Video sites are moving towards full-screen, immersive experiences where there are lots of things viewers can do besides hit play. One of the better examples of what is possible comes from a small Isreali startup with two 26-year-old co-founders and no VC funding called Tvinci. The startup’s media management technology powers the social video player for MTV Israel.
If you play a video on MTV.com, you see this MySpace-inspired train wreck:
If you watch a video on MTV Israel, which is in private beta and will launch early next year, you will see something like this:
The video control box can be dragged around the screen anywhere you want it. You can minimize or maximize the video to whatever size you like. You can add comment bubbles, reorder items in your playlist by dragging them around, check out your friends’ playlists, or see other peoples’ playlists who share your taste in music videos. You can preview other videos and channels through a Coverflow-like rotation of thumbnail images overlayed on top of the video you are watching, allowing you to browse while enjoying a video rather than stopping the video to find a new one. The sidebar with your playlist pops out when you need it and hides away when you don’t. When you get bored with your playlist, you can watch your friends’ or find videos by mood (the videos are tag-based, so this could be set up for other categories as well). Of course, you can rate each video or leave comments. There are also chat and RSS feed widgets you can add to the player.
Tvinci also supports video uploading from viewers and video recommendations based on what your friends like. MSN Israel also uses the platform. Hopefully, we’ll see this stateside soon. Co-CEO Ido Wiesenberg hints that he is in talks with major media companies to do just that. He is also working on Facebook and OpenSocial apps so that videos can be shared between social networks and sites like MTV.
Unfortunately, you have to be in Israel to experience this for now because most of the videos are geo-blocked (due to licensing). but TechCrunch readers can try this site that Tvinci set up for us that replicates what can be seen on MTV Israel, without the restricted videos.
Here are some screenshots:
It’s just sooo lame how this is geo-blocked from the rest of the world. Why can’t everything just be opened up for the world to see?
Meshuganah! Ouy Vey!
WOW…i gotta admit. It’s pretty impressive.
Simply put, it’s Kickass. I’m going to play around with this for a couple hours.
Hh..and because I can’t stand when people post the comments like “slow news day” and “how is this about startup technology?”
I’ll actually take the time to commend you Erick. Good job with the start-up find and great post for the day.
You rock.
I wonder if you could use Israeli proxy servers to circumvent the geo-blocking. I also wonder whether that would be legal. Too bad I’m not that tech savvy.
LOOK AT ME! ANOTHER FAKE-XXXX SPAM COMMENTING TROLL!
ugh.
man what an ugly chick on the first video that showed up
also, you mention full screen, I am sure there was a button for that, but a quick scan and I did not see it
Hi Damon,
To get a full screen you should click twice on the video (double click)
Enjoy!
Dave
i am sorry to say that current crappy Flash technology does not allow for reasonable full size GUI/video. All those services are great for small in-page videos but when you go full screen, even with a monster computer, it all feels very clumsy and slow.
TVinci did a good job with the GUI for sure. Much better than all the new players out there.
I have just played with this amazing internet TV application; it reminds me Joost a little bit but much better…
Even Compared to Hulu it looks more attractive and cutting edge, nice to the Israeli guys
Hope to have it soon on the dot com site of MTV
i’m so over mtv i could puke.
pfft whatever…
This is sooo much cooler, and it’s been around for a year+
http://www.neave.tv
…oh and no geo-blocking needed — and the videos are more “MTV’sh” than MTV would ever know
Why are you covering sites that 99.9% of your users can’t even open the home page of???????
#6 made my day.
I am not Steve Ballmer pretending not to be me!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
i too busy to write a cooment because i’m watching all this great flash tech on mtv israel
i hope that the big fellows on mtv network will wake up and upgrade soon so all the surfers around will be able to enjoy it as well
This would be awesome for MAC users who like super glossy interfaces. Apart from the usual web2.0 functionality (tagging, other people’s faves, etc) what is the real ground breaking change with this?????
@13,
You DID see that there was a site set up by tvinci that replicates MTV Israel for those outside, right?
Finally, a site that allows non-US users to enjoy it. I have so many beta log-in’s for sites that won’t let me watch a thing. It’s great to see the product that I had been hearing whisperings about!
I’m just happy to have a way to watch Israeli music videos! Also it’s nice to read some technology news from my home land… Thanks TC
Unfortunately, like every other Israely website — it only works in Internet Explorer (I tried Firefox, half the form submit buttons didn’t work at all).
And even in IE – the “Debug” dialog pops up every couple of clicks.
The quality of websites made by Israely companies is so terrible, it’s amazing that Israelies use internet at all.
Anyways – I couldn’t signup for an invitation, because of the javascript bugs, even using IE.
Fantasy Interactive already built and launched a site like this for MTV USA it was up for a while (maybe less than a year) and MTV pulled it in favor of an HTML only site because I guess people in America don’t like cool things, only people in Israel do.
to bad the (Hebrew) text is the written the wrong way and is unreadable…
21 Evgeny and 23 tur: I’m logged in to mtv.co.il (I got the invitation)with Fire Fox and everything works just fine. I use only FF and can view most of the Israeli sites properly, YNET, NRG, THEMARKER and even use Bank Hapoalim online banking.
The Hebrew is wrong on the demo site but on the live one Hebrew looks just fine.