Smart Screen Exclusive
Flingo Sees Multi-Screen Future
Story Highlights
By Lyndsey Schaefer
Flingo CEO and Founder Ashwin Navin envisions a future filled with multiple screens. Flingo is actively tying together the first and screen experiences with its multi-screen technology to fulfill that vision.
Navin says that the overall interactive TV vision has been around for over a decade and hasn’t come to market because it requires a lot of important stakeholders to agree on standards.
“The Samba product that we showed at CES is the culmination of everything that we’ve learned and represents the multi-screen experience,” Navin says. “You’ve got some very simple, elegant interactions on your TV that allows you to start feeling more immersed in the experience with a few clicks of the remote control. If you want to drill deeper we’ve moved that to the second screen. So it gets you deeper into the experience so that you’ll feel connected to the apps and offers.”
Navin believes in leveraging consumer electronics rather than traditional delivery mechanisms for content. Using Flingo’s Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), smart TVs, smartphones and tablets will be able to identify what’s on the screen to figure out the visual characteristics of the content.
“Interactive TV as we knew it is dead. CE will be the enabling platform for interactive TV in the future,” Navin says. “Our ACR is the key missing piece to unlock this opportunity. The TV’s user interface will engage with the content with your remote control – and the tablet or phone becomes a compliment to that and all are synchronized.”
Flingo is showcasing its Samba product to blend traditional TV with the second screen to access linear programming from multiple screens for both traditional and streaming content.
“We’re very excited to be members of the 2nd Screen Society, although we’re not purely second screen – we’re firmly of the view that TV is more about multi-screen than strictly second screen,” Navin says. “A second screen product without a first screen strategy is doomed.”
Flingo is also making strong investments in ad technology to help measure ROI on TV advertising in a real way.
Hear more from Navin at the upcoming 2nd Screen Summit NYC on June 27, where he’ll be speaking on a panel on how app developers, CE manufacturers and Pay TV operators can create engaging apps to enhance the viewing experience with synchronization and control of the TV. Flingo is also sponsoring the event.
For more information on the 2nd Screen Summit NYC, click here.
