Last week I spent a few days at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s the biggest and probably one of the oldest performing arts festivals in the world with more than 3,000 different shows ranging from stand-up comedy, theatre plays and concerts to acrobatic acts and dance – all happening across 300 venues spread across the city for 20 days every August. It is really quite impressive.

But with all this choice and variety of performances, how do you decide what you want to see?

I decided to take a somewhat structured step-by-step approach: checking reviews on-line; going through the festival catalogue; selecting shows; checking video previews (if there are any); choosing the most suitable times; making sure I had ample time to move between venues and shows (because I wanted to see several shows each day) and only then buying my tickets.

As you can imagine, there were a few flaws to this approach. Apart from being too time consuming, I couldn’t always be sure that the reviews would correspond to my taste (sometimes they were too generic in description); the video previews often didn’t do justice to the shows; and of course there were too many performances I wanted to see, times overlapped and venues were too far away from each other, so I had to prioritize.

Now, let’s think about television. It can be equally time consuming and cumbersome to choose what to watch on TV. Nowadays there is a huge amount of content available at my fingertips both on-demand and live. But I can’t always be sure that the reviews will correspond to my taste; it’s a bit hit and miss when it comes to video previews; and naturally, my favourite TV shows are inevitably going to be on at the same time on different channels; not to forget the reality that I have limited time a day to sit in front of the TV or watch videos on my mobile devices. So what do I do?

The average number of shows that a broadcaster has in its library is much higher than 3,000 titles. Finding shows that you like will require even more effort, considering that good recommendation services are not always available and reviews are often unreliable. Even if you put your faith in your group of trustworthy influencers, you might still miss out on some great content and even more importantly, the amazing feeling of coming across something spectacular simply by chance.

Assuming that your preferred shows are available to watch on-demand all the time, in principle, it should be easy to select and plan. But, there are always live concerts, sports games or new episodes of a favorite TV series available on linear TV that you’d rather see when they are first broadcast. The availability of PVRs can enable you to timeshift certain content, but then you’ll be missing out on the experience of watching live events as they unfold and engaging real-time with others – either on Twitter or on the sofa next to you. And let’s not forget, you have to avoid spoilers in the meantime too.

So, wouldn’t it be great if there was something to help you make those critical decisions? For example, a way to watch previews of your selected shows or access to additional sources, such as critics’ commentaries or actors’ interviews on every device you are using at the moment. And once you’ve made your choice, wouldn’t it be great if you could make your experience truly entertaining and immersive? For example, with access to highlights from the shows, chatter on social media networks and so on.

Fortunately, unlike with the Fringe Festival, having TV content available on any device and changing between locations while watching your favorite shows isn’t a problem.

Unless, of course, you consider it too far to move from the TV set in the living room to the iPad in the bedroom.

Stan Dimitrov, Product Marketing Manager, Online Video Services