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The digital space that I will be analyzing in this course is a streaming platform known as Discovery Plus. Discovery Plus is a streaming platform that combines television shows from fourteen different television networks, and the genre of shows that are offered to the viewer include (but are not limited to) reality shows, game shows, and true crime. As a result, the platform is a site for that should be able to offer something for the whole family, making it very attractive for the average television viewer. This type of platform is also useful for people who either have a basic cable plan or no cable plan at all, as this platform offers viewers the opportunity to watch shows without being forced to buy channels they may not need. The price for this platform is $4.99 per month (with ads) or $6.99 per month (without ads). As a result, this application provides viewers with the chance to watch their favorite shows at a reasonable price. How I will be obtaining photos from this digital space will be from snapshots that are taken from my iPad in which I have the application on.
This first picture represents the home page (or “For You Page”) of the application. This is shown to the viewer when you first open the app. Above what I snapped in this photo is a featured show that is based on the viewer’s show history. This is a show that the viewer may be interested in watching due to the algorithm that the app gives. In this picture, the uppermost section represents the different channels that are offered on the platform, the “featured” section (indicating the most popular shows at this given time), and the “continue watching” section (Showing programs that the viewer has not finished yet or is still watching). In this section, my family and I (as we all share the account) have been watching TLC’s “90 Day Fiancé” and their respective spinoff shows. Below this snapshot (that is not found on the current image) is the different categories of shows that the viewer may be interested in watching or other categories of shows that the viewer should test out.
This picture shows the viewer the page of the show that they select to watch on the platform. As shown, the page represents the show “90 Day Fiancé” and the episodes that are in the series that are available for the viewers to watch. At the top, the title, the episode the viewer left off at with its description, the rating of the show for the viewers, and a button to start playing (or resume watching) the show they are on. In this situation, the show is still airing new episodes of this series, so it will prompt the viewer that new episodes are airing on a particular day of the week. When it comes to this particular show, the company is offering people early access to the new episodes the morning of the release on the actual network to prompt people to purchase the platform.
Below the title screen, there are episodes of the show that people can pick to start watching if they want to watch a different episode of the show that they want to watch. It would also indicate if the particular episode of the show is incomplete by having a white bar showing the approximate state of the show in progress.
This section represents a particular area of the platform in which the viewer chooses the type of show that they want to watch from the bar at the top. In this situation, the viewer selected the “Nature & Animals” section on the platform to watch. As shown in this section, when looking at a particular show, it indicates the title block of the show with a thumbnail that they created from the platform, as well in the bottom right corner indicating what channel the show is from. For instance, the show “Pit Bulls and Parolees” is on Animal Planet and “Shark Week” is on the Discovery Channel.
This image represents what is shown when a video is playing on the app. The video is blacked out as you are unable to take a screenshot of the video while it is playing. In this picture, the video is shown on the top half of the screen, with the ability to screencast a video to a bigger screen in your house (such as a television) and the ability t make the screen bigger and the ability to fast forward (or rewind) the video in ten-second increments. In addition, the viewer has the option of whether to display the captions or not, and these captions are able to be translated into a different language if the viewer cannot understand what is being said due to a language barrier. In the current video, you can see by the middle of the screen how long the video is, the progress that the person made watching the video, and the ad breaks that are dispersed in the video which is represented by the black breaks in the timeline of the video (ads can take as long as thirty seconds or three minutes). In the bottom half of the screen, you can see the current episode a person may be on, the episodes that they may have watched (or not finished watching) indicated by the white bar in the episode thumbnails as well as the episode the viewer is watching at that time.
