It is really no surprise that watching TV these days is often accompanied by a laptop and your favourite social network. A survey conducted by Nielsen found that 42% of Americans who use tablets and 40% of smartphone owners were glued to them while watching TV. 75% of UK TV watchers are also glued to the internet whilst watching TV.
There could be a number of reasons for this, personally I find very few programmes manage to hold my interest for very long, so my mind wanders and I start thinking about what other people are doing, or perhaps something in the programme requires further investigation to satisfy my inquisitive mind. My other theory is that this 24/7 access to limitless amounts of information, plus a dangerous amount of coffee has left my mind a bit addled and slightly obsessive and constantly in a state of disquiet. If I spend to long away from the internet or my mind thinks of something that I need to find an answer to RIGHT NOW, I find myself getting quite exasperated. I think I need help. Anyway I’m digressing here.
Zeebox has clearly come along in response to our strengthening emotional tether to the internet in an attempt to marry the TV world to the internet. Zeebox is a TV planner, with a helping of social networking and relevant information thrown into the mix. You start off by telling it how you get your TV, be it Freeview, Sky, Virgin. You then tell it what region you are in and it’ll display listings for the “free to air” channels, Sky Movies and Sky Sports. The documentary channels, music channels and news channels are sadly absent. I spend much of my time watching Discovery and History, so that’s a bit of a disappointment for me.
Each channel has a thumbnail and a synopsis attached to it and the idea is that you tap the orange bit to say that you are watching a particular programme. You can access more in depth information about the programme by tapping on it. You’ll then have access to a cast list, a live twitter feed related to the programme and a few more odds and ends.
By tapping on a programme to say you are watching it, you add yourself to the viewing statistics. Zeebox will rank each programme in order of popularity as well as track whether the total number of viewers is rising or falling.
Also included is a chat function. When you sign up (which can be done through facebook) you are encouraged to invite friends. You’ll then be able to chat about the programme from within the app.
If you have an internet-connected TV that is on the list included with the app, you can use Zeebox to control your TV. Sadly the Sky box isn’t supported, so even if my TV was supported I’d only be able to change the volume…
Where this app comes into its own is if you have a lot of friends using it. You could have quite a lot of fun chatting away whilst watching some Saturday evening drivel. Unfortunately for me, most of my viewing is centred around History for “Ice Road Truckers”, Discovery for “Storm Chasers” and BBC 2 for Top Gear and Scrum 5. I don’t think I’m going to get a great deal of use out of it, but the app is free so it doesn’t hurt to try it.
If you don’t have an iPad, there is an iPhone version in the works apparently.
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