Blinkx has hopefully solved the latter problem with its new Blinkx Remote service. Initially available in the UK, but with a US-centric version to follow, it’s kind of like a Google for free TV content on the Web. It shares similarities with services like tVadio.com and FindInternetTV.com

Blinkx Remote was originally launched in April 2007 but didn’t seem to make good headway and Blinkx is now relaunching a new and improved version of the service.

BBC iPlayer & More

Blinkx Remote filters out all of the illegal content, the spam and falsely tagged material that clogs up the Web to bring a fast and easy way of searching the Web for where you can watch your favourite programmes online in full.

The UK service aggregates all the content from the BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD, ITV.com and Demand Five, plus the US networks that allow more than just US viewers to watch content online.

Blinkx CEO Speaks

Blinkx chief executive Suranga Chandratillake told The Guardian:

“We constantly monitor video on the web to see what content people are finding and indexing, and what content people are looking for on a daily basis,”

“One trend we spotted in both the UK and US is the growth of free online, full-length TV shows – in the UK that is driven by the iPlayer and in the US by Hulu.”

“With normal search the results would be mixed up with clips, or videos people had made about shows and put on YouTube,”

“There is only going to be more and more TV on the web, but people don’t often know what it out there.”

Basic Version Free

The service is currently free although Blinkx doesn’t rule out introducing a paid-for service at a later date. This is likely to be in addition to the freely accessible Blinkx Remote in its current form.

First Of Many?

Blinkx Remote is sure to just be the first such tool for narrowing down the kind of search currently required to find all of the free and legal television content on the Web.

With more and more TV networks and channels, particularly in the States, starting to see the potential for having an Internet presence, the general populous, who don’t hear about every new start-up such as Joost and Hulu, will be crying out for services such as this.

Capturing Mainstream Viewers

Unfortunately, Blinkx Remote doesn’t do anything to solve the first problem: how to get mainstream TV viewers on to the Web and using the Internet to watch TV.

That’s surely the next challenge, and we have to hope that high profile events such as the forthcoming Beijing 2008 Olympics being broadcast almost in its entirety will help turn the public on to the potential of Web TV.

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The company, which is based in Cambridge and San Francisco, was launched in 2004 by Suranga Chandratillake. It is currently listed on the London Alternative Investment Market.

Intense Speculation

There is speculation that both Google and News Corp are interested in buying the company out, which has seen its shares rise by 50% in light of the talk.

It means the company is now valued at around $200, the hight valuation since September.

More Popular Than Google UK

The possibility of a buyout is quite high, as at the present time, Blinkx video search engine is more popular than Google UK. This would seem to make it a very attractive proposition for the likes of Google and Yahoo.

Blinkx has now released a statement about the bid speculation, and the share increases as a result, saying:

“The Board of blinkx plc notes the recent increase in the Company’s share price and confirms that it is not aware of any external bids or bid-related reason for the movement.”

But the likes of Joost, Hulu, Vuze, Babelgum and more, now have a new competitor.

Blinkx already offer a video search engine, which enables users to browse their way through streaming videos from Google, YouTube, Metacafe and more.

Blinkx BBTV Launched

Now it has decided to try and compete in the already overcrowded online television sector, and today launched Blinkx BBTV (BroadBand TV) on to the masses.

The service offers the usual bells and whistles that you’d expect it to, with high quality video streaming, full screen viewing, and a choice of channels over many genres.

So far, so samey.

Speech Recognition Software

The one thing that BBTV offers over the glut of other online TV services out there is the speech recognition software which enable you to view the spoken lines of dialogue in certain films and shows.

While this ability certainly won’t appeal to everyone, it does have its uses. For starters, you can click on any line of dialogue to be taken straight to that point of the film, enabling you to easily select a certain favourite scene you want to watch time and again.

It could also be a boon to advertisers when combined with the Blinkx AdHoc service, as it would enable some highly targeted adverts to be launched on viewers.

Blinkx BBTV also offers IMDB integration which means that you can click on an information window while watching a film, and be shown the cast, crew, release date and synopsis, amongst other things.

Content?

The problem is, as nice as these features are, there is currently little content worth watching on the service, so it all seems a bit pointless.

The company boasts of 250 content partners, but with such big names as DogWoof Pictures, that number could mean nothing in terms of content actually worth watching.

Conclusions

The service is currently free to use, and free of adverts, although they are likely to follow in time. The only problem left is the admittedly small, but still present, download required.

If we can learn anything from Joost, it’s that viewers aren’t particularly keen on downloading software and would much rather watch streaming on sites such as Hulu.

Both of these new online advertising options allows publishers to earn extra revenue, but Blinkx AdHoc is much more universal than Google’s new offering which is limited to select YouTube videos. 

