Online Video Television Gets Cool And Personal: Neave.tv

Online television keeps moving its first few steps, tasting and exploring differing directions, formats and looks. And while the big names keep focusing on transferring the old content to the Internet while trying to extract extra cash from it, the small guy in the next garage door keeps cranking out, cool unique ideas that need no advertising budget to take flight.

One such highly innovative internet television idea that really struck me favourably is Neave.tv which has all that I have been missing in online video sharing sites: cool Long Tail gems someone else has discovered before me, divided into themes which I can watch through automatically, in a TV-like full-screen user experience.

And that is exactly what I was looking for.

I have really no interest in wading through the thousands of video clips uploaded to YouTube or GoogleVideo, to have to play through each one of them at least for a few seconds, to then decide that once again this is only crap and nothing like what I was looking for.

I am not saying that there are no gems within those daily thousands of videos. I know and I have seen that there are indeed some truly great ones. But tell me about finding them! The user experience to wade through that ocean is not yet either clever or smooth enough to endure my passionate searches any longer.

This is why, whoever, company, team or individual, can sit between me and these oceans of rich media information archives and select for me what may be of value to my interests, has a lot of attention coming in her direction.

Video curators in this case, capable of wading through, searching, finding, editing and compiling unique online video channels of content on specific themes and topics are the next wave of video innovation in the Internet Television space.

Their work will be able to give life to the first group of what I would finally call true Internet television channels, built by finding rare gems, popular hits, golden oldies, new underground clips and recompiling them in uniquely consistent theme-based channels.

To witness this new emerging phase is, among others, a new unique such channel, which has chosen visual artistry and avant-garde video communication as its thematic trait. Neave.tv broadcasts on the Internet a uniquely selected set of short amazingly beautiful video clips, giving life to a truly unique creative and highly visual Internet television channel.

Video clips on Neave.tv play one after the other with no need to go and click the next one you want to see.

Photo credit: Neave.tv

Of course you will not find here the latest video from Madonna or Shakira (though I did find a music video from the Chemical Brothers) but, if you can endure the new, unseen, original and sometimes surprising style that art oriented avant garde video may propose, you are in for a great, luxurious treatment.

Neave.tv interface is a beauty of simplicity in design, and the few controls available make the experience a smooth ride throughout.

Full screen video viewing in Neave.tv is a visually gorgeous experience, especially if you have a fast computer and a superfast Internet connection. One megabit is the recommended download speed required and unless you have a good and fast CPU your mileage may vay when shooting this video clips to a full screen blast by pressing the handy F key.

Other controls include volume, that is managed via the "+" and "-" keys on your keyboard, and the "pause" which can be enabled by pressing the "space bar".

For each video played a caption displays title and author in a very discrete manner, while rotating other short info sentences that remember you how to operate the few commands I have listed above.

The cherry on the pie is a auto-hiding visual menu that provides access to all video thumbnails and titles for all the video clips available, sub-divided into different sub-themes. The visual menu is simple and easy to use and makes navigating Neave.tv content a true pleasure.

You can always tell which clip you are watching thanks to a simple and very subtle visual touch. If you look at the auto-hiding visual menu you will notice that one thumbnail only is transparent to the background video being shown. And that thumbnail is the one of the video you are watching. Just hover your mouse on it and you will find out the title of the video clip being played.

The video clips you see on Neave.tv are public video clips hosted on Google Video, YouTube and Blip.tv. The value Neave.tv brings in is the one of finding, selecting and aggreating the best cutting edge, non-mainstream music videos and serve them in a frictionless format, that is as visually rich and appealing as it is possible.

"It's like television but nicer."

Neave.tv is in my humble opinion an impressive and innovative step in the right direction for creating an effective, user-friendly and sticky internet television channel.

Neave.tv on a large wall-sized plasma screen or projected as a large image on a blank wall must be a wonderful atmosphere creator and a stunning audio-visual experience.

Neave.tv is the end result of an evidently successful synergy between Paul Neave, a British serial Flash fettler and interactive activist and Media Temple a US-based hosting provider.

Together, the two have already brought to the Internet another visually stunning projects:
Flashearth.

Photo credit: Paul Neave

Paul Neave, the author behind Neave.tv, writes of its latest creation:
This is "my very own TV channel, brought into your eyeballs via the web. Sit back and watch oodles of top banana creativity in a telly stylee."

Kudos to Neave.tv. I really like it.

Neave.tv provides a full RSS feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/neavetv

Here some selected video clips I have first seen thanks to Neave.tv, that I would recommend you seeing, if you want to explore in a more active way, the superb Neave.tv present video art collection.

• Bonobo - Flutter - a lovely chill out instrumental track with some very cool abstract visuals


• The Music Animation Machine: Claire de Lune - a music classic visualized in a mathematical, yet colorful notation


• Hexstatic: Deadly Media - great video mashup


• Readymade FC: Only One - amazing home made video music clip - some true artistry at work here


• Camera: Out on the water - cool animation on a great song


• Roundabout - like scratching records - how about scratching cars? Here's the ultimate visual scratch clip - supercool


• LA Let's Be Friends - Animation and 3D over television footage - music remix - a video mashup


• Bit.fall Aquadisplay - music video about the writing water fountain showcased in public streets in France


• Steve Carthy - Public Brand Study - very cool video shows how we are being commoditized as branding vehicles - excellent

And these are just a few. Watch on!