To accompany their fall lineup, CBS launched a new feature for their website which allows online TV viewers to join a virtual viewing room. In the room, viewers can watch the latest episodes with groups of other viewers, commenting and reading each other’s comments. There is a “LOL” button you can hit every time you find something funny and even a list of icons to choose from which allow you to throw virtual tomatoes, blow virtual kisses, or throw virtual darts. Be careful of this though, I learned the hard way that other people can see you doing this and may be annoyed with persistent kiss blowing in potentially innappropriate places. In addition to the chat room feature, you can compete against others in quizzes about the show you are watching.
The virtual viewing room provides a unique social/interactive element to watching shows online, something that hasn’t necessarily been used up to this point. You can give it a shot by testing out the new CBS comedy, “Worst Week” on the CBS website. The show is pretty funny, it is basically Meet the Parents turned into a sitcom…plenty of uncomortable moments.
October 2, 2008 at 6:57 am
I teach in a college on Mon and Tue nights. I used to VCR NCIS and CSI Miami for viewing later on.
Last season, I discovered cbs.com and watched the episodes online.
This year, when I try to watch alone. I constantly get messages about VIDEO CONTENT expired and my ad blocker is interfering.
I uninstalled my ad blocker, I set Firefox’s ad block off, I tried IE and Opera.
Nothing works.
When I try the social viewing room, if I am the only one there, I cannot start the episode.
If I joing an existing viewing room, I usually find myself in the middle of an episode. So I must wait.
The darts and kisses thrown by others are annoying.