With AdHoc, users can add text advertisements to video from any of the major video-sharing sites including YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Revver, Metacafe, Veoh, DailyMotion, and more.

More Potential Than AdSense

The process is simple and can have website owners and bloggers set up with ads on video in a matter of minutes. Dare I say it has more potential than even AdSense video units at this point.

To generate the ad-embedded video player, users simply paste the embed code from any video website into AdHoc. 

After this, there is only one step which involves choosing whether to display the advertisements directly above the video or as an overlay that consumes the top 20% of the video (Google also offer both options).

Once that is complete, AdHoc provides the ad-enabled code to be copied and pasted into a website. When viewers click on these ads Blinkx will share 50% of that revenue.

Leveraging Ads From Multiple Sources

The primary advantage of AdHoc over AdSense video units is that with AdHoc users can take any video and add advertisements. If there are no ads in the AdHoc database that the algorithm determines relevant to your website, then none are displayed with that video. 

With AdSense, however, there are only a limited selection of videos that can be displayed with ads, primarily those from YouTube partners. Not only that, but AdHoc leverages ads from “multiple sources including a number of PPC networks,” which should help it compare to Google’s large variety of advertising clients.

“There will be times when there are few or even no ads shown, and you won’t make money. However, we believe that, in the long term, keeping your viewers happy and engaged is more important, so we aren’t going to waste their time with irrelevant and annoying promotions.”

As far as payment, AdHoc has a $20 minimum monthly payout and sends funds through PayPal. The amount publishers are paid depends on how many of the ads are clicked on and how much each of those ads pay per click.

With the limitations of the AdSense-embedded video players, I think I will give Blinkx AdHoc a chance. It definitely gives you more options.

Michael Garrett is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com

Blinkx, which claims to be the world’s largest video search engine, has extended its staff headcount to forty through the hire of several new executives, stating the hires will support new initiatives and business development.

Two of the new executives will focus on content acquisition: John Bryan, formerly of MediaZone.com, and Marco Nadotti, from Babelgum, will be charged with pursuing large content acquisition deals and signing media partnerships.

Gavin Morgan comes on board from Miva to drive Blinkx’s syndication strategy in Europe, whilst Onil Gunawardana has been appointed to develop the company’s new contextual video advertising platform, AdHoc.

The new hires come at a busy time for Blinkx – it’s recently announced several partnerships, including one with GeoBeats.

[Press Release]

There could be nothing worse than jetting off to what you are assured is a peaceful Mediterranean paradise only to find yourself neck deep in drunk revellers, building sites and stolen travellers checks (i.e. a club 18 to 30 holiday).

Never fear however as GeoBeats, the video travel guide guru has teamed up with the video search engine hyperlord, blinkx, to help arm you with some up-to-date concrete video evidence that your destination of choice doesn’t resemble the ninth circle of Hell.

The distribution deal essentially means that GeoBeats online destination media will be indexed within blinkx’s 14 million hours (wowzers!) of searchable video.

The deal will see GeoBeats join the likes of The New York Times, BBC News, and Reuters segments on blinkx’s list of media partners. Not the best timing, seeing as holiday season is about to end and all, but still welcome news nonetheless.

[Via Press Release]

Blinkx already claims to be the world’s largest video search engine, but yesterday it reached new heights – 14,000,000 hours of searchable video, audio, viral and TV content.

The company, which floated on the London Stock Exchange in May, also claims to have over 200 media partnerships. One of the newest is with RealNetworks, where Blinkx provides the video search feature in the new RealPlayer 11.

Blinkx’s success as a video search engine relies on its patented search technologies which see and hear the web. This allows for more powerful search results than what can be achieved by meta-data based keyword searches.

Considering Time Magazine included Blinkx in its 50 Best Websites for 2007, I don’t think there’s any chance the company will be gone in a blink. Blinkx (BLNX) shares closed yesterday at GBX42.00.

Webmasters should check out this cool Blinkx It widget, which adds relevant video content to your site automatically!

[Press Release]

BBTV, short for Broadband TV, will be a downloadable P2P client which enables it’s users to search for TV shows and movies. The idea and software will be nothing without content and so distribution deals are currently being worked out.

While YouTube is the video host with the most, its collection is a lot smaller than what you would find by searching for videos on Blinkx.

While Blinkx is not my favorite video search engine when it comes to ease of use (that would be uLinkx), I have to admit that Blinkx does have an impressive index of videos.

The latest news from Blinkx is that it is adding videos from the Travel video sharing site, Travelistic, to its video search index.

[Press Release]

Read about it on our sister site, Web TV Hub. Press release follows: