Telescoping Defined

Seamless Video Expansion:
Shaping the Contour of Streams for Personalized TV
ACM SigCHI 2000

Relativity Controller:
Reflecting User Perspective in Document Spaces
ACM InterCHI 1993

BAGuette (circa 1996):
Watch or download narrated video walkthrough of an early interactive TV prototype

WHAT IS TELESCOPING?

Digital video makes it possible to blend the fluid continuity of cinematic experience with the kinds of choice and control that hypermedia affords. Telescoping is a general term that describes user experiences in which video streams expand and/or contract dynamically.

Seamless Expansion

Seamless Expansion is a form of interactive media in which a link from a video enables playback of optional content, such as another video, pictures, text or interactive. When the viewer is done watching the expansion content, the main video resumes where it left off. MONKEYmedia invented the technique and reduced it to practice in the early 90's while experimenting with concepts for then-future video distribution formats such as DVD and interactive TV. On DVD and Blu-ray today, the technique is commonly referred to as seamless branching.The broadcast TV and Internet video industries now refer to it as long-form or telescopic advertising.

There are three general types of expansion content:

• Advertainment (e.g. 3 to 12 min. ads, network previews, product details...)
• Bonus Material (e.g. behind-the-scenes, commentary, trivia, past episodes...)
• Calls to Action (e.g. request materials, vote, purchase, set DVR recording...)

 

Seamless Contraction

Seamless Contraction is the inverse of seamless expansion; enabling long videos to be shortened by skipping over undesired or non-salient segments based on user preference. MONKEYmedia invented the technique while exploring methods for representing and displaying divergent personal perspectives on a variety of media types. The first prototypes, developed in 1992, were called Relativity Controllers because each viewer benefitted from seeing content in accordance with their own unique point of view.

On DVD and Blu-ray today, Seamless Contraction is commonly used to deliver multiple versions of the same movie (such as a director's cut and theatrical release) on a single disc.

 

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