If you attended NAB last week you surely heard this question asked by our booth staff over and over again. “Question the rectangle” was our catch-phrase for our NAB showing. Our objective was to show video professionals that the current state of video on the Web is dismal. Only one technology allows us to truly break out of the “rectangle” of Web video. My favorite question, which I asked my audiences over and over again, was “What should happen when you click on a ‘play video’ button on a web page?” The intuitive answer for everyone was, “A video should start playing!”

I wish this were always the case, but it rarely is. All too often we’re redirected to a “Pick your player, pick your bandwidth” page. Or worse, we’re sent off to install a huge player that we don’t already have (good luck finding the free version!). What about clicking “play video” and a new browser window spawns with a non-contextual use of video? Or even worse, a player launches with a proprietary UI that forces advertising down your throat.

Our “Question the Rectangle” theme was all about giving developers and video producers full creative control. This is something that they’re not used to having when it comes to delivering their video on the Web. We also used this expression to stress that video should be used contextually within a web browsing experience. CNET does a great job of this, as does Ford.

Now, where am I going with this? Well, I wanted to point out an example that truely questions the rectangle. Visit the Vodafone Future Vision site and mouse over “Quick Launch” and select “1. Entertaining”. In this section you can “experience” a visual bracelet a-la Dick Tracy. Notice how this video is not delivered in the traditional “rectangle.”

Enjoy!

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