How the iPad will turn TV viewing social

I like the final line “Puts the power in the hands of the consumer”. This has been what networks here (except Channel 2) have been fighting against.

This is awesome. The ability to instantly tell a friend – quick watch this now.. Also I can see services setting up – to tell me whenever there’s my fave actor being interviewed on a show – and it can pop up and direct you there.

So this will give us a bigger remote for the cable box? Oh yeah, it will also reduce our phone bills, getting our friends to watch the same broadcast

I can’t wait to get this… so I can stop talking to friends and not go to their place to watch a game together 😉

It’s more social if it’s online.

“there’s likely to be a (probably long) lag before this is possible in Australia”

IceTV is pretty close, Australian, and certainly innovating in that direction. In some respects, IceTV would be ahead of Comcast. IceTV already have an iPhone app out, and they’ve recently announced Android and other platforms will follow.

http://www.icetv.com.au/

Get yourself a mac (or PC) Eye TV and an iPhone or iPad. Voila.

Uses IceTV Marc mentioned for scheduling and you can watch anywhere in the world you can connect to the interwebs.

Great, if you’re into that kinda thing.

No. This is not awesome. You can file this under dumb shit that masquerades as social networking.

You could always tweet your friends that you are watching a show.

Watching TV in real time while your friends also watch the same TV show in their houses in real time is the schizzle. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

Social media fail.

You know it makes sense.

@Andre
I agree, what is the point?

Onya Carrob,

I reckon you nailed it. There are so many portable options around now I see this as just another version.

I love using my PSP to watch my home TV from anwhere in the world using the PS3 Play TV add-on. Does all the same stuff as this thing and I can Facebook/Email/SMS my friends from my Blackberry about what I’m seeing if I want.

Would be more fun still if you could annotate the programming privately via this connection.

“hey look at Dicaprios crappy ass wig”

Doesn’t the mate you invite to watch Gangs Of New York have to be within WiFi range … maybe 100-200 metres (though I believe that 802.11n has greater range)? So, what’s the point … why not invite him over for a pizza and beer!

Just because it’s dumb doesn’t mean people won’t love it. I think it’ll go off when it gets here.

Looks too hard for me … Tv is feet up, beer and relaxing

Considering I have friends in different states in the same time zone it would be nice to “remotely watch TV together” no online is never more social than f2f but, considering a heap of people work at home after “hours” and occasionally in front of the TV as well, and cant really afford the time to have people over or go somewhere; this is sadly the next best thing, but it is less sad than less and less contact with one’s friends due to busy work schedules.

Also, a shout out to the awesome show – “Attack of the Show”, where this clip is actually from.

@reveesy – is this “back-channel” conversation not already possible with Twitter? If not I am sure a bit of tweaking with the Twitter APIs would make it so.

On a smaller scale already I can use my iPhone to control the AppleTV via wifi. The main advantage here is searching with text (as the video points out), but it would be good if this was extended so that what was on TV was simultaneously on the mobile device, a gimmick if for video perhaps, but would be handy for managing iTunes (ie if someone asked what the song was).

The idea that your smartphone controls everything has been a mobile developer dream for a while. One draw back of this idea is that something that fits in your hand might not actually be that good for controlling everything, but something the size of a pad – well I guess things get more interesting.

Conversely the functionality to stream content from an iPad to a TV would also be good – i am thinking particularly of catch-up TV here. The ABC Network app for catch up on the iPad is very impressive. The issue here is the interface between the TV and the wifi network? It may not necessarily be in the cable co’s interest to make free-to-air catch up simple by opening up the cable box in this way so that leaves Apple TV (again unlikely as it would cannibalise an iTunes audience who are currently paying for tv episodes or seasons) or the PS3 (not sure if this is technically possible)