VideoPlayback

Entertainment Weekly Subscribers in New York and Los Angeles were treated to 40 minutes of video promoting the CBS fall lineup right in the pages of the magazine's Fall Preview this week, as Bob reported last month. But this groundbreaking movie got me thinking about how this technology could be used.

It's a potentially great development for the print medium. The player in EW is interactive, meaning that as you press on the page it's embedded in it responds. Click on The Big Bang Theory and you'll see the preview of the new season on that show. All those people who abandoned print for the interactive experience online can now get that in their favorite magazines as well.

The technology is a brilliant way for an advertisement to reach out to an even wider audience. These little players can be stuck just about anywhere, and loaded with 40 minutes or so of playback. Imagine picking up that DVD set of a TV show you've heard about and being able to watch clips of it right there.