on a promise

Promise.tv have a logo that looks more appropriate for the 12” sleeve of Lil’ Louis’s French Kiss than an “entirely impersonal PVR”.

So, what’s the promise?

Promise.tv allows viewers to remain in control of how they watch TV without having to proactively plan the recording the shows before they’re transmitted. It makes viewer controlled TV watching lazier and Promise argue that they introducing serendipity into time-shifted viewing.

Since the introduction of the first consumer TV recorders there have been attempts to make it easy to timeshift. With VHS there was Videoplus aka G Codes to tap into the VCR instead of the time and duration. With PVRs the EPG presents all the content lollies for us to pick and mix from, some take this a step further allowing series or genre based selections or even attempting to second guess what you might be interested in.

All of these require up front proactive behavior from the viewer. They require that the viewer have an understanding of the entire broadcast offering for them to even know what they might want to record. Then for them to actively choose to record it. Even on NZ free to air (4 channels) that’s a lot of content to be aware of with a lot that’s poked away into odd hours, with a lot that doesn’t get overly publicised and which may be of interest.

Promise have spun this fundamentally around – don’t worry about picking what you’re interested in – we’ll record everything. Their prototype rolling records a weeks worth of all Freeview channels (DVB-T). That then allows the user to zoom around horizontally through time and vertically through the channels throughout that period. Though the data (SI) meant for the EPG is available to provide navigation and search capabilities.

They also are discussing other methods that would allow users to discover programmes of interest. Such as audio to text extraction to provide searches on words used within programmes, and tagging – presumably in a shared community style like del.icio.us

Of the course the prototype is the size of a small fridge, with a serious number of noise generating disks and fans which would require it to be located in the basement. This means the concept isn’t about to productise into a brand purchase down at your local Dick Smith, Dixons or Best Buy just yet. And it is still not certain what future of BBC commissioned promise.tv project will be. They state that it the BBC are considering open-sourcing the project “for uptake amongst as many individuals as possible.”

backstage.bbc.co.uk/Open Tech

For those like me, stranded on the wrong side of the world, who were not able to attend the backstage.bbc.co.uk Open Tech event last month in sunny Hammersmith there are a number of audio and video presentations available. Including Hacking the TV Stream in which the promise.tv project was first publicised.