My project this weekend was to take a look at the alpha version of a new online video venture backed by VON pioneer Jeff Pulver. It's PrimeTimeRewind and it's a one-stop shop for catching up on all the major network prime time TV shows (and a growing number of top cable networks, such as TNT and USA) that are available online, a far more interesting task now that the WGA strike has ended.
The site starts with a cube that users can rotate either horizontally (to view different networks) or vertically (to view different genres.) PrimeTimeRewind also features social widgets that enable comments or sharing links among friends or adding personal video selections from RSS-sourced videos.
PrimeTimeRewind doesn't host the content, however. It aggregates content from network-owned sites and joint ventures such as Hulu. According to PrimeTimeRewind, it doesn't pull the content into its own player and "does not interfere with the way the network wishes to present its contents." Each episode can be viewed "in the same player with the same experience, ads that the original network wishes for it to be viewed."
That's what seems to happen. The same "House" episode playing on Hulu plays on PrimeTimeRewind exactly as it plays on Hulu (although everything stays in the PrimeTimeRewind frame with a PrimeTimeRewind URL.) Although I'm no intellectual property attorney, this seems to me to be almost akin to hyperlinking, only with video pulled into a frame. If it takes off, PrimeTimeRewind should drive traffic to the relevant content suppliers' destinations and, presumably, drive ad impressions.
The concept is not new, although I haven't found a site that focuses only on prime time network hit shows. AOL Video does something close to this, without the nifty rotating cube. It's not a surprise, then, that the founder and CEO of PrimeTimeRewind is Amit Shafrir, former President of AOL Premium Services at AOL.
Because so many TV shows are available online through so many portals, it's hard to say whether pulling them together in one slick rotating portal will be a winner. Yet, I found myself turning that cube around for shows to watch and ended up watching one (the most recent "House" episode). The social networking features, and the ability to build one's own video list will no doubt be gravy once PrimeTimeRewind moves from alpha to beta.
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