Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Gracenote: Fulfilling Metadata Dreams Behind the Scenes

From The Online Reporter  

The trend of consumers accessing the Web while watching TV is
only going to go up, especially if Gracenote can help it.

At CES this year, Gracenote showed off a series of new
technologies that will help consumers delve further into the
lives and stories of their favorite actors and characters
across movies, live TV, new show episodes and even old reruns.

Gracenote’s connected TV services — available on Blu-ray
players, smart TVs and STBs — are designed to give users what
it called a “lean forward” experience for navigating to
relevant content. Gracenote provides a TV-specific menu for
exploring the actors in a film, allowing the user to click on
their picture to see recent work, their acting history,
biographies, photos and even trailers for films the actor was
in.

Gracenote’s full-service suite runs as a unified combination
of MusicID, VideoID and Video Explore.
- MusicID: Like its name suggests, this service is able to
identify music being played, whether it’s from CDs, digital
files or analog media. The service powers a music
identification and discovery app of the same name. The
impressive part of this service was its integration into the
video offerings, allowing Gracenote to identify a song being
played in a film or TV show.
- VideoID: When a consumer puts a DVD or Blu-ray into a disc
player, computer, game console or other device, this service
can immediately recognize the metadata of the disc and deliver
that relevant information to the consumer. Information
includes things like the movie title, release year, cover art,
rating, cast and credits, genre and synopsis. All of this
information is then linked in with the Video Explore
technology. Some devices, like the LG Blu-ray player that was
being demonstrated, have a dedicated remote button for the
VideoID service.
- Video Explore: This technology is all about how the VideoID
content and other data is displayed to the user. This gives
users search, navigation and exploration of their content
using what VideoID provides as the initial point of
interaction. The service allows navigation through the entire
Gracenote database and recently has added the ability to play
film trailers thanks to a deal with IVA plus the ability to
purchase content. The demo for purchasing was using Amazon,
but Gracenote said it could be leveraged with any market that
its partners desired.

The Other-Screen Companions
Perhaps the best thing shown off by Gracenote at this year’s
CES was a prototype iPad app that served as a companion for
the TV screen. The app, named MediaLink, also appeared to be
working on a newer ViewSonic Viewtab.

When running, the app literally listens to what is being
played by the TV and can identify the show or film. In the
demonstration area, which was a bit noisy at times, it took
roughly 5 seconds for the app to determine what the content
being played was. The app then delivered relevant information
on the content from Gracenote’s vast metadata library. The app
also allowed navigation to other content in Gracenote’s
library, including the IVA trailers that were demoed on its TV
and Blu-ray player platforms.

Gracenote said it could do the same recognition with
advertisements if provided information by the advertisers, an
area it seemed eager to get into.

One solid thing about the app is its ability to detect and
determine new TV content in the midst of heavy background
noise. The app is able to determine when a change in content
has taken place and can discriminate between content inputs
and whether the TV is what has changed or if it’s something
like other noise in the room. Here, it took about five seconds
for the service to recognize the change and then bring up
relevant information for the new content.

The app, according to Gracenote, only activates and accesses
the database when it determines there has been a significant
change in what it’s listening to. The app, after determining
there has been a change, then begins to access its database
and talk with Gracenote servers to figure out what’s being
played and what it should send to the user. This dormant-
until-needed approach was developed to save battery life,
Gracenote said.

During one demonstration, a mobile phone went off directly
next to the iPad being used to show the app, but it didn’t
skip a beat as the viewer fumbled around to silence their
phone.

The only downside to this great app they were showing off is
that end users can’t get it just yet. The app was a
demonstration of what Gracenote can do.

The Data Behind the Curtain
From its CES demonstrations, on the iPad and various Blu-ray
players and STBs, the service was very impressive. Gracenote
sells access to its services and databases to various CE
partners instead of direct to consumers, and it’s a bit of a
shame.

The information on the devices connected directly with a TV
served as a great launching point to explore movies and TV
shows. The ease of the interface made it very engaging and
adding in a commercial solution made it a perfect fit for a
couch experience. This is what should be on an Apple TV or
Roku box to drive purchases.

The MediaLink app that determined what was playing on TV and
delivered related content was one of the nicest apps around
for this type of information discovery. This is one that
consumers would be willing to pay for as-is, but that
broadcasters and advertisers are likely to pay a lot more
money for to get their name or brand attached to it.
Advertising is likely the biggest market for it down the road,
especially since it works on mobile devices and won’t require
a smart TV or STB.

By using audio recognition, the platform opens itself up to a
wider range of devices and ultimately lower-cost devices as
the tablet wars are expected to bring down the prices of just
about every non-Apple tablet around. Expanding to smartphones
would be nearly instant and would give it a much larger base
with which to interact.

With VideoExplore targeting smart TVs and boxes plus MediaLink
targeting any touchscreen mobile, Gracenote is poised to
control the way users experience, discover and interact with
all the metadata that’s behind their favorite TV in a very fun
way.


To see 3 free editions of The Online Reporter, the weekly source for competitive intelligence about digital content, online entertainment services, mobile media and wireless networks, visit www.onlinereporter.com/trial_copies.php 

No comments:

Post a Comment