HP Labs India launches personalised online video applicaion

BANGALORE: HP Labs India today announced the public beta release of a "personalised video" application which helps users create their own 'channel' that will deliver content relevant to them, based on their preferences.

Speaking to reporters, HP Labs India Director Sudhir Dixit said the application enables a user to create a TV-like channel by choosing a topic and clubbing all the videos relevant to the topic under the same category.

Illustrating the concept, HP Labs India Senior Research Scientist Krishnan Ramanathan said a viewer could create a 'channel' of Indian vegetable cuisine and could have all relevant online videos, currently sourced from Youtube, available at the click of the button, akin to a TV.

The user could watch new videos, view already watched videos, add new channels, get similar videos, go the previous video or next video and rate the videos.

The application will over a period of time learn the user's preferences via an in-application rating mechanism and would automatically adapt to the user's preferences to show videos that are relevant.

The beta application that is currently available for free download at http://www.personalized-video.com/ could deliver a high level of content personalisation through innovative algorithms and the smart use of local computing power, said Dixit.

From the monetisation point of view, the application could help push advertisements to selected clients. It also has a 'suggestion channel' where videos are recommended based on user preferences and these could be leveraged by businesses.

Giving a break-up of the overall demand for online videos, Dixit said at present, around 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute on Youtube and it is believed that by 2013, major internet traffic will be online video. In particular, emerging markets were more likely to consume video.