

VICI.tv - Just turned YouTube into TV (just for fun) - ARolek

A buddy and I were playing with the YouTube chromeless player, Javascript API, and data API the last couple weeks and next thing you know we made essentially Pandora for Videos.  Leveraging jQuery on the front end and a bunch of intelligent filtering, recommendation, and sequencing algorithms (to handle videos in parts 1 of 4, 2 of 4, etc.) on the back end we ended up with a pretty fun web app.<p>Try typing in a random topic (I dig Heli Skiing &#38; High Stakes Poker) or your favorite musicians (Weezer, Miike Snow are both great) and sit back and enjoy.<p>Let me know what you guys think. - http://VICI.tv<p>Happy Halloween<p>Alexander
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ARolek
Thanks everyone for the solid feedback! The feature requests and critiques are
invaluable. This was an alpha version we put together to see what type of
response we got before we started to develop additional features.

@Adrianwaj - I dig your favorites video idea. I'm going play with some
interface designs and see what I can come up with. You have a lot of great
suggestions here. I think we can incorporate most of them over time, but I
want to avoid having too many features and making the app too complicated for
the user. I do appreciate all the great ideas. Thanks!

@iwr - I was debating between wrapping the YouTube chromeless player in Flash
or JavaScript. To achieve a full screen button, I would need to wrap the
player in Flash, but overall I much prefer working in JS, especially with the
push towards HTML5 and CSS3. You bring up a great point about dual screens. I
think as HTML5 develops, so will a solution. As browsers continue to trend
towards being more minimalistic maybe a they will soon offer a JS full screen
mode.

@makuro - We have not developed the seek scrubber or volume control quite yet.
I wanted to see the overall response to the core application before I started
working on those additional features. I have designs for them though, so keep
an eye on us. ;-)

@iworkforthem - Thanks for the positive feedback! I would love to use this
interface to build out content channels for others. You bring up a really good
utility here. Using the Data API we could easily grab all the videos from a
certain user, and booya you have a custom channel. Ping me if you know anyone
who could use this. vidi@vici.tv

@Vantra - Someone else mention that thumbs up \ thumbs down idea too. We are
essentially doing that with the next button. We figured if you hit the next
button the video was not engaging enough for you to watch all the way through.
We capture that data and consider it when choosing videos for everyone. Our
back end crowdsources what videos are the most entertaining using the next
button and a few other pieces of critical data pumped through a some cool
ratio analysis and comparison algorithms. With this AI, VICI.tv will filter
though YouTube and deliver better and better content over time.

Again, thanks for all the comments and keep them coming. We will put in more
features based on what people suggest the most. Any questions, feel free to
find us on twitter (@VICItv) or drop us a line: vidi@vici.tv.

Lastly, what channels are everyone's favorites? I saw so many awesome ones pop
up yesterday. A couple of my new favorites are Parkour and Chris Farley.

Alexander

~~~
shib71
On a side note - veni vidi@vici.tv? Well played.

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iwr
If the youtube window loses focus while in fullscreen, for whatever reason, it
reverts back to small web size. This is a PITA for people with multi-monitors
who would want to use one screen as a webtv.

So far, workarounds involve hacking the assembly code of the particular
flashVM executable (won't work if you update). Another option is to use a
flash video downloader and just view your videos offline.

Focus-lockable fullscreen is a must-have feature of webtv.

~~~
makuro
While this is true, am I missing something? VICI.tv doesn't have a fullscreen
button. At most it just takes up 100% of the width of the browser window.

Unrelatedly, I am really enjoying this, but also am wondering if it was a
conscious design decision to remove the progress bar? Usually TV ends on the
00, 15, 30, 45 minute marks, but here it's hard to predict when the current
clip will end.

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adrianwaj
Suggestions:

\- have a way to hide the left and right arrows on the screen.

\- have a way to favorite, or, view on youtube.com the actual clip

\- have a way to enter a username, then show their profile:

[http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#User_...](http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#User_profile_entry)

and then display the favorites of that user:

[http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#User_...](http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#User_favorites_feed)

their playlists (maybe subscriptions) too:

[http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Playl...](http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Playlists_Feeds)

[http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Subsc...](http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Subscriptions_Feed)

a way to switch over to their contacts:

[http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Conta...](http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Contacts_Feeds)

(check out <http://twitya.com> as my example of surfing usernames on twitter)

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iworkforthem
I love it! I think you can make your own TV station here... Pick a niche
audience group, work with a selected few Directors/Gurus, brainstorm a few
good shows with these partner a year. You have a hit!

Leave some space in your website for advertisers or leave a few seconds in
your shows for advertiser.. Either way I think it is very possible here!

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corin_
Looks great in terms of what you've achieved - however I should say that I
much prefer <http://www.youtube.com/leanback> (not that I'd personally use
either other than to see what they are, so my opinion is fairly pointless.)

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vantran
This is great! I wanted to do something like this a while ago, and YouTube API
is powerful enough to build on top of, but never had time.

Why don't you have a quick Thumbs up / Thumbs down feature, so you can store
data of videos people like to use for recommendations?

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olalonde
Clickable: <http://VICI.tv>

