It may not seem like much, a matter of a few feet, negotiating a corridor and a couple of doorways, but it has become one of the technology industry's greatest challenges - dragging the internet away from the family PC and out of the home office and putting it on the television set in the lounge. After years of watching others fail to achieve it, Samsung Electronics believes that it is about to succeed.

This week the world's largest consumer electronics company will tell the IFA industry fair in Germany that it is partnering Yahoo! to provide content for a new integrated internet access service in its televisions. The InfoLive service will provide news, finance and weather information from Yahoo!, directed from the remote control. Samsung plans to provide the service on Series 7, 8 and 9 televisions in Canada, Australia, and Singapore and in selected countries in Europe by the end of this year.

As ever with such advances, timing is everything. Previous attempts have failed not because the technology was lacking but because the audience was not ready to give up the big screen to anything other than a television programme or a film. Interactivity came a poor second to sitting and watching.

But tastes are changing. Consumers are much more used to interactivity across all media, from radio phone-ins and X Factor-style votes to internet blogs and comments, and they are embracing the combination of net and television. One survey, for example, found that 43 per cent of viewers of the Super Bowl in February surfed the web on their laptops or mobile phones while watching the game on TV.

Samsung believes that it has surmounted the problem of navigation by not swamping the big screen but by adding bite-sized interactive choices. Users will be able to watch a programme while a tickertape of news items, share prices or weather forecasts runs in tandem with it. The content is accessible via an integrated Ethernet port or via Samsung's wireless LAN adapter, which connects to the viewer's broadband service.

Moreover, Samsung is seeking interactive success on several fronts. Separately, it is a partner for a venture between Yahoo! and Intel, the chip-maker, to develop what is being called the Widget Channel of interactive content. In due course, viewers may be able to check their eBay auction, view a friend's photos and instant message friends, all using the remote control from the comfort of their armchairs.

Jungwoo Park surveys these prospects from his office in the Samsung tower south of Seoul. The head of the digital media division at Samsung Electronics sees them as part of the battle to make Samsung's televisions the centre of entertainment in every living room. According to Dr Park, televisions will be the company's big driver of growth for the next five years.

“We want televisions to be centre of the home network,” he said. And the key to that is a change in Samsung's strategy. Until now, it has kept out of the game of providing content, concentrating on developing its market-leading range of high-definition sets. Now, according to Dr Park, the solutions are not just about hardware but about the software that televisions carry.

Samsung Electronics, with significant market shares in mobile phones, LED screens, white goods and other items, powered its way to a $105 billion worldwide turnover in 2007. Amid this year's global economic woes, Dr Park argues that he should provide premium products with added value to keep the customers spending.

He foresees a time - perhaps only five years away - when TV sets will been connected wirelessly to a range of devices that will “talk” to each other automatically, downloading pictures, streaming video, music and games. “No stress,” Dr Park said, with a smile.

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