Chumby NeTV overlays the ‘smart’ on a pass-through HDMI signal

Don’t look now, but Chumby might’ve just cracked the case. The widget purveyor just announced its new NeTV project, which overlays its wares on top of a plain old HDMI signal, and then passes along the results. What’s great is that this turns the best screen in your house into a Chumby box, without sacrificing the ability to actually watch TV on it. The display of updates, culled from Twitter, Facebook, and even SMS and email from your Android phone, is passive and “non-intrusive,” so you can theoretically leave the box on at all times. If you don’t have an Android phone to pair up with NeTV there’s an IR remote you can use, or you can wait around for the planned iOS support. Under the hood there’s an 800MHz Marvell processor and 802.11g Wi-Fi, with power provided by a micro USB plug. In typical Chumby fashion, all of this hardware is open source. Developer hardware will be available later this month, no word on when consumers can get in on the action -- though they can always roll their own, of course. Check out a demo video after the break.