Quibi Announces ‘Turnstyle’ Feature at CES 2020, Allows for Seamless Fullscreen Landscape and Portrait Mode Viewing
During a keynote session at CES 2020 in Las Vegas today, Tom Conrad, Quibi’s chief product officer, announced that the service will come with a new innovation they call “Turnstyle,” which allows for seamless fullscreen viewing whether the consumer is holding their phone in landscape or portrait mode.
“We experience the world in landscape, but when we hold things, we tend to hold them in portrait [mode]. Historically filmmakers have projected their craft on wider and wider screens to fill more of our world with theirs. But with phones shifting back and forth from portrait to landscape and cinema presented in landscape alone, product designers have faced a lose-lose scenario,” Conrad explained. “With Turnstyle, you move at will, between fullscreen portrait and fullscreen landscape.”
Over the past couple months, Quibi has been aggregating content for their platform. They are in partnership with ESPN, which will be the exclusive U.S. multi-sport content provider for Quibi’s curated news and information programming “Daily Essentials,” as well as CBS, which will produce “60 in 6,” a more condensed version of “60 Minutes” for the platform.
Other collaborators include The Dodo, Cara Delevingne, Zac Efron, 50 Cent, Andy Samberg — among a host of others.
Quibi (short for quick bites) will launch on April 6 and focus on high-quality short form content that is designed to be watched on your smartphone. The mobile streaming streaming will offer two plans — $4.99 with ads and $7.99 without ads. The ad-supported product will include a pre-roll ad, as well as a one to two mid-roll ads depending on the length of the content.
Photo credit: CES 2020