In pictures: Toshiba Places

Toshiba Places - coming in May
Toshiba Places - coming in May

Toshiba Places, the new web platform from Toshiba, will be making its way to the UK in the coming months hitching a ride on the next generation of Regza TVs.

Like the Samsung Smart Hub and Panasonic Vieracast before it, the internet portal is initially part of Tosh's TV setup.

Unlike the aforementioned, though, Places is set to become part of the entire Toshiba eco-system, eventually finding its way on to laptops and tablets.

Toshiba Places is broken down into a number of sections, all of which are available from the main hub.

Toshiba places

Here you can get to: Video Place, Social Place, Music Place and News Place. In each of the sections you will find apps which will allow you to connect to various web-based services.

At the moment, what's on offer is fairly limited. Apps which are on most other connected services are present and correct, though, There is the obligatory YouTube app, one for DailyMotion and you can also access Flickr from the portal.

Toshiba places

There's a number of news feeds to choose from and you can also access any of your own content from here as well.

TechRadar asked if the Toshiba Places was going to get any Twitter and Facebook integration, but it seems we will have to wait until the second integration of the service is released before this happens.

Toshiba places

While Toshiba Places isn't mind-blowing at the moment, there is a lot of promise here.

It is a platform that hopes to bridge the TV/laptop/tablet divide. This is because the system is platform agnostic and will remember your habits.

All you have to do is sign into the service, and it will remember where you are on, say, a YouTube video. This means you can begin watching it on your TV and start where you left off on a tablet.

Toshiba places

This current dream for Toshiba Places is that it won't just be consigned to Toshiba devices, as you can access the portal it through a browser.

We will have to wait until May when it is launched on Tosh's Regza range to see if it is also the reality.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.