ZeeVee says that the Beta 5 release of Zinc, its Internet video manager, is now available “on the cloud,” helping users find high-quality Internet video through an easy to use “big screen TV” living room interface.
ZeeVee’s Zinc home page
According to ZeeVee, Zinc provides a simple, consistent way to browse and manage more than 100,000 professionally produced videos, including more than 60,000 mainstream TV shows and 20,000 movies from hundreds of different Web sites like Amazon, Netflix, and major broadcast networks.
Zinc is a Media RSS (MRSS) fed program guide that comes pre-populated with video channels and content from many sites. Users can also add content from any MRSS source. New Zinc Beta 5 features make creating and accessing a personalized content experience easier than ever before.
The “Favorites” tool lets users bookmark shows and videos to make it easier to stay up to date with favorite content. The newly added “Queue” feature helps users manage what they will watch next.
The Zinc Internet video manager is now hosted in the Internet cloud, allowing users to login from anywhere they want to access their personalized Zinc experience. Users can access popular Zinc features such as personal Favorites, the new Queue feature and their Zinc History on any Zinc-enabled device. For instance, users can add content to their Queue from their PC and it will ‘automagically’ show up in their account on any other Zinc device.
“The ability to access Zinc via the cloud is significant for our users as they often times are not at their PC but still want to watch their favorite Internet videos from a different device when they have free time,” said Vic Odryna, CEO of ZeeVee. “This release of Zinc gives them that flexibility and a continuous on-ramp to their preferred Internet TV shows.”
Also included in Zinc Beta 5 is the new Zinc TV Widget for TVs and other consumer electronic devices powered by the Yahoo! Widget Engine. The Zinc TV Widget allows access to Internet video on a new generation of Internet-connected televisions. TV Widgets offer consumers on-demand access to their personal selection of movies, TV shows, and Internet services including Web videos, photos, shopping, games, lifestyle content and more. Yahoo! is enabling an ecosystem of developers, publishers, device manufacturers and advertisers that will benefit consumers by bringing the best of the Web to television.
