Neato Entertainment is looking for about 25 Maritime television aficionados willing to test its new technology, which allows you to enhance your TV time with a simple application on your smartphone.

The company, formed last year by TV production veteran Michael-Andreas Kuttner, is founded on the premise that smart TVs (which converge television and the Internet on a single monitor) should offer people a more relaxing and enjoyable viewing experience rather than using it for more games, video downloads and the like.

 “The television-watching experience is pretty well perfected,” Kuttner said in an interview this week. “You don’t have a lot of energy watching TV, and that’s sort of the point of it.”

So Kuttner has set out to make this almost-perfect experience even more enjoyable by allowing viewers to diminish one of its more annoying facets — commercials. He also takes aim at TV remote controls that have 100 or more buttons that boggle the minds of most viewers.

Neato has devised a simple application that people can download free on to their Android-based smartphone (he may produce an iOS-based application later, although not before next year).

The app produces a touch-screen panel that includes only the most commonly used buttons on the TV remote, such as those controlling channels, volume and mute.

It also includes a special button you can push as soon as a commercial comes on. This button minimizes the TV broadcast to a small window in the corner of the screen and mutes the commercial.

Instead, the screen will show predetermined Internet content — sports scores, stock market updates, YouTube or whatever the viewer wants. There could be a stream of content that has to do with the show being watched or it could be feeds the viewer selected.

Neato is working on a feature that will automatically minimize the broadcast if the system detects that several other users watching the same show have minimized it.

If a lot of people trigger the mