WorldWideTech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.
A new service has launched in the UK which aims to dramatically change the experience of watching television.
Anthony Rose, Zeebox CTO and co-founder explained it: "Okay I've got Zeebox at my side and I'm looking at the program guide..." Built by the architect of BBC successful iPlayer, Anthony Rose, Zeebox provides TV viewers with a new way to interact with the medium.
"You can sort the guide by regular channel order, or you can say show me the most popular programs right now. Or you can say, show me the programs my friends are watching." TV viewers who want a collective experience can tune in to what their friends are watching or invite friends to watch the same program. Hook it up to a connected TV, and the channel changes automatically. And that's just the beginning.
"What we do is analyze second by second what's playing on television. They're talking about Tom Hanks. I click on Tom Hanks and there's information on Tom Hanks, I can look at the Tweet stream on Tom Hanks, I've got news programs about Tom Hanks and so everything comes out as a neat overlay so you stay within the application. Everything's just one click away." For instance, movies and music featuring - who else, Tom Hanks
"I think the aim for the platform is really to be the Facebook of television. So in the same way Facebook has a website but has APIs where you can put 'like' buttons and can use it to log in and so on, we would like to have a great app but take all the pieces of the app and make them available. So imagine you're a broadcaster and you have this morning show, you could take the stream of what's playing second by second, or the friends who are watching it or the commercial things and put it into your website." Zeebox users who're not keen to expose the TV viewing habits, can switch on private viewing mode. There are plans to bring Zeebox to additional platforms and territories, including the U.S. in 2012.
The BBC iPlayer and before that Kazaa, , technical driving force behind them , Anthony Rose , this week returns with Zeebox, an iPad app designed to tap the growing trend for “dual screening”.
Zeebox.- What can do users with Zeebox.-?
At the same time:
As watching live TV, you can chat to your friends on Twitter and Facebook, see what they are watching, pull up extra information about a show’s participants or topics, and buy related items.
The app looks something like a real-time TV guide, with the ability to order channels according to popularity, and can also act as a remote control for internet-connected TVs.
Zeebox is already in the App Store’s top five most popular downloads after launching on Friday.
An accompanying website and HTML5 web app go live on Tuesday.
Zeebox initially launches at the UK market.
Mr Rose co-founded Zeebox in April with Ernesto Schmitt, a serial entrepreneur who has also worked at EMI, DSG and Tesco.
The company raised £5m in venture funding from undisclosed investors.
Zeebox sees a shift for the former iPlayer CTO (who also had a brief stint at British internet-TV venture YouView) from catch-up to live TV.
In spite of the advent of iPlayer, YouTube and digital video recorders such as Virgin Media’s
Tivo and Sky+, the majority of television is still watched at the time of broadcast.
“We expect entertainment to be socially connected, transaction-enabled so we can buy things, information-augmented so we can dig deeper, participatory and interactive,” says Mr Schmitt. “The one place where we consume the vast majority of entertainment – the living room – remains unchanged.”
Many of the biggest shows – from highbrow political slots such as BBC Question Time to eality-TV hits like X-Factor and even Downton Abbey’s period drama –are already subject to feverish discussion on Facebook and Twitter.
Through hashtags and other semantic smarts, Zeebox will pull this chatter into its app.
Tweeting from the app comes with a link back to the Zeebox site, attracting other
users.
Of course, for many shows there are already dedicated apps for social media, and Twitter and Facebook themselves are doing a pretty good job at working directly with TV companies to drive online discussion and “engagement”.
But Zeebox provides other goodies too. Its servers are constantly processing a live broadcast feed to pull out keywords of what’s being discussed on a show; these are shown on each programme’s page in real-time, to provide extra information from places like Wikipedia, iTunes or Amazon links and relevant ads.
All this, Rose and Schmitt claim, is just making easier what already happens on sofas around the country, citing research that 30 per cent of all internet usage in the UK is done while watching TV; more than half of viewers have one eye on the big screen, but another on the laptop or tablet as they browse the web or send emails.
Although over-35s are not such avid social networkers during shows, the Zeebox app is designed to serve up other kinds of information too.
Rose and Schmitt hope that Zeebox will eventually become a platform for broadcasters’ and programme-makers accompanying apps, as it can provide a new level of detailed data about who is watching their shows.
Ambitious vision to watch.
Source: FT and Reuters.
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