Last night I watched Night At The Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian on DVD and as is sometimes the case I had my laptop open next to me so I could occasionally check my Twitter and Facebook feeds. This time however, in amongst the “tweets” and “status updates” from friends and contacts, I received a number of messages from the movie itself. Occasionally Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Amy Adams, or even Dexter the capuchin monkey would pop up in my feeds as if they were “friends” or if I were “following” them, and send me bits of trivia and behind-the-scenes info on the movie, all perfectly timed to arrive in order to match the very scene I was watching on my television. And, just like my friends on Twitter, they sent me links that opened up quiz pages and encyclopedic entries in a web browser.

It’s a new feature that Fox Home Entertainment is adding to their upcoming DVD and Blu-ray releases called “FoxPop” and it involves a program developed for both personal computers and iPhone/iPodTouches. FoxPop is a social networking client, a program that allows you to login and access your Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as a third feed created just for the movie itself.

While your friends on Facebook and Twitter will be sending you instant messages, the FoxPop movie feed is designed to send stored messages that are released as the movie plays on your television. The program uses the microphone on your laptop or iPhone to “listen” to your living room and pick out the audio from the movie. It then analyses the soundtrack and from there can both identify which movie you’re watching and which scene is taking place.

What is a Gyro-prop trivia question with results from other FoxPop users available 

With this information it can send you messages timed to match the events happening on-screen. So that, when Emilia Earhart appears in the movie and discusses her passion for adventure, it sends a pre-written message that explains how her mother was the first woman to summit Pike’s Peak in Colorado.

Since everything in synced through the audio from your television, if you pause the movie, the FoxPop messages pause. If you skip to a different scene, it skips to the messages that match. All the while you can still receive and send updates through your Facebook and Twitter feeds.

The idea, and I think it’s a very smart one, is to take the system that’s already in place for Twitter and Facebook and adapt it to watching movies at home. You won’t need to sign up for a special FoxPop account, instead it simply uses the login information from your Facebook or Twitter accounts. A built-in web browser is used to access the FoxPop site as well as to open links and pictures or videos sent from your online contacts.

Using the built-in browser to open a YouTube link sent from Twitter 

The really interesting twist is that, in addition to receiving messages from the movie, you can also write and send your own messages based on specific moments from the movie. When you compose a FoxPop message, it marks down the time in the movie’s length and then stores it onto its system. When one of your Facebook friends happens to watch the same DVD with the FoxPop program running, because you are on their Facebook contacts list, the messages you wrote during your experience will be added to the messages being sent out from the movie itself. The idea is that it will be like you and your friends are all watching the movie together, online.

Sending a Movie-related message over FoxPop 

The technology wasn’t developed by Fox Home Video, but rather by Spot411 who is also marketing the software under their own brand, in fact whether you download it as FoxPop or as Spot411 doesn’t matter, it’s the same application. Their hope is to expand the use not just to movies outside of the Fox catalog, but also for use with television shows too.

The technology works really well. The noise I made while watching the movie, opening a bag of chips, the phone ringing, etc. didn’t prevent the software from keeping a sync with the movie’s audio, and because the software itself has simply adapted the same system already used by social networks, it’s easy to pick up and use. The application itself will even change to a customized skin to match the movie it’s detected, in this case adding tentacles and Crystal the monkey to the borders, creating a fairly polished experience.

A giant squid takes over FoxPop 

My biggest concern with the idea of FoxPop was that it could prove to be a very annoying or intrusive feature, but that’s a pitfall that seems to have been well avoided and the messages coming in are no more annoying than those from Twitter and Facebook. If you’re already someone who uses those networks while watching movies, then it’s not an issue.

Just as it is with director’s commentaries, the issue isn’t the idea of the feature, but the content itself. Fox’s first title will be the Night at the Museum sequel, launching on December 1st, and it’s a good choice simply because all the museum artifacts that are featured make for a good tie-in for trivia tidbits, although what’s offered is fairly basic in nature.

What I found missing was a personal feel, although the in-coming messages had the avatar pictures of the characters from the movie, the messages themselves were written in the style of a more official trivia service and it’s not the best fit for a social networking medium.

If you are a movie lover or cinephile you may point out that it’s a bit disrespectful to not give a film your full attention, and while I would agree with you when it comes to seeing movies at the theatre, the home video space is a different story. At home you’re more likely to watch movies out of boredom, to have them playing in the background while you work, or to watch them for the tenth time just to try to spot something new.

The other angle here is to try to re-create the experience of watching a movie and talking about it with someone else, much like the way Billy Crystal’s and Megan Ryan’s characters do using telephones in When Harry Met Sally. Here it’s done with text messaging, although Fox is looking to upgrade the FoxPop experience to include voice chat too.

On Twitter I followed along as film director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) sent out entertaining tweets of observations while he was watching An American Werewolf In London and at the time I wished I could have popped in the movie on my own TV set and followed along with him. FoxPop and Spot411 delivers an excellent way to explore that kind of experience.