Showing posts with label leanback. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leanback. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

You and Leanback - This Time It’s Personal

When we launched Leanback in July we wanted to create a simple, easy-to-use YouTube interface for the big screen. Since then we’ve graduated Leanback out of TestTube, added the ability to place ads to bring in more partner videos, and launched a YouTube Remote that lets you control your YouTube Leanback experience from your Android mobile phone. In our latest iteration, we’re enhancing the video discovery experience in Leanback with a new feature called Personalized Channels.

Personalized Channels is built to tackle one of the big challenges for our users: what should I watch next? It's a bit like having your own personal video delivery butler, serving you relevant videos that reflect what you like, or find interesting. For instance, if you create a ‘fail’ channel, it will start out showing the best fail videos we can find, and then gradually start branching out to pranks, funny commercials and other related topics. It will also adjust itself based on how you interact with the videos shown and get better the more you watch and interact with them.

Here’s how it works. Start by signing in to your YouTube account and go to YouTube.com/leanback and select “Create Channels”. We’ll suggest personalized channels to you based on the videos you have watched in the past. To create a new personalized channel, choose from the suggested channels or just type in a topic, like “cooking.”

We’ve put together a short video introduction to Personalized Channels, below, to get you started.


Like all products we launch, we’re eager for you to try it out and then give us suggestions on how we can make it even better. This project is still in its early stages and your participation and feedback will help us improve it (you can let us know your thoughts in the forum). Have fun and share with us in the comments below the personalized channels that would reflect you the best.

Christina Ilvento, product manager, recently created a personalized channel around “meerkats”, and Ben Liebald, Software Engineer, recently created a personalized channel on “marathon training”.

Monday, October 18, 2010

YouTube Leanback officially launches -- on Google TV

Back in July, we announced the launch of YouTube Leanback in beta. If you didn’t get a chance to check it out, Leanback is a new way to experience YouTube on a big screen. We named it “Leanback” so you could do just that: kick back and, with as little effort as possible, enjoy hours upon hours of YouTube videos. When you go to www.youtube.com/leanback, you’ll note that videos start playing immediately, are always presented in full screen and HD (when available), and you can easily browse using just the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Today, YouTube Leanback moves forward into a new role at the center of the YouTube experience on Google TV, which you’ll start seeing in U.S. stores this week. When you view Leanback on Google TV (or online), videos based on your subscriptions and viewing history will begin playing immediately. If those don’t pique your interest, Leanback offers 10 channels, updated daily, featuring popular and interesting videos in genres like Comedy, Entertainment, News, Science & Technology, How To & Style, and more. You can also watch full-length movies and TV shows rented from youtube.com in the highest quality.

Learn more about YouTube Leanback or visit www.youtube.com/leanback to try it out.

Camille Hearst, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched the “Best of YouTube” channel at www.youtube.com/leanback.