Time Warner Cable is rolling out a new feature for its digital cable customers called Quick Clips. Quick Clips allows customers to access short-form video content, including content produced for the Internet, on their TVs. The feature was launched in the company’s South Carolina division.
If additional content is available, a banner saying so is displayed on subscribers’ TV screens. Subs can push their “select” buttons, choose the “Enhanced TV” menu, and select “Quick Clips.”
Quick Clips material is hosted on TWC’s VOD platform. After the video is delivered to the subscriber, the sub is returned to the main program, which will be in progress. (Viewers could opt to go back to the beginning of the program, if it’s available on a channel that works with TWC’s Startover feature.)
TWC provided the example of a viewer watching an episode of “Storm Stories” on The Weather Channel. The viewer might be offered additional content such as their current local weather forecast. Once they finish viewing the forecast, they are returned back to “Storm Stories.”
The Quick Clips feature is available only with participating networks. The first networks involved are CNBC, CNN and The Weather Channel.
Quick Clips is currently available to all 150,000 digital cable subscribers in Time Warner Cable’s South Carolina division. Time Warner Cable expects to increase the number of channels that offer Quick Clips and plans to launch in additional markets later this year.
