{"id":87788,"date":"2016-04-01T00:05:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T22:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=87788"},"modified":"2016-04-01T16:47:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T14:47:53","slug":"showmax-makes-it-possible-to-watch-tv-shows-42-faster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/87788-showmax-makes-it-possible-to-watch-tv-shows-42-faster","title":{"rendered":"ShowMax makes it possible to watch TV shows 42% faster [April Fool&#8217;s!]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ShowMax has launched its new \u2018power bingeing\u2019 function, which speeds up TV shows and movies by as much as 42% without impacting voice or video quality.<\/p>\n<p>The new power bingeing function means that ShowMax viewers can now fit three more episodes into a five-hour binge viewing session.<\/p>\n<p>This new function is made possible by technology originally developed to reduce data consumption while watching video via a mobile connection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have been grappling with the affordability of mobile data and how this impacts internet TV usage in Africa. That\u2019s when it hit us \u2013 if we speed up shows, our customers will use less data,\u201d said Mike Raath, ShowMax Chief Technology Officer.<\/p>\n<p>The image below shows the new ShowMax\u00a0power bingeing function in the desktop application.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Showmax.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-87792\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-87792 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Showmax.jpg\" alt=\"Showmax\" width=\"800\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Showmax.jpg 800w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Showmax-768x575.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">How the technology works<\/h3>\n<p>A significant proportion of verbal communication is made up of pauses and other non-lexical vocables.<\/p>\n<p>Fillers such as \u2018uh\u2019, \u2018erm\u2019, and \u2018ah\u2019 can be removed without impacting the substance of a conversation.<\/p>\n<p>ShowMax has developed proprietary technology to achieve this, speeding up conversation without causing a \u2018helium voice\u2019 effect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur first attempts sounded like chipmunks on speed, but the engineers cracked the voice issue surprisingly quickly,\u201d said Raath.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpeeding up the video was much tougher. To be honest, everything we tried looked pretty much like an episode of Benny Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The answer came from a study on Critical Flicker Frequency (CFF). CFF is the threshold at which light flickers so quickly that it\u2019s impossible to discern discrete flashes and instead one sees a steady glow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy manipulating frame rates and removing those beyond the perception limit of humans, we\u2019ve managed to increase the speed of video without the characteristic jerky motion that you\u2019d expect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ShowMax has now added a \u2018power binge\u2019 play button to all of its apps.<\/p>\n<p>The following link gives a demonstration of sped-up content vs the original: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/233UnAh\" target=\"_blank\">ShowMax &#8216;Power Bingeing&#8217; Function<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ShowMax has launched its new \u2018power bingeing\u2019 function, which speeds up TV shows and movies without impacting voice or video quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":87794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17688],"class_list":["post-87788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-showmax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87788"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88003,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87788\/revisions\/88003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}