NextGuide: The Next Generation of TV Guides

Have you ever spent 30 minutes combing through multiple streaming video apps, trying to decide on something to watch? Me too. And apparently, we’re not alone.

At OTT-con, we heard a lot about this particular challenge from Jeremy Toeman, CEO of Dijit. He called it the “Chinese restaurant menu effect,” where we have so much to choose from that it becomes a burden. Dijit aims to solve this with NextGuide, an overhaul of the traditional TV guide that combines live and on-demand content into a single place.

NextGuide started as an iPad app, and released a web browser version last month. The browser version is still in beta (you can sign up if you’re registered on the iPad app) and it appears there are still a few things to be ironed out, but in general both apps work well.

NextGuide has much in common with other video discovery appslike Fanhattan (which just announced a new device) and Matcha (which just shut down its app, but claims to have something new in the works.) It hooks into many of the same content sources: Netflix, Hulu Plus, iTunes, Amazon, and live TV. (No HBO Go though.)

Like the earlier discovery apps, NextGuide lets you browse a bunch of sources in one place. When you pick something, it automatically launches an app (or website, in the case of the browser version) and starts playing the content. This worked solidly on both the iPad and web versions for me, and with none of the Netflix playback issues we noticed with Fanhattan.

Recommendations

Dijit’s recommendations go a step further than any other app or service I’ve yet seen. They work on an episodic level – meaning, you get recommendations for a specific episodes rather than the whole show.

Here’s how it works: You set customized categories based on your interests, location, favorite actors, and so on. Then Dijit combs through all the content it can see to identify episodes that might be of particular interest to you.

The iPad app has a section called “Your Picks” that highlights the top recommendations for you, but I was only interested in about 10% of the titles it gave me. To be fair, I didn’t give it a lot to work with: Dijit takes into account shows that you’ve “liked” on both Facebook and NextGuide, and uses these to fine-tune recommendations. It also lets you edit the “My Picks” section to veto things you don’t want to see.

The content is organized into a bunch of different categories, like “Denver” or “Sports,” which you can customize and browse through by selecting the icon at the top of the page or swiping right and left. You can choose the sources of content, and even select favorite channels in your live TV lineup.

But one thing that is notably missing is a separation between Amazon Prime and On-Demand content — it’s all combined, and my recommendations list fills up with a bunch of titles that I have to pay extra to see. One more button on the content filters would do a lot to help this experience.

iPad App:

On the iPad app, content is organized in a series of screens that you can flip through by swiping or tapping the icons at the top. It defaults to a section called “Your Picks” that combines all of your recommendations, and if you want to see content related to a particular interest or genre you just head to that section.

It also includes some other features beyond the typical content discovery mix. Last month, it added USA Network’s “USA Sync” technology, which uses ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) to recognize the content playing on your TV and bring up polls, trivia, and cast information on your iPad.

This feature only works with a few USA shows that this point, and only when they’re playing live – when I tried to test it at home with Burn Notice via Slingbox, the short delay (~10 seconds) was enough to make this feature not work on either NextGuide or the USA app. This would be so much more useful if it behaved more like Yahoo’s IntoNow app, which recognizes content whether it’s live, timeshifted, or on-demand.

NextGuide also includes a social layer that allows you to connect with Facebook friends and other users with similar tastes (this came from Miso, which Dijit acquired back in February.)

There were a few things specific to the iPad app that bothered me, after quite a few hours of using it. Like that it’s far too easy to accidentally switch categories while trying to scroll down. And the iPad app defaults to displaying 12 hours worth of content, so at first glance it was a jumble of shows with daytime television alongside 11 p.m. listings.

Fortunately, Dijit included a very intuitive way to change the date and time range for listings, I just didn’t notice it right away:

Web App

The browser version, released May 20, is a bit different in terms of functionality. Like the iPad app, the web version kicks you over to Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon and starts playing your video automatically. But this version also lets you schedule DVR recordings (if you’re a Comcast or DirecTV subscriber, that is.)

There are some discrepancies between the two interfaces – the website doesn’t display a “Your Picks” section, only favorites from the entire user base. And it  allows you to add things to a “Watchlist,” but this same list is called “Bookmarks” on the iPad app. The web version is still in beta, so we’re guessing these inconsistencies will be ironed out before the official launch.

Final assessment: NextGuide is an app on a bit of a learning curve, with some minor inconsistencies that should be worked out – but it shows a lot of promise.

However: We’re still waiting to see one of these discovery apps make the jump to the big screen. Somebody tell me: How long until I can use my iPad to cue up content on my Roku? And will we see a NextGuide app popping up on some of our devices in the lab – or a white label version of if? I hope so, but only time will tell.