CBS launches live, social, chatty video player

Posted by admin

October 3, 2008

CBS Chat

CBS has launched a new online video service that lets you watch live video streams while chatting with other users at the same time. The service is part of CBS Labs, the experimental arm of the CBS web site.

While watching a program you can type into a comment box to interact with other users, answer quizzes, or be obnoxious and throw virtual items including darts, hearts, and lips at the screen. Messages disappear from the screen pretty quickly, which helps keep the display from getting to cluttered. But you can click a history box to review older comments if you have a hard time keeping up.

If the whole idea sounds familiar, that’s because Lycos rolled out a similar service a few months back. The Lycos Cinema player actually offers a better interface with a more traditional chat window that stays on the screen while you’re typing or hovering your mouse, but disappears when you’re not using it. And you can start playing Lycos movies whenever you like instead of sitting in on live streams. But Lycos Cinema’s content library is populated by obscure titles and lacks mainstream fare like How I Met Your Mother.

[via TechCrunch]

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