Supposedly we’re still in the fall season… but with 29 degree temperatures and snow flurries? While the winter season brings an assortment of great things with it, I find that it also ushers in a little bit of laziness in all of us. It’s really hard to leave the comfort of my heated apartment sometimes—at least without spending 10 minutes to throw on a coat, hat, gloves, and a positive attitude.
Thankfully, Logitech Revue has provided me with some great entertainment when I’ve wanted to keep myself locked indoors. Armed with freshly delivered Chinese food last night, Revue and I had a date with YouTube Leanback. If you’re not yet familiar with this modified YouTube interface, it’s basically YouTube designed for the couch experience. Rather than having to navigate traditional YouTube pages, Leanback gives you a simple, streamlined interface that makes finding and navigating videos drop-dead easy.
When you’ve launched YouTube Leanback, you’re prompted to enter a search term. Type in whatever you’re after, and you’re presented with a horizontal bar with thumbnail previews of your search results. Using the navigational arrows on your Logitech Revue keyboard controller, slide left and right to select the video you want to view. I want to explain more, but… that’s really all there is to it!
When you want to try a different search term, just start typing it—Leanback will automatically adjust the search results for you.
As I’ve explained to a bunch of people who visited Logitech Loft LA, one of my favorite things to do on Logitech Revue is watch online video. And thanks to Leanback, it’s fast and easy.
Leanback is great idea, but somehow the videos just aren’t very entertaining for me. http://crowdtube.tv seems to find really great videos and shows them endlessly similar to leanback.
It’s exciting to see the web finally come to the physical tv!