First Online TV Search Engine Launched
The first television search engine offering customers over 42,000 hours of clips, has been launched by blinkx TV, allowing users to search online for clips from their favourite news, sports and entertainment programmes.
The new technology allows TV and radio programmes from 15 international broadcasters, including the BBC, ITN and Sky News, to be fully searchable over the internet.
Blinkx TV captures and indexes the entire video stream directly from the broadcaster and, by entering a few words in the query box, customers can access directly the specific clip the are looking for, bypassing advertisements. This could cause problems for advertisers as research on the effect of personal video recorders (PVRs) on advertising revenue has shown that around 40% of ads are missed in PVR homes, and in a report last October, analysts Merrill Lynch estimated that PVR’s will cause a 25% reduction in advertising (see PVRs To Hit UK Commercial Broadcasters Hardest).
Blinkx TV offers an early glimpse of how people may one day find and view TV programmes, with satellite and cable operates offering an increasing choice of programming through video-on-demand. TV executives say that improved navigation tools such as blinkxTV will be a key factor in determining whether or not people consume these services.
Blinkx co-founder, Suranga Chandratillake said: “Today’s consumers deserve an easier way of finding video and audio content online. Rich media, like video, is the next step in the evolution of search from web to desktop to living room. The ability to watch TV where and when you want is something that consumers are showing an increasing demand for. Digital TV recording devices such as Tivo and Sky Plus are growing in popularity and in turn are changing the way we watch and access home entertainment.”
He continued: “blinkx fills the gap between the explosion of rich media content and the growing consumer interest in harnessing it.”
Blinkx TV: www.blinkx.com
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