Dijit launched an iPad version of NextGuide last summer, aiming to reinvent the traditional TV guide with universal search for movies and TV content across live TV and iPad apps from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes and others. Users of the app can also define searches for very specific interests and get recommendations for any content related to their hobby or their hometown.

It all makes sense – but I just don’t find myself frequenting the iPad app very much. Maybe it’s the fact that I just don’t feel like I don’t have enough choices for things to watch. Maybe it’s due to my binge viewing habits: while I’m burning through a new show (mind you, burning a very relative term if you have a job and a family), I  don’t look for much else, and don’t need to know what’s on. Or maybe it’s just that the app is a bit too complicated for its own good.

But there’s something about NextGuide’s new web app sibling that is very intriguing. For one thing, it is a lot simpler than the iPad app, and it feels less like you have to turn thousand nobs before you get good results.

But the app also feels a lot more social, thanks to its Facebook integration: Users can easily browse the movies and TV shows any of their Facebook friends have liked on the social network, no matter whether these contacts are using NextGuide or not. The results are displayed in a Pinterest-like fashion, inviting you to aimlessly browse around and check out what your friends like to watch.

Once you find something that catches your interest, you’re able to see which services it is playing on, add it to your own Watchlist or subscribe to email alerts to be notified when new episodes are available online, or on the air. Essentially, it turns your friends’ Facebook likes into your TV guide, and that’s pretty cool. Oh, and you can also compile a list of your own favorites to display to the world.

Pre-populating a video discovery service with data from Facebook certainly isn’t new – but there’s something about this kind of Pinterest-like approach that just invites browsing. And TV fans will appreciate that their friends’ likes, which are otherwise scattered on Facebook, are all brought together in one place.

Sure, there’s still room to improve NextGuide on the web. Recommending the right resources to play content is one of those things. For example, for a show like the Daily Show, it only recommends Hulu, Amazon and iTunes, even though full episodes are also available on the show’s website.

But even with those shortcomings, I have to say that I enjoyed playing with the website, and I can see myself coming back to it much more often than to the app.

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It’s a solid update worth checking out if you’re interested in an app that helps you to find shows and movies on live TV as well as streaming services like Amazon Instant and Netflix – but the thing that I took away from a conversation I had this week with Dijit CEO Jeremy Toeman was something else. I asked Toeman why there’s even a need for an app like NextGuide, now that everyone from Google to Roku offers universal search across a multitude of services. His answer: Because we’re Switzerland.

NextGuide’s newest update includes a social stream that shows which content your contacts like – even if they’re not using the app.

Toeman argued that most companies involved in this space have too much of a vested interest to be good at becoming TV’s next recommendation engine. Subscription services like Netflix exclusively focus on their own offerings, and all but ignore anything on live TV. Cable companies on the other hand recommend both live TV and their own on-demand services like Xfinity.com – but they still don’t link to their competition. “I don’t see the Xfinity app searching Netflix for me,” Toeman quipped.

Device makers are in a bit of a different position, because they often want to present you with as many content choices as possible. But Roku exclusively focuses on viewing content that works on its own devices. That means you’re screwed if you want to watch anything on the TV in your den that doesn’t have a Roku, or even continue watching a movie on your iPad during your morning commute.

NextGuide on the other hand doesn’t care about any of that. The app supports content from 54 5 different content sources, including Netflix, Amazon and Hulu Plus. It currently puts a heavy focus on watching content on the iPad, but it can already be used in conjunction with a DirecTV DVR, and Toeman said that support for other devices and platforms is coming soon.

NextGuide extends this Switzerland-like approach to the way it handles social signals. The newest version of NextGuide integrates an activity stream that lets you see what your friends are doing on the service. But it doesn’t stop there: Users can also see what kind of shows their friends are liking on Facebook, even if those friends don’t use NextGuide themselves.

Missing from the app is the kind of restless conversation through pulled in Twitter or Facebook comment streams many others in the space are banking on. Toeman told me that he wants to use social networks to find recommendations for new content, not to relay what everyone is saying about shows and movies. “I don’t care what people tweet,” he told me.

Image courtesy of (CC-BY-SA) Flickr user twicepix.

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Dijit originally launched mainly as a universal remote control, but has increasingly been adding content discovery and social features to its product. Those features are designed to provide personalized access to the most relevant shows a viewer might want to watch, as well as to give those viewers an easy way to find out about new shows based on what their friends are watching.

The new iPad app expands on existing Dijit mobile features by taking advantage of the tablet’s larger screen and adding more functionality as a result. Viewers will be able access their local TV listings, get recommendations from their Facebook friends, and gather more information about the cast and crew of the shows they’re watching. The app includes Wikipedia and YouTube integration to highlight additional content online. It also has a social check-in feature that will let users share what they’re watching with their social graph on Twitter and Facebook.

