Adult Swim Video adds Relateds
Last week, we rolled a small update to Adult Swim Video. The update included some minor visual updates to keep things looking freshy fresh, but also added a couple of feature additions.
The major additional feature that we added was related videos to a video’s detail section. When adding this, we actually didn’t have a true “relateds” service, so I build it based on context. Essentially if you are browsing a section, you are looking at a video in context, so I grabbed those videos from that context. If you are deeplinking to a video, I request the first ‘N’ videos in that video’s collection. It is a simple solution, but what I’d like to see is a more user driven symbolic relationship. Regardless, it works for now ;). The great thing about the current setup, is that if you go into the What’s new section or say Aqua Teen Hunger force, you will see all of the surrounding videos in your relateds, which allows you to select them without jumping back to browse. This also brings up another feature, continuous play.
Continuous play is tied somewhat tied to relateds and is what actually gives it worth. At first you might think it seems pretty lame, because you are using an ondemand application. However, what you have to realize is that the application is essentially keeping the related playlist in memory. This allows you to go fullscreen and just keep watching one item after another passively or jumping to next items manually. Also, if you find it annoying you can just toggle it off.
There are some other subtle changes, but I’ve bored you enough, go check out the AquaTeen movie while they have it up!