The service is available on the latest series of SONY BRAVIA Internet Video TVs, Bravia televisions, Blu-ray players, and Blu-ray Home Theatre kits.

LOVEFiLM subscribers will be able to select the service as an icon on the SONY menu bar of SONY Internet Video devices, search for titles through categories such as genre or ‘most watched’ and eventually manage their DVD and Blu-ray rental lists through the TV.

Pushbutton is one of the leading connected TV design and build agencies in Europe, with prize winning designs for Microsoft Mediaroom in its portfolio, and years of interactive TV experience on satellite and IPTV behind it. This is the company’s first app for the SONY Internet Video devices platform, and the first third party app from a European company.

Pushbutton Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said “We are extremely proud of the LOVEFiLM app. This kind of project plays to all of our strengths as a design agency with a deep technical understanding of the new wave of Internet connected media devices. The new SONY Bravia’s are gorgeous, and I believe our collaboration with LOVEFiLM has produced an app that truly does them justice, adding an exciting new tier of content choice for viewers.”

Lesley MacKenzie, Group Digital Officer said “LOVEFiLM is setting the pace in Europe with this online DVD rental service. The SONY TV app enables instant digital content and puts DVD & Blu-ray rental in the palm of your hand via the TV remote, greatly enhancing the choice and convenience proposition for our members.” … “Pushbutton provided invaluable design and build expertise in the delivery of this exciting new, connected TV app for LOVEFiLM on SONY televisions. We were extremely pleased with the service they provided.”

Managing Director of Pushbutton, Paula Byrne, said “Time Capsules is the dream application for the World Cup. When video content is time-based and highly scheduled the Time Capsules engine really comes into its own, and we are very excited about honing the offering in time for Brazil 2014.”

The ‘Time Capsules’ app gives viewers a highly efficient and engaging tool for viewing time-based video content. It works particularly well when the viewer is in ‘information finding’ or ‘interactive mode’ – for example when catching up on goals, results, and activities in groups other than the primary group they are following.

Pushbutton’s ‘Time Capsules’ application has been designed to runs on the Microsoft Mediaroom platform. It was the runner up application in Microsoft’s global competition to find a top class application for Mediaroom.

See it here

The past six months has seen major leaps forward in television technology – with a wide range of 3D televisions now on sale, and new IP-based TV services being announced daily.

Pushbutton Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said “The past week alone has seen the announcement of Google TV, rumours about a new version of Apple TV, and a new, social- networking-ready version of BBC iPlayer. Add to this, the boom in TV connected devices, and you start to see a picture emerging of a revolution in new technologies to enhance the TV viewing experience.”

Pushbutton has always been the first independent agency to harness the power of the new enabling technologies. Increasing the firm’s investment in R&D expertise for these areas will keep the company ahead of the competition, said Byrne.

“Pushbutton is now the ‘go to’ digital agency in London if you need help with connected devices, 3D television, or IP-based TV based on Microsoft Mediaroom or over the top, straight from the Internet, video-based concepts,” added Byrne.

“I am delighted to announce this new appointment. It shows Pushbutton has emerged strongly from the recession, and is now at the threshold of a new growth phase, as we position ourselves to exploit the new wave of TV technologies,” said Byrne.

The Pushbutton concept is a social TV planning tool, designed to help families plan their viewing, with the aid of an engaging app.

PLAN-IT TV makes best use of IPTV and broadcast media so that viewers can relax, sit back, and enjoy their viewing without all the hard work. Using profiling and recommendation engine techniques, PLAN-IT TV will take the arguments out of family TV schedule planning.

It embraces the family TV and the family group to create a superior social viewing experience. PLAN-IT TV knows what individual family members like to watch, and it recalibrates its viewing recommendations based on which family members are present.

Put simply, PLAN-IT TV takes the entire family and creates a whole packaged evening of entertainment based on their collective profile. Family members can be added into the mix and seeding can be adjusted to produce a different line up. Think of it as autopilot for your remote control.

This takes all the hassle out of searching for the latest TV content that everyone can enjoy and allows content providers to deliver premium content packaged alongside other quality programming.

Pushbutton Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said, “Our PLAN-IT TV app shows the way families will enjoy TV viewing in the future. It is an intelligent TV friend that will help families arrive at the best television to suit everyone. It is there to suggest, to learn, and to help – using clever profiling and recommendation engine techniques. I am immensely proud that Deutsche Telekom spotted the potential of our app, and awarded a prize to it in their competition.”

The service is available on the latest series of Sony Bravia televisions, Blu Ray players, and home entertainment systems.

Unlimited LOVEFiLM subscribers will be able to select the service as an icon on the SONY menu bar of SONY Internet Video devices, search for titles through categories such as genre or ‘most watched’ and eventually manage their DVD and Blu-ray rental lists through the TV.

Pushbutton is one of the leading connected TV design and build agencies in Europe, with prize winning designs for Microsoft Media Room in its portfolio, and years of interactive TV experience on satellite and IPTV behind it. This is the company’s first app for the SONY Internet Video devices platform, and the first third party app from a European company.

Pushbutton Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said “We are extremely proud of the LOVEFiLM app. This kind of project plays to all of our strengths as a design agency with a deep technical understanding of the new wave of Internet connected media devices. The new SONY Bravia’s are gorgeous, and I believe our collaboration with LOVEFiLM has produced an app that truly does them justice, adding an exciting new tier of content choice for viewers.”

The best way to learn a new system is by building something with it. So, in anticipation of the 2009/2010 football season, and the 2010 World Cup, we decided to get stuck in with something that would have instant appeal: a Yahoo! TV Football Widget.

Teams, Leagues & Results

Our widget gives you instant access to the latest league tables, results and fixtures, so you always have the most up to date information to hand. Because of the way Yahoo! TV Widgets work as an overlay, you can access it all while you’re watching the game (or anything else for that matter). Once you’ve selected the league you want to see information about (details are available for all of the major UK leagues), you can drill down to your chosen team to find out their standings, results, and upcoming games.

Give Your Team a Widget of its Own

You don’t want to browse through all of the available leagues and teams every time you just want to find out the result of your last game. So, we added the ability to create a ‘Snippet’ in the Yahoo! TV Widgets dock, which links directly to your team’s page. You can add as many of these as you like, so if you follow more than one team, or you want to keep a close eye on the competition, keep a snippet for each one, an access them instantly. Each snippet is even colour coded with your team’s colours to make them easy to identify.

Room to Expand

The current incarnation of the widget is just the beginning. It’s been designed to be built upon, and over the course of the next 12 months we’re planning to add a lot to it. The most important event on the football calendar is of course the 2010 World Cup, and the widget will give you direct access to all the latest data, as it happens. Football news, YouTube integration and exclusive content are all in the works too, so watch this space.

We are also planning to port the widget to a number of TVs and connected devices, to reach the maximum possible market penetration. To help us do this, we are also working on a bespoke Javascript framework which will let us more easily develop cross-platform widgets. Stay tuned for more information on the Pushbutton Calcium framework soon.

In the same way that Skype and MSN provide chat on your computer, and a variety of Facebook and Twitter apps let you access those services through your phone, Wigwam lets you chat to your friends and access your social networks directly through your TV. By building this as a standalone service, and deploying it to every connected TV platform we have access to, we’re aiming to let people experience real social TV, and be in touch with anyone else on Wigwam, regardless of who they buy their TV service from, or what channel they’re watching.

There’s a lot of potential for a service like this. The simple bits are fairly obvious – chat to your friends about what you’re watching or send a tweet about a video you just watched on MTV, but there are some less obvious ones. You could be watching one football game, and see that your mate’s watching something else – when a goal’s scored you can invite him to switch over and watch the replay with you. Or if you get bored of what’s on for the rest of the evening, you could send your friend a gift of some video on demand, and watch it together.

There are a few problems with building a service like this, and the number one problem is that people don’t like typing with their TV remote. Most remote buttons are horrible to press, or unresponsive, and on screen keyboards are very annoying to use. We’re bypassing this problem by letting people use anything else with a keyboard to to their text entry. So by deploying not just to TVs, but also iPhones, Android, Flash and the desktop, you can be watching TV, talking on Wigwam, but typing your replies into your phone. The Wigwam central server makes sure that everything stays in sync.