Dijit works with Roku streaming set-top boxes, and also acts as a universal remote control when paired with the Griffin Beacon IR blaster. But the startup soon hopes to directly connect with Wi-Fi-capable TVs and operator set-top boxes.

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BuddyTV

BuddyTV got its start by building a TV news and community site, but has expanded to create mobile apps built for personalized recommendations of TV shows. By taking into account which shows viewers have checked into, as well as those they’ve rated, BuddyTV can suggest new TV shows that are airing whenever they open the app. And since it tracks viewership, it will surface shows users already have shown an affinity for when those shows are on air.

Dijit

Dijit’s mobile app was launched primarily to be used as a remote control for a wide range of devices. Paired with the Griffin Beacon IR controller, Dijit can be used to control anything from your TV to your Blu-ray player to your Roku streaming media box. But in addition to the channel grid, which can be used to search and navigate what’s on TV at any given time, Dijit has added a social layer on top, allowing viewers to check in and comment on their favorite shows. It also provides social recommendations based on Facebook integration, suggesting new shows for users to watch.

Fanhattan

While it’s not necessarily used to find or watch shows on the TV, the Fanhattan app provides a way to search for content within applications from services like Netflix and Hulu Plus on a user’s iPad or iPhone. With a universal search functionality, users can search TV shows and movies without having to jump in and out of different apps for the information they want. It also provides a wealth of cast and crew data, ratings and multimedia assets related to the content users are searching for.

Fav.tv

While most people are looking for the best content available when they turn on the TV, some want to know when their favorite shows air. Enter Fav.tv. The startup’s iOS and Android apps offer the ability to keep track of when new episodes are airing and mark off episodes they have already watched. The app also provides news about shows from around the web, as well as the ability to share comments about shows with their friends within the app.

Yap.tv

Yap.tv has taken a decidedly social approach to aggregating TV listings, showing its users which shows are most popular, while also letting them set favorites and see what friends are watching. Its guide is also a lot more visual than most other TV apps, highlighting cover art for each of the shows represented. Once viewers choose a show, they can take polls, see tweets from other viewers and participate in live chats as well.

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This universal remote solution is a combination of both hardware and software. Unlike old remotes that require infrared (IR) sensors, the Dijit application on a phone or tablet communicates with Griffin’s Beacon hardware through a standard Bluetooth connection. The Beacon unit then converts commands from the remote control software into an IR signal, which it beams to a television, Blu-ray player, DVR, or any other IR-compatible media component.

The Android app is freely available in the Android Market, but does require Android 2.3.3 or better to run. An older handset then may not be compatible, but nearly all Android tablets should work with the software.

Ironically, I remember when all of my mobile devices had IR sensors, because Bluetooth was still up-and-coming; Windows Phone handsets and old PDAs, for example, mostly carried the tech built-in. Now these sensors have generally gone away, although I noticed this morning that Samsung’s newest Galaxy Tab includes an infrared port. I guess everything old is new again, after all.

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To be fair, Apple won’t be first in bringing voice-controlled TV apps to market: Google TV’s remote app allowed voice controls more than a year ago, and the next update to Microsoft’s Xbox Live will include Kinect-enabled voice controls when it goes live in late November. But Apple’s introduction of Siri as an integrated part of the user interface could take the concept well beyond how we’ve come to think of voice control to this point.

If Siri does emerge as an integral part of the Apple iTV, it won’t be the first time Apple changed media consumption through the input device. The company also revolutionized the way people interact with content with the introduction of the touch screen on the first iPhone. While it might not have been readily apparent at the time, the ability to control iTunes — and later Apple TV — with the iPhone Remote app was the first step in changing the way people controlled media.

More remote apps have since followed, some of which worked directly with devices already in people’s homes and some of which use bridging technologies to do so. Service providers like Comcast and AT&T have introduced apps that connect with their proprietary set-top boxes, allowing people to search and browse channels, and set and update their DVRs through an easy-to-use touch interface. App makers like Peel, Dijit and Logitech have extended that model to create universal remotes that integrate with IR blasters to control all the devices in one home.

With the introduction of Siri, it seems the touchscreen control could soon be replaced by voice controls throughout the Apple ecosystem. But consumer adoption voice control for an iTV or other Apple device is just one step toward a voice-controlled future for all sorts of other devices.

That will enable applications like whole-home automation — the ability to set heat, A/C and light controls — controlled by voice through a unified system. And with persistent connectivity of all these devices — the so-called “Internet of things” — users will be able to speak controls remotely into a phone or other device and have them carried across the network before being implemented in other locations.

This is all very Jetsons-type stuff, the kind of “they promised us jetpacks” future we’ve all been waiting decades for. And we’re finally on the cusp of realizing it. All of which is to say that while asking Siri to perform outrageous tasks and seeing what her response is seems like a novel joke today, someday soon it might not be so unusual to order her to bake you a pie and actually have it defrosted and ready made in the oven when you return from work.

