A search engine… for your television
Cory Bergman February 19th, 2008
A new Samsung set-top box, called See’n'Search, is a search engine of sorts for your television. Using closed captioning and program listings, the box automatically searches the internet to give viewers more information on the shows they’re watching. In this video demo, a newscast on the Iowa Caucus popped up key topics: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama…etc, and you can click a topic for a variety of search results across Google, Wikipedia or even video. In the demo, the Samsung guy clicked Hillary Clinton and selected her website, which appeared full screen. While they have a ways to go on the usability front (as you can see, it’s a little cluttered), this approach to interactive TV — it doesn’t have to be pre-programmed, it just automatically correlates information on the internet — has tremendous promise.
3 Comments Add your own
1. Jason | February 19th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Cory- I saw the set top box at CES and it has some great opportunities. The concern though is that the cable, satellite and phone companies control the settop box gateway at this time and based upon discussions with the various manufactures they do not see that changing in the near future.
So the big question will be do these gateway providers see the opportuniies with this platform.
2. oakling | February 19th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
That is so excellent. Although I twitch to think how it would work with the ag4383#^@%@q9q333-looking gibberish that closed captioning often seems to turn into, at least on our screen.
3. Anonymous | February 20th, 2008 at 2:34 am
No need as I already have that. They are called up, down and power.
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