What happened to channel-surfing?

Back in the day, when you turned on the TV, it played immediately. When you wanted something different, you could change channels instantly. I remember flipping through channels as quickly as I could recognize the images on the screen.

That experience has largely vanished. As the amount of content exploded, and as everything became available on-demand, we were given guides, and search, and menu hierarchies. When you know what you want to watch, you can locate any video in seconds. But when you don’t, you’ll be faced with making a lot of decisions: what network? which app? what genre? which clip? If you don’t like what you picked, you have to do it all over again. And forget about channel-surfing: your cable box takes up to three seconds to decode and buffer the next channel.

Enter Rheo

Rheo is the fastest way for you to discover and enjoy the videos you want to watch. We find the best short-form content available, and deliver it to you as a single, interactive stream.

We’ve also made the app fun and easy, by reducing navigation to its simplest form: Watch, Skip, Tune.

Watch

When you launch Rheo, it starts playing immediately. When a video ends, the next one begins. Simple.

You can also scrub content. Pros use jog wheels to scrub videos. With the Siri Remote’s touchpad, we wanted to do the same. By moving your finger in a circular motion, you can move slowly to scrub frame-by-frame, or quickly to jump anywhere in the clip. It’s better than any scrubber you’ve ever used.

Skip

We believe that the best way to decide whether to watch a video is to actually see it playing. And if you don’t want to watch it, you should be able to move on to the next one quickly.

Rheo lets you flip through videos as quickly as you’re used to flipping through photos or songs (or even people!). We do all the work to make sure the next video is ready to play as soon as you’re ready to watch something new.

Tune

The more you use Rheo, the more it learns what you like and what you don’t. But it can’t always tell how you feel. By pressing the ‘menu’ button on the Siri Remote, you can pick between:

Laugh — enjoy the hottest new comedy clips

Inform — catch up with breaking news

Learn — expand your mind, just a little

Spark — appreciate festival-quality short films and animation

Chill — float on a stream of downtempo music that you can play all day long.

Where to get it

Rheo is available today for the new Apple TV, and we can’t wait for you to start watching. Search for “Rheo” on your Apple TV’s App Store.

Hit us up on Twitter or email us at hello@rheo.tv. We’d love to hear from you.

PS: We’re hiring too! Send us your resume at jobs@rheo.tv.