Cloud Synchronization for Remote Social TV Viewing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current social television applications fail to provide an immersive, geographically remote shared viewing experience, often distracting users with text-based interactions and focusing on broader audiences rather than intimate connections with friends, while also struggling with synchronization delays between remote devices.
Innovation Solution
The Tok.Tv platform allows users to create a virtual living room for shared viewing experiences by using voice interaction and a cloud service to manage and synchronize displays across remote locations, enabling real-time commentary and content sharing without the need for text input, and employing methods like audio and video fingerprinting to synchronize TV shows across devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If text-based chat interfaces are used for social interaction during TV viewing, then users can communicate with friends, but users are distracted from the TV show and must type instead of watching
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces text-based mechanical input (typing on keyboards) with voice-based acoustic input. Users can interact socially by speaking into microphones while continuing to watch TV, eliminating the need to type and thus reducing distraction from the show while maintaining social communication capability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If cloud services manage synchronization across geographically remote sites, then shared viewing experience is enabled, but synchronization delays occur between remote devices
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces cloud-based servers as intermediaries that manage synchronization between geographically remote devices. The cloud service coordinates timing information and media streams across distributed sites, enabling synchronized viewing experience despite physical distance and network latency by acting as a central coordination mediator.
3Productivity
If social television applications focus on gamification and textual feeds, then broader audience engagement is achieved, but intimate connections with friends are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating intimate, private viewing parties with specific friends rather than broadcasting to broad audiences. Each viewing session is customized for a select group of participants, maintaining the warmth and intimacy of watching TV with friends while still providing social interaction capabilities through voice communication and shared media viewing.
Data Source
AI summary
A system providing for selective management of program display system services involving display devices located at geographically remote locations relative to one another. The system includes a display device, located at each of a plurality of sites, that is capable of receiving and displaying a transmitted show. A control device, also located at each of the plurality of sites, enables managed control of the display device through the execution of a client application. A cloud service interacts with the client applications as executed by the control devices to manage select associations of the plurality of sites.