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Now watch TV with friends, remotely
By siliconindia
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Monday, 04 January 2010, 22:24 IST
San Francisco: Many companies are trying to come up with innovative ways of watching TV on web with friends, including Skype which makes it possible for friends to watch TV show together even if they are miles apart. Media companies have been spending huge amount of money to make TV more of a shared interactive experience, according to New York Times.
The online streaming TV site Hulu.com, owned by NBC Universal, the News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, has experimented with real-time interactive systems but has yet to make them available. Verizon Communications offers a Facebook connection tied to its FiOS Internet service where people can post messages while they watch a program. Video-game console makers like Microsoft and Sony seem to have come closest to offering an interactive experience with their voice chat and messaging systems.
"The cable companies and marketers have shown us what can be available and given a glimpse of what's possible," said Elizabeth A. Vandewater, a scientist at the research group RTI International, who has studied TV viewing habits for years. "Now people are acting on those ideas and extending them." Jessica Acres, for example, gathers with a few friends, via Skype, most days to watch shows like "General Hospital," "One Life to Live" and "Gossip Girl."
People have discovered other tricks for shrinking distances between far-flung friends, particularly those in different time zones who want to watch a show as soon as it goes on the air. Using readily available adapters that cost less than $100, people can connect their cable and satellite TV lines to a computer, grab streams of live television and make them available on Web sites like Justin.tv. Such technology has, predictably, turned the Canadian maritime provinces into popular places.
Justin.tv, a start-up based in San Francisco that lets anyone put on a live broadcast, has tried to capitalize on the rising interest in Web-based interactive TV. Viewers on the Justin site swap more than 100 million messages a month while watching video. In October alone, Justin.tv viewers watched 50 million hours of video, said Michael Seibel, the company's Chief Executive. "We have certainly stumbled upon something there is lots of consumer demand for," he said. He argues that this generation of TV watchers, who want a more interactive experience, could create opportunities for advertisers trying to find a more engaged audience. Early this year, Justin.tv will make it possible for anyone to create a pay-per-view program on the Web. "People are in a different state of mind, and it opens up interesting business models," Seibel said. "What we see is that people pay a lot more attention to the programs."
