Sometimes I invent things and don’t have time to file a formal Patent – so I just Blog it.
The basic idea is to be able to take a completely dynamic video or audio on demand system and allow arbitrary groups to create synchronized shared experiences. These groups will self-organize and membership will be dynamic.
This will allow a person working with a VOD system such a as a digital CATV system. The idea is that instead of simply starting the program – one would indicate that they want the program to start at a particular time in the future – typically in 10 minutes or so. The VOD system would display a “joining code” on the screen and count down to the start of the program. This join code could be send to friends or other groups who want to watch the program in a synchronized manner – those other folks would enter the join code on their systems and become part of the synchronized VOD stream. You could even join after the program started. The likely distribution of the code will be IM, SMS, Phone, or E-Mail. Maybe even the CATV system would have a notification mechanism or a group capability.
So the upshot is that you and your group can watch the same thing *at the same time* – all on demand – effectively this is VOD for groups. This has a number of aplications – teaching, learning – where there could be IM or other out of band communication to allow rreactions – also you could collectively pause to discuss things. Other things would be effectively like watching a movie Saturday evening with pals around the world – they might also have separate monitors with webcams so follks could interact and hear each other’s laughter or screams. Effectively creating a distributed theater.
So where did I come up with this idea? Well on a A330 coming to England I watched as two children next to me struggled with their individual VOD systems so as to watch the *same* movie at the *same* time. They navigated to the start of the movie and pressed “Play” at the *same* time so they could share the experience.
As we get to the point where we can completely isolate ourselves with totally customized entertainment – we will slowly yearn for group interactions. And the beauty is that adding a group interaction layer on top of a completely personalized system – this also saves bandwidth, etc becuase information can be multicast and precious resources like Digital channels can be used for multiple destinations at the same time.
This provides a nice hybrid between pure VOD and the “movie will start in 35 minutes” of partial VOD.
Please call me if you want to license this patent :)