My Review of Tron Legacy as a SecondScreen Experience

Sat and watched the Blu-ray version of the movie with my son today.  He was in awe of the special effects and the story-line, and found the concept of a second screen even "cooler" (he's 8).  While the movie was great, the second screen experience was didn't match it.  During start-up of the app, you are asked to choose their Audio Sync option provided by TVplus, a manual sync or explore on your own (presumably without the movie playing).  It said a Wi-Fi sync would work if the BD player was connected, Bluetooth turned off on iPad, etc--not an option today.  I tried to get the audio sync to work for about 20 minutes before giving up.  I tried different scenes, I tried getting everyone in the room to be perfectly quiet, turned up the sound, etc.  Ultimately, I used the manual sync to test the experience--I can imagine at this point most consumers are giving up instead (rather than restart the movie like I had to).

The content displayed during the timeline (with manual sync) wasn't that "engaging".  There was an event about every 30 seconds or so, but often just story board drawings or pre-production photos with no explanation.  Occasionally there was an interesting fact with an explanation, but not much more than that.  There was no way to use the app to control your Blu-ray experience.

Simple.  I will re-test when I have a connected Blu-ray player to see if you can control the 1st screen then--but there is no control with audio, manual, etc (not surprising).  None.

Social.  No ability to share with Facebook or Twitter friends.  None.

Seamless.  No integration of other sources of content.

Stimulating.  In theory, the primary purpose of the app itself.  However, while the synchronized experience is a step up from most apps, they didn't spend enough time on the UX of it all.  As stated above, a few simple explanations on many of the images they presented could have been incredibly Stimulating.  There could have been references to the first movie, the game from the 80s, a more stimulating content to view as the events presented, the ability to share those images with friends, etc. It seems like they had a great idea but forgot to put the budget together to make it a great consumer experience.  Medium (for the sync) to low (for the poor content).

Discovery.  None.