuntu TV demo in Barcelona is only one of its key demonstrations at Mobile World Congress. You can watch a video of Ubuntu for Android in action here, which is being shown at the conference and represents a major step toward the smartphone arena for Canonical. Canonical has also wrapped Ubuntu TV into Ubuntu for Android.

Many tasks in Ubuntu TV are automated and friendly. It finds and organizes existing media that you own, and it uses good tools such as Gstreamer for video playback, but it's definitely version 1.0 technology. Mark Shuttleworth himself provided much of the early information about the new platform for TVs on his blog. It's clear that Canonical is serious about Ubuntu TV, and both the Mobile World Congress demo and the demo of Ubuntu TV running on Ubuntu for Android are worth watching. As you can see from Canonical's graphic below, the platform is aimed at big screens as well as smartphones and computers: