Saturday, February 26, 2011

New app from the Vault

It is said that 57% of consumers surf the web while watching television (Nielson Data).  Disney wanted to capitalize on this by making it possible to have an interactive way that can keep a family involved with the movie and use some newer technology.  Disney is doing this with the new release of Bambi from the Disney Vault.  Disney is going to do this by having a new app called the second screen.  This will allow for families to synchronize their movies to an ipad or apple computer and play games and have the synchronized screen change as the movie goes on.  This could be random puzzles that need to be unscrambled or some facts about how the movie was made.  Disney does understand that in 10 or so years that discs will be obsolete because everything will go digital however they are planning for the future with these interactive tools.


Now, I understand that Disney is trying to meet the needs of the consumer but I would like to take a look at why it isn't enough just for someone to watch a movie.  A comment on the website from the second screen article stated that the lady wanted to use the new movie interaction for her grandson with a short attention span.  Are movies not interesting enough with the new generations?  Or is it actually a good way to keep kids interested in the movies?

3 comments:

  1. Whoa. I'm with you. This sort of boggles my mind. And as a parent with two young kids, I'm thinking I don't want them to try to "multi-task" this way, because research shows we can't actually multi-task--we can only task switch, going back and forth from one thing to another rapidly. But this can harm our ability to concentrate. I probably sound like a fuddy-duddy, and maybe this will become commonplace and be no big deal. But I don't like the sound of it.

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  2. The one thing that seems nice about it would be for parents who, if their kids are anything like I was, have to watch the same movies over and over again. On the other side though it seems like if a young kid had a short attention span you'd want to teach them to sit through something like a movie without doing other things before they have to sit through classes.

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  3. I totally agree with bre. I think this technology is geared more towards the parents and not young kids. I fall victim to the short attention span as well and have even found myself playing a quick game of angry birds on my ipod while watching a movie i've seen before especially during some of the more boring parts. So this tech would be great for people like me that like to watch movies over and over again but sometimes get bored for a couple minuets.

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