Online TV Tech: Let the Battles Begin
Blinkx, an advanced video search engine, introduced a new TV API (Application Programming Interface) for its 35 million hours of audio, video and TV content.The video network has been amassing a great deal of data on web TV trends, and putting that to good use within an API structure will extend blinkx’s business opportunities, enabling it to get a foot into multiple developments building around online video. The strategy isn’t entirely different from its original goals around early partnerships, growing its network of shared information around video, its sharing behavior and trending patterns.
“blinkx is an unparalleled source for online video search and discovery through any platform. The blinkx Web API was launched five years ago and today accounts for two-thirds of our global search volume, but mobile and TV are coming on strong,” said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of blinkx. “We introduced our mobile API last summer, and already it has generated significant traction with partners like Samsung and EVRI.”
The new feature filters results based on the capabilities of the user’s device so as to offer the user only compatible clips. At the same time, blinkx uses a combination of patented conceptual search with speech and image recognition software to understand rich media more thoroughly than any other solution available today. blinkx’s API indicates the company is looking to others to leverage the database they have been building for the past years and find them a good entrant into the connected TV trend. Television sets connected to the Internet are expected to make up about 40 percent of all TV sales by 2013, according to electronics research group IMS.
From a technology standpoint, while third party players are working their way into broader online video trends, Google and Microsoft are fighting over how online video will be accessed and distributed openly on the web. Microsoft has accused Google of ‘natively supporting only the newly open-sourced WebM video format in its Chrome browser, rather than the H.246 format preferred by Microsoft and Apple’ and stated it would build a Chrome plug-in to restore support for H.264.
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