Another problem is that most TV and smart phone platforms currently only let you run one app at once – so if you’re in the Facebook widget you can’t be in the Twitter one. Through Wigwam you can be logged into all of those services at once, and so you don’t need to switch between every couple of minutes when you want to have a look at a different service.

At the moment we’re working on development for the first few versions of Wigwam for TV and mobile, but as we go along we’re learning a lot about developing a service that uses each of the three screens to its full potential. This is the way we see 360 development going – using the strengths of each platform properly, rather than just deploying the exact same set of functionality to each screen.

Microsoft were once again impressed with Pushbutton’s pioneering and inventive use of the tools available in MPF, to create an interface which had never been seen before on the platform. The application is designed to be easily hooked up to new feeds or APIs, to let content owners quickly and efficiently create new ‘time capsules’ around any set of media or VOD assets they need to provide access to. It can also be easily re-skinned to match any desired look and feel. Time Capsules was ported to Silverlight at Microsoft’s request, to be demoed as part of a three screens cross-platform demo suite at Management America’s TMF Forum Orlando 2009. It has since been ported to Flash, iPhone and Android.

PLANIT creates a viewing schedule by combining live TV, video on demand and recorded content. This is presented by a stylish and intuitive interface that guides the viewer through their recommended content in the form of strong imagery and HD trailers.

Viewers can also use the PLANIT smart phone app in conjunction with the TV application to update their profile information, and check out the latest trailers whilst on the move. Any household can have a number of smart phones or connected devices that can be synced with the TV to update the schedule.

Approach

The original concept was created in house by Pushbutton’s creative team. James Cumberbatch, Pushbutton’s Director of Development, headed up the project.

“Once the concept was shortlisted the design and development team worked very closely on creating the core UI that presents content to the user. A key feature of the UI is the fact that the Z-axis is used to represent a historical breadcrumb trail. This helps the user visualise the size of the application and keeps things simple from a user’s perception of the product.”

After spending some time with the team at Deutsche Telekom, Pushbutton refined the concept through a number of rapid iterations.

“Our goal was to create a TV experience that was much more enjoyable for the user. In the new world of IPTV it is becoming more important to push personalised content channels at consumers. If you combine live TV, VOD and PVR the amount of content that a user can access is huge. If you then add over the top content, the choices are just too vast to navigate using lists or traditional EPGs. Our aim for PLANIT was to simplify the process of selecting content and reduce the reliance on linear TV. As a result we would hope that by using an interface such as PLANIT an operator would be able to drive more subscriptions for premium content and VOD purchases.”

Truly Non-linear

Doing away with the traditional notion of programmes being watched at scheduled time slots, PLANIT’s viewing schedule is presented to the user in the form of Now, Next and Later. The user can either sit back and watch the suggested schedule or re-configure the schedule at any time. PLANIT stays in charge of reorganising scheduled programming to show when the user wants to watch it, and coordinates the automatic recording and rearranging of content to let the user watch TV in a way that is completely free of the restrictions of the traditional EPG.

“One thing that we were keen to avoid was the problem of PLANIT being seen as a recommendation engine. What we’ve tried to create is an interface that can unlock the real power in any recommendation engine, by building a completely new way to interact with it. User profiles can be setup for each member of the household and the accuracy of their profiles easily enhanced by using training mode. With the training mode we decided to take another completely fresh approach, with an interface that feels more like an interactive quiz than a complicated settings screen.

“The project was a great team effort and I’m really proud of the end result. Microsoft Mediaroom is a powerful platform to develop applications for. In the future TV will still need to be funded through advertising or subscription, so we feel its vital to work on platforms that allow us to create rich user experiences, whilst providing strong access to back end systems for billing and reporting.”

The BBC invited new media companies to pitch for the 30 slots at the prestigious event by submitting examples of recent projects, and by completing a written application.

The event will be attended by Pushbutton’s Director of Interactive Development, James Cumberbatch and by our Commercial Director, James Penfold.