[ngcoders]

Hi

I am the developer behind - http://www.indiantvschedule.com .This site Aggregates IMDB , TV Schedules and Youtube to provide a somewhat better TV Schedule.

The question i have for you guys is that , will such a site work in the US , i mean is it worth the effort for me to look at US as a market too. I plan to target US Movie Channels only. Since im from India and dont have much Idea how TV channels and EPG etc work in the US i thought ill ask some guys here .

Please let know what u think ...

Regards

Vikas Patial

[akula]

Vikas, I think you're an extremely talented programmer, and I am a huge fan of your work

As far as your question goes, I'm in Australia and I do see a potential for your solution as long as you correct 2 important points.

a) distribution: for an advanced tv scheduling solution to get adoption, it must be promoted by a 3rd parties. online portals like http://www.bigpond.com/ want people to spend more time on their sites, and so they buy a whole heap of content/technology from startups like yours. I don't see your site getting off the ground unless you can get some distribution from an online portal or some other tactic.

b) features: your site exists to help me solve a problem - it's hard for me to keep track of what's on TV, and your site is supposed to help me. but your current feature set isn't a substitute without substitutes. namely, my PC is at home, and so if I am at home, I can just flip through the chanels and bypass using your site (or use another site). what you need is SMS support. specifically, I should be able to use your site to build an alert list, so I can nominate which TV programs I should be alerted about on my mobile. that would be a better solution because I can benefit from your site even though I am away from the computer.

if you can build an SMS based "TV alerts" product, that would help me better keep track of all the programs I wanna watch

then...you'll want to sell the software to the dominant TV guide publisher

overall: you've worked with a lot of products so you know that tech is not king....to make anything work there's gotta be a tea m in place who can round up the customers and organise the finance for the shop to break even....whilst I like that you're working on consumer media products, personally, I think that you will find much better business opportunities in commercialising AI driven, enterprise applications.

you have a very unique skill set and I'd like to see you explore opportunities in enterprise software

[ngcoders]

thx Daniel for the appreciation .

I am working on both fronts ( but only for India right now )

a) Im planning to implment a community Driven TV portal which will have everything ( Schedule , forums , User collaborated news , videos etc ) - i plan it to make as self sustaining as possible so that i dont have do much after it goes live.

b) SMS features will be availible soon , As my current host did not support CRON ive shifted hosts and am building in SMS , iCal and RSS features for advanced users.

Ur right about me working with lots of Tech's, and I exactly know how important marketing is. But marketing and Gfx design are the two areas im not good at, and am constantly looking for people to work with .

Daniel if you have ideas about commercialising AI driven, enterprise applications , do let me know , maybe we can work together.