Imagine watching a movie where during a blast scene you can feel the heat and the vibrations of the spot besides smelling the burning rubber and dust. Or having your living room filled with the fragrance of flowers as the lead couple sing around them in a garden on screen. All this and more will be possible once Zee Entertainment makes commercial its latest patent on a platform for offering immersive experience to viewers.

Developed in the Silicon Valley at Zee Media Lab, the technology platform is built on 3D audio, augmented reality and virtual reality, digital scent, holograms and touch, to transform the viewers’ living rooms into an immersive mode.

“What our patent does is that we can connect to any of these devices and enhance your content viewing experience. It is an app that sits on your connected box and mobile and provides an experience involving the five senses. We are not getting into the hardware,” Amit Goenka, CEO, Z5 Global told BusinessLine .

The other leg of this offering involves content creators. “For creators, we will provide a tool to convert their content into five senses offering. They can enable their existing content and also create future content on these lines using our tool,” he added.

Going global

With the grant of the US patent, Zee can make the platform available to users across the world. The commercially viable prototype will be ready in the next 12 months, Goenka added. This emboldens Zee’s plan to target mainstream global viewers across US, Europe, Asia, China and Latin America. “We will go commercial first with the US, Europe, Japan and China markets,” he said, refusing to divulge pricing details.

“Based on the uptake in these geographies, we will expand to other countries,” Goenka said, not giving any timeline for the India launch, though it will be inevitable given the company’s audience base in the domestic market.

Tech commerce

The platform will also enable the viewers to order any product, which they see being consumed or used by on the screen, at the touch of a button. Besides, it will offer a 3D gaming experience and give the players the experience to feel the heat of an ongoing combat with the opponent.

The patent also is a step towards Zee’s ambition of turning a technology company from being only a content company. “In the last three years, the lines have blurred and may disappear soon between content and technology companies. All tech companies have already forayed into content or are planning to. We are looking at technology as our aim is to become a tech company,” Goenka added.

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