Netscape TV on the horizon?

Chatting with Netscape's senior business development manager, Brian Hanley, at the recent Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica, I got a sense of where the browser-maker might go next. Netscape, a division of Time Warner, is testing a new Web browser to contend with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and plans to relaunch the Netscape.com Web portal. But Hanley also said that it is exploring a new a broadband service. "What's good for Yahoo is good for us," he joked.

What's more, when I asked why was he attending the confab of entertainment and technology executives, he said that he was "investigating partnerships" for a service he called Netscape TV, an Internet Protocol television product. Whether that would actually happen or what such a service might look like, he wouldn't say. But with growing interest among cable and telco companies to expand their Internet entertainment options, it's an open field for companies like Akimbo, DaveTV or ... even Netscape?