The Cable Show, a yearly trade show for the cable industry, is taking place in Boston this week. There, cable companies gather to show off their new products and services. This year’s hot item seems to be software that are similar to, yet not as good as, an Apple TV or Roku.
Motorola is announcing DreamGallery by Motorola Medios. DreamGallery is a new on-screen display. Specifically, Motorola is touting DreamGallery’s bookmarking function, which allows content to be marked for later viewing. The platform also has recommendations.
“Consumers spoke. We listened. DreamGallery is to TV what search was to the Web,” said John Burke, senior vice president and general manager for Converged Experiences at Motorola Mobility. “Consumers want to be able to find personalized and relevant content, fast. We set out to address this hunger by leveraging our expertise in media software and our leadership in content delivery. We ended up reinventing the entire interface for television. DreamGallery isn’t just a better search and discovery experience. It’s a better way to watch TV.”
Presumably, DreamGallery will come standard on new Motorola DVRs. Also, much like Comcast’s just-announced X1 platform, there is no mention of DreamGallery having any meaningful internet connectivity. No YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu to be seen in the preview video below. DreamGallery does, however, allow users to watch programming on multiple devices. How this works, and what restrictions might be placed on it, have not been revealed.
These Apple TV-like devices have not been impressive, though The Cable Show is not for consumers. Comcast and Motorola are trying to impress cable service providers. To that end, these products feature interfaces that can be changed easily to promote programming or otherwise control the viewing environment of the subscriber. This focus on cable companies as customers instead of end-users is why many in the U.S. are simply dropping cable altogether.
Take a look at DreamGallery below in a video provided by Motorola: