Sam Gibbs - 

The BBC has a whole R&D lab dedicated to engineering the next big thing in TV, radio and media. It’s just unveiled its first adaptive, changing or “perceptive” media experience called Breaking Out, which changes depending on who you are, where you are, and even what the weather’s like.

Essentially it’s a customised audio-visual experience that adapts to the individual trying to use it — a fancy radio play of sorts. It’s designed for Chrome, but will probably play in any modern browser.

Parts of the story are altered by things like the whether it’s chucking it down where you are now; the current date and what’s going on in the news today; whether you’re logged into Twitter or Facebook in your browser, and other small bits and pieces about your current circumstance. It’s a very subtle customisation though — not a loud and shouty look at me! — and you might not even notice it initially, but it really does change depending on where you are.

It’s certainly an interesting experiment, and I can see some massive potential in it, even if this current example doesn’t totally blow me away. Can you imagine a show that changes depending on how much of a fan you are? None of those tedious explainers you can get over and over if you’re a massive fan, just straight into the action, perhaps with extra bits for dedicated watchers — taking the narrative back to how it used to be when a storyteller just told you a story around the campfire, adapting to you as the audience and tweaking it to make it more scary or funny based on your reactions.

At any rate, it’s well worth checking out, and possibly in two difference places to see what actually changes. Jump on over to the BBC’s R&D labs site futurebroadcasts.com to give it a whirl for yourself. [BBC via The Next Web]