Hunch Brings Predictions to Internet TV

One of the big reasons Netflix is so successful isn’t just that it’s cheap and available over the Internet. The service keeps track of what you watch, takes into account your ratings of different content, and then makes suggestions for what else to see according to all of that data. The accuracy of those predictions likely determine your opinion of the service itself.

Today Hunch has partnered up with Samsung and Digitas to launch The Smart Living Room, an “interactive microsite that makes movie watching a deeper social experience.”

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If you’ve never played with Hunch before, know one thing – it’s eerily creepy. If you have some delusion about being a unique snowflake of a person, you can quickly dispel that illusion by using its Twitter predictor game for a little while. Suddenly, you want to ask it if it could have a magician’s assistant write down the answer on a separate sheet, take it out of the room and come back after you answered just to prove it isn’t making it all up. That’s about how accurate Hunch can be.

The Smart Living Room is taking that predictive ability and adding it to television viewing. Here’s the explanation from the announcement:

After a viewer answers a series of Hunch personality questions, The Smart Living Room creates a personalized movie recommendation including the genre best suited for that viewer as well as movie title suggestions. The viewer can then create a movie watching event by inviting friends and family through Facebook or email. The site utilizes dynamic CG animations to offer the viewer entertainment and surprises throughout the experience.

If Hunch can bring it’s often appallingly accurate predictions to content recommendation, Samsung could have a winner on its hands. Unfortunately, all the site currently recommends is a basic genre, like “Action” or “Comedy”, a pretty 3D animation and a couple title recommendations. With a prediction engine like Hunch, we’re hoping to see more from this in the near future.

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