Earlier this month, Blinkx, one of the web's most sophisticated online video portals, launched Blinkx Red Label - a service similar to YouTube's Partner Programme that lets users make money from videos indexed on its site. This week, however, the video site has announced a feature that could really differentiate it from the Google-owned market leaders: Blinkx Remote.Essentially, Blinkx Remote is a free online catch-up service for TV shows in the UK. The feature indexes links from all the major online TV catch-up facilities - including BBC iPlayer, ITV.com, Channel 4 OD and Demand Five - and sorts them alphabetically, by genre or by network.
According to the Guardian, Blinkx CEO Suranga Chandratillake, commented: "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."
Altogether, Blinkx Remote offers around 1000 British TV programmes and between 300 and 400 US shows. No agreement has been struck with the networks; however, since the data is publically available, it can be listed in the same way that news aggregators like Google News and Yahoo! News index news stories.
Online video news might have been dominated by YouTube's wrangling with Viacom in recent weeks, but the growing popularity of TV catch-up sites has been edging its way into the headlines too.
In mid-July, bigmouthmedia reported on the 250 per cent rise in the number of CNN videos watched online, while UK digital TV provider Virgin Media's decision to host the BBC iPlayer has provided the veteran broadcaster with more than 10 million extra viewers.
The comparisons to Hulu are not unjustified either. This US online video service is run by FOX and NBC, and offers United States situated users the chance to watch both new and old shows from each network - from recent episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to old favourites like Arrested Development. Unlike the BBC iPlayer, however, Hulu does not feature the ability to download video clips for offline viewing.
For TV junkies, Blinkx Remote is sure to provide the ideal way to catch-up with favourite television programmes in one, convenient online portal. And with such a wide range of genres indexed - from popular soaps like Eastenders and Hollyoaks to news features like Panorama - it's likely to win fans of the small screen across the country.
