So as Ive complained about before, part of my task for this summer is to choose an honors thesis topic. It has been very frustrating and sobering, discovering just how few original ideas I have about the world. But I think I'm circling around something decent, but its still a rough idea and I'd love people's input.
The premise: As wonderful as tv-links and YouTube are, they take away one key aspect of movie watching - the community feel of the viewing. Part of the experience is going in a dark theater with strangers and all being affected by the same movie simultaneously. It's well-documented that we find something funnier when those around us are laughing, for instance. My idea is to design a new YouTube-like interface that somehow gives you a feel for the other people watching the same video at the same time. One idea is to have little webcam feeds of fellow viewers floating around the main movie, showing them as they watch it. Another is just to have little icons of people that react in different ways when they feel humor, fear, etc., so you get some sort of visual sense of how other people are receiving the movie. The research question is then how such information affects your viewing experience.
SO, my question to you: What are the best parts and worst parts of watching movies/tv shows online? Obviously the instantaneity and lack of commericals are great. But at what cost? Do you miss watching movies in theaters or all gathering together for a TV show? Think of our 24 watching parties this year - what aspects of that are missing from watching it the next day at Fox.com? To take it a step further, what about watching a show on your video iPod on the subway? Pros and cons of that. What sorts of information would you want about fellow viewers: name, age, location, current emotional state, other movies they liked, nothing? Would you find an interface like this distracting? Would you feel your privacy was invaded if I asked you to show your face to other viewers? Or, just any other thoughts...
Thanks for the input. I appreciate it.
2 comments:
I'd only care about other (virtually represented) people if they were friends of mine. otherwise, they'd have to be there in-the-flesh. I don't care about the virtual joe-shmoe
I think that part of the problem with watching TV on your computer is the temptation to multi-task. Very few of us (Ashwin is an example) watch TV on our computer in a dedicated fashion when we're by ourselves. That is, we keep a bunch of things on and work or surf the net. And I think that does two things: one, it increases the replay value of episodes, because you miss things (I recently watched an episode of 30 Rock where I first noticed that they made a joke wherein
KAT
COUR
SU
was scrawled on Brian Williams' dressing room wall and I laughed my ass off); two, it disconnects you from viewing television as an event--when Lindsay etc. lived with us Lost was an event. This past year, I fell behind and didn't bother to catch up.
I feel like I haven't been helpful. I'm sorry.
In other news, my GMail account and my old Blogger account have the same username and password, and it's kind of annoying because this thing seems to pick and choose which one it logs in as.
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