Ask HN: Review my startup, www.inair.tv

brickmort · on March 17, 2015

I love the idea. The product has a variety of directions it can take with emerging technologies and I can see it becoming a solid companion to viewing TV/videos.

Price is out of my range, but I don't think it's an unrealistic price tag, but at the current price, you'll only be gaining a certain portion of the market.

As for me, I don't watch TV and haven't owned a TV for about five years now. That's not to say I wouldnt mind trying this out when I'm watching a movie on my laptop, if and when thats be a possibility.

anigbrowl · on March 17, 2015

Hmm. I'm not too crazy about it by default - my initial reaction was negative, of the 'I know what I'm watching, isn't there enough clutter on my screen already' variety. But looking at the applications, I can see a lot of value to this, even though I don't care to discuss TV on social media or closely track live events, though I do like a baseball game and this could be great for sports - although again, you're competing with all the visual cruft that broadcasters insist on slapping onto the image. What I wouldn't give for being able to watch a game without any overlay and using my own instead....

From a UX point of view, it's very good. The biggest problem is that you're competing with everyone else's attempt to own the TV, so you need to be careful it doesn't become like a battle between competing iFrames, the way the web was a few years ago. I thought your platform + plugin approach struck a good balance between accessibility and power which most people would find easy to connect with.

Gesture control - maybe. I feel like I'd rather talk than flail my arms about. If something happens on the game/show/movie and one of us sits up suddenly, I don't want playback to stop or menus to pop up. I'm sure it works well in the lab, I'm less optimistic about how it responds to two people and a dog or a bunch of couch-bouncing kids. Voice control might be easier and better. Better come up with some sort of privacy statement in order to forestall the inevitable tinfoil hat concerns about all the data you're going to be gathering, and presumably selling back to the content originators/broadcasters.

Price....$149 seems a bit high. I don't think it's unfair, because it looks like you're actually delivering a lot of value here. But for that it'll have to be seamless and deliver real utility, so that you don't wind up as last year's overpriced gizmo, especially given that manufacturers are trying to build this functionality into new TVs and consoles. I would be trying to get the price down to half that and building the business model on the data gathering - but you do ave a good presentation here, and it might be wise to price for early adopters than the median consumer right now.

Sorry for being a bit handwavey, it's long past bedtime :)

noso · on March 17, 2015

I think it looks good, I like the UI.

Price is a hard one, I would say under $100 ideally.

The other option is to only pass on the cost of the device and display ads and use this as a way of revenue or $149 with no ads.

Looks good!

dandare · on March 17, 2015

Feedback 1: It is or is it not dependent on a 3d tv? It's not clear from the video. Feedback 2: I have concerns about the way you will navigate something on tv with mobile while looking at the tv. If you've cracked it then good for you.

penetrarthur · on March 17, 2015

The voice on the video is slightly depressing.

killdill · on March 17, 2015

I like the idea. But you should really work on the site loading time. It was very slow and might piss off some users.