The Twitter widget for Yahoo TV Widgets offers a well-designed, fully featured client that lets you post tweets from your TV.
When collapsed, the widget, or snippet in this form, displays the most recent tweet, whether it's from you or someone you follow. These are updated in nearly real time without having to hit a refresh button or take any other actions.
It's unfortunate, though, that you're limited to just the most recent update in this view when the Samsung TV we were using organizes some other snippets, Yahoo's weather and finance ones, into scrollable tabs that show multiple weather or finance updates.
2 of 6Sarah Tew/CNET
Main menu of the Twitter widget
The expanded widget opens up to a main menu that allows you to check your feed of tweets, direct messages and replies. This window also has quick links to post a new tweet and access other options.
3 of 6Sarah Tew/CNET
Tweeting from your TV
One of the standout features of the widget is the ability to post new tweets. Using the TV remote can be a frustrating experience, though, as you have to use the directional pad to select letters on a virtual keyboard. This is one of those few times where you'll celebrate the fact that there's a 140-character limit. Luckily, the virtual keyboard has been laid out in alphabetical order as opposed to QWERTY to make the typing process somewhat friendlier.
4 of 6Sarah Tew/CNET
A detailed view of an individual tweet
Twitter has also made the typing process easier by providing buttons to reply to, direct message and repost a tweet when viewing a specific tweet. You can also view the rest of a user's feed and even choose to follow someone you're not already following.
5 of 6Sarah Tew/CNET
A full-fledged Twitter experience
While you unfortunately but understandably can't follow all those TinyURL and bit.ly links, the widget provides a complete Twitter experience in almost every other way. A menu provides quick access to nearly everything on the site, including your favorites, the public timeline, search, trends and saved searches.
6 of 6Sarah Tew/CNET
Fun with custom searches
The Twitter widget allows you to save custom searches, which could potentially be useful if you want to keep up with what others are saying about a TV show while you're watching it.
