21 May, 2010
Written by Dexter Han
Beijing RayooTech Co., Ltd.

Clicker is releasing a new version of Web-based video directory at its website Clicker.tv at the Google I/O conference this Wednesday. The original site Clicker.com stays for all traditionalists who like text-heavy sites which can be easily operated with a mouse. The new version is designed for the "10-foot experience," which is code for the Google TV set-top box we’re expecting to see at the conference.

I made a preview of its new website Clicker.tv in Firefox. The site leads you to the same content as the former version, but the interface is very pretty and classic, also very easy to navigate with just four direction keys and two buttons: Enter and Backspace. You can search the entire site just by typing anywhere; you don’t have to focus on a search box.

The future of this app’s capability to point to good content is still in question. Hulu, and other TV video websites, do not always want to see their contents appeared on TV a screen, that’s the reason why companies like Hulu, Boxee and Hillcrest Labs’ Kylo has blocked its Internet set-top apps, because it may make a competition with traditional cable delivery. And now with Clicker moving clearly to the TV field, it’s possible that Hulu will block playback called up from the .tv version of the its website which is merely designed for a computer, not a TV.

In Clicker’s content database, the format videos are in and where videos are blocked, so if Hulu makes a restriction of playback through Clicker.tv, users will not see the blocked videos on that site. Likewise, when Clicker becomes available on iPad, users there won’t see Flash videos in their searches either. Lanzone says that’s approximately half the content of the company indexes.

[ All rights reserved, reprint, please specify source and the author. Thank You. ]

Download ‘ Clicker Released a Set-top Version of Its Video Directory ‘ Article