LocateTV Blog

Specialised TV and film search is certainly a growth market. With so much TV and film content out there and so many ways of watching it, it’s no wonder that companies are spotting an opportunity to help people navigate all the offerings to easily and quickly find what they want to watch.

But amongst all the startups and new offerings from established sites such as TV Guide’s new video search and TIOTI’s social TV finder, we’re confident that LocateTV offers something totally unique. Let’s clarify why.

Professional content

First, the content. Unlike a lot of the other new search sites, including TIOTI and TV Guide, we’re not looking at user-generated web content, despite all the buzz about it on the net at the moment. In our experience, people still see this as a very different thing to professionally produced content. We want people to be able to find their favourite TV programmes and films without being bogged down by a lot of results showing Mad Billy doing a handpuppet version of Lost on YouTube.

Multi-media

This isn’t just a TV listings search. This isn’t just an internet download search. This isn’t just a DVD price comparison. LocateTV is all three. In one search, you find out where you can next see a show on TV, online and on DVD, so all the bases are covered and if it’s out there, anywhere, you’ll be able to find it.

Multi-region

LocateTV covers UK and US, and allows you to select your region by postcode and the channels you have available, so your results are tailored to you.

Embeds

These are one of our coolest features; we’ve been keen from the start to let bloggers and forum members take control of the content themselves and share it with others. LocateTV allows you to embed the content of your search onto your own site or comment, through a neat widget that is always dynamically updated to remain relevant to the time and location of the viewer.

Simple design

We’ve always wanted LocateTV to be ‘Google-esque’, focused on making a search as easy, quick and uncluttered as possible. We don’t host the content, we point you to where and when you can find it. No polls, no gossip columns, no opinions about exactly how thin Angelina is this week. There are exciting personalisation features such as alerts and recommendations on the roadmap, abut we will incorporate these in a clean way that doesn’t detract from our basic function: to point you to the content you want.

Other bits and pieces

Of course, that isn’t everything. Thanks to the site design, once you’ve found your content, clicking through to other results for the actors and cast involved can make browsing a surprising pleasure. We also hope that LocateTV’s transparent and collaborative attitude to its development makes for an effective, creative and human business model.

These are the basic reasons we think we’re special, and we hope you agree that LocateTV hits a spot that no other search quite reaches.

Lottie