DivX Bringing Social Bookmarking to the TV?

I recently saw a link to an online survey on DivX’s website, and since I’m not shy in sharing my opinions, these sorts of things are the perfect click bait for me. Most questions covered how and where I watch online video, but after answering a dozen or so, one caught my eye:

5. Would you be interested in a free service that lets you bookmark online videos to queue and play back in media center software or on a device?

I’ve never really been a heavy user of bookmarking services, but being able to bookmark television content would be much more appealing. One of the biggest problems in bridging the computer to TV gap, is the process of finding the content that you want to watch and then getting it to the television set. For downloadable media this is easier to accomplish, but for streaming media you’ll need some kind of a PC or internet connected gadgetry. Once juiced up to the net, trying to navigate the vast sea of digital content with a remote is like trying to paddle upstream while going over Niagra Falls backwards.

So far, Netflix seems to have come up with the best solution, but there’s still room for others to build a better mousetrap. Instead of letting consumers use a remote to browse all of their programing, Netflix makes you bookmark your watch now movies via the old fashioned computer. This hybrid tv/computer approach may lack some elegance, but it does ultimately create a more satisfying experience to the end user. Sometimes having too many choices can create a paralyzing effect when it comes to finding content.

If DivX were to launch their own bookmarking service, here’s what I think it would look like. Instead of limiting  “queues” to Netflix content exclusively, they’d allow consumers to bookmark content from all over the web. While there would be a few notable exceptions, I bet that they could build support for 90% of the sites on OVGuide.com. Using some kind of greasemonkey script or a toolbar button, consumers would be able to click a button and create a playlist of streaming content that they can watch later. As you begin to bookmark more and more videos, the service would get to know you and could make video recommendations to you. Once consumers are at the television, they’d be able to connect to their data stream and shuffle through their own personalized VOD channels. The killer feature would be the public streams that allow you browse through your friends’ queues too.

Throw in some nifty social networking features, support for sites like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed to help make it go social and a partnership with StumbleUpon video or Reddit’s bookmarking service to help get others to adopt it and DivX could have a very useful application for their Connected solution. If they’re able to build enough of a critical mass around these types of enhanced video services, it would help differentiate DivX’s features from generic codecs.

This question alone doesn’t necessarily mean that DivX will actually try to launch another social network, but it does suggest that they are at least thinking about it. What do you think, something only a geek could love or would you be interested in bookmarking online videos for playback on your TV?

Davis Freeberg is a technology enthusiast living in the Bay Area. He enjoys writing about movies, music, and the impact that digital technology is having on traditional media. Read more at Davis Freeberg’s Digital Connection.