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Just about every company in the video entertainment ecosystem has a stake in such a development. Content producers need to have outlets for their (often expensive) productions that can provide enough return on investment to allow them to stay in business. Publishers and distributors of this content need effective ways to deliver it to consumers. Television manufacturers depend on the consumer demand for video entertainment to create a market for their products.

As a result, different companies are establishing different routes to what they believe will lead to the ideal interface, choosing different starting points based on their core competencies and strategic interests. Rather than try to pick winners at this very early stage, here are some examples of those involved in the new era of TV interfaces and the solutions they offer:

Netflix. In spite of its recent stumbles, Netflix remains the content provider to beat in this game. It has invested millions in developing different user interfaces to run on different platforms. It has unmatched expertise in its recommendations engine, developing algorithms that can identify content that a given subscriber might enjoy. The company has made strides in improving what has been viewed as a lackluster catalog of titles, and its recent licensing of the popular Mad Men series shows that it’s willing to spend serious money to compete. Like Hulu, its content inventory depends on its ability to continue to negotiate licenses for the programming, but of the two, Netflix appears to be on more solid financial footing for the moment.

Dijit. Dijit was founded in 2009 with the goal of integrating smart devices into the household media entertainment experience. Under this strategy, a second screen is essential for home entertainment discovery. The company also believes that recommendations based on social data are sufficient, so complex algorithms may not be required. Extensive metadata for the content elements will still be an important factor. Dijit includes touch gestures as part of its smart device interface, but it does not believe that large physical gestures (such as Kinect) or voice controls are reliable enough to be effective. Dijit’s technology is interesting, but the focus is still limited. Its strategy relies on consumers’ providing an expensive third-party device in the form of a smartphone or tablet; it is not at all clear yet that this could be a broad-based solution for the average consumer, and Dijit may simply end up being an acquisition target.

Logitech. Logitech’s Harmony line of universal remote controls for televisions are available on retail shelves, and it was one of the first companies to come out with a Google TV product: the Revue. Logitech has the experience with remote control design that will be needed to adapt to the demands of new user interface requirements. The Revue already has a compact QWERTY keyboard controller that includes a touchpad for cursor control. Logitech is not likely to drive the development of the new video user interface, but it is positioned to be an effective hardware partner for a company with a winning strategy. The company’s recent poor financial performance — a $45 million operating loss in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012 — could open up the possibility of an acquisition.

It is unlikely that we will reach a compelling solution quickly that will spread rapidly throughout the infrastructure. The successful approach will likely take either the cooperation or the combination of companies to assemble the assets, resources and alliances required to create an effective system that is supported by all the stakeholders in the system.

For more company profiles and predictions, see the full report (subscription required).

Image courtesy of flickr user espensorvik

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We wrote about Dijit a few weeks ago, noting its ability to control Roku media streaming boxes. But the app, along with Wednesday’s release of Beacon to the public, opens up a whole new realm of devices that can be navigated. The Dijit app connects to the Beacon hub via Bluetooth and then provides universal access to content through the software. Users can add their TVs, DVRs, Blu-ray players, and multiple streaming devices such as Roku and Apple TV devices — basically anything that has an IR controller.

The Dijit app provides the same sort of up-down-left-right navigation capabilities that are available on typical TV remotes, but improves on the search and discovery functionality available through typical electronic programming guides. In addition to accessing the traditional grid program guide available to cable subscribers, it enables users to search, navigate and manage movies in their Netflix queue. The app also has social sharing capabilities built in, enabling users to rate, comment on and share what they’re watching through social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

The release of the Dijit app and Beacon controller follows the trend of “appification” for video remote control. A number of cable, satellite and IPTV providers, for instance, are all seeking to improve search and navigation of their content, and many are turning to mobile applications for the iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices to do so. But those applications typically only work with the live and on-demand video feeds that they control. Dijit provides an extra layer of sophistication by accessing multiple devices.

Dijit and Griffin aren’t the only ones that are seeking to unify the experience between devices — the recently released Peel controller also provides an iPhone into a remote control for multiple devices as well. But the Griffin Beacon has the benefit of hitting major retailers, including the Apple Store, both online and in retail locations. This is a hot space, and we’ll be keeping tabs on new entrants as they come out.

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Dijit isn’t the first app to bring Roku remote control functionality to iOS devices. In fact, we recently reviewed the Peel app and IR blaster on our weekly Cord Cutters web series (check out the video below) that can also be used to control a Roku. However, Dijit promises its users some neat features that set it apart from the Peel app, including customizable gestures, an on-screen keyboard and the ability to manage a user’s Netflix Instant queue on the handset.

Much like Peel, Dijit wants to become the default universal remote control in a user’s home. The San Francisco-based startup has partnered with Griffin Technology achieve this goal, and the Dijit app will be the default interface for Griffin’s upcoming Beacon IR blaster. The combination of IR blaster and iOS or Android handset will allow users to also change live TV channels and control other devices that aren’t yet connected to the home network.

Check out a review of the Peel below:

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