August 11th, 2010

The question of ‘what next?’ for television is one often at the forefront of any tech-head’s mind, the integration into the digital home of free-flowing media content, high speed internet and social networks is leaving the humble TV looking more and more like a tech relic as the big players continue to stumble over how to truly achieve next-gen viewing. Consider the number of times, when watching the box, you’ll grab your iPhone/iPad/MacBook/similar-inferior-device to Wiki ‘what’s he off?’, Shazam are song, place a bet on a sports match, or perhaps be reminded to book tickets for a concert or event. Now consider Irish agency Notion’s inspired MetaMirror concept��..

An augmented reality inspired concept, MetaMirror delivers the enhanced viewing experience we all dream of, but without disrupting conventional perspectives, reducing the increasing clutter on our screens from broadcasters, and instead placing them on a secondary viewing device of your choice (iPad). Sports can receive realtime statistics, Twitter updates and scores from other matches, music broadcasts can be enriched with track and album names, direct links to Wikipedia, ticket outlets and advancements in object recognition could even see instruments automatically tagged.

Seamlessly fusing our increasing needs for immediate information with our long conditioned viewing conventions, Notion’s exceptional concept is like all the best enhancements in technology – a human progression rather than a radical shift. After all, it’s the human nature of touch and movement that has made Apple’s innovations so successful. Some may say this will open floodgates for the next level of intrusive advertising and commercialisation of television – but we live with that every day on the internet, through search engines and social networks. If this is the future, then we most certainly want to be aboard��..

innovative answer to technology's next conundrum.... Technology