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Microsoft To Use Jinni Recommendation Technology For Xbox Video
Today, Microsoft announced that it has sign a multi-year agreement with Jinni to use its "Entertainment Genome" technology for Xbox video discovery.
The press release states "Jinni's proprietary Entertainment Genome uses deep knowledge of every show and movie in the Xbox Video catalog to help the Xbox recommendations system intuitively and accurately connect Xbox users to content they'll enjoy. By using the rich set of attributes in the Jinni Entertainment Genome, Xbox recommendations go beyond the standard genre similarity. When paired with other Xbox signals, such as a user's viewing history, this sets a new bar in content discovery."
You can check out Jinni's technology for yourself on the company's website. Basically it appears to be similar, slightly more complex, version of what you're used to on Netflix Instant. So, soon your Xbox will know that you prefer "Emotional Violent Thrillers Set In Canada With Brunette Female Protagonists Who Enjoy Scrabble."
Our Take:
I went on the Jinni website and searched around a bit. Frankly, I wasn't
especially impressed. While I like the idea of being able to search by criteria
like "mood" and "plot," the results didn't always seem that enlightening. For
example, I type in the search term "heist." I got some fairly obvious results
like Snatch, Ocean's Eleven, Inside Man, The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs,
etc. However, I also got a few that didn't really strike me as heist films,
like Die Hard, for example. From the pull-down menus, I selected "humorous" and
"misfit" and got everything from Monsters, Inc. to Borat. As I kept adding more
and more terms, the results got more interesting.
As it stands, it's an interesting concept, but I'll be curious as to how it works in practice on Xbox Live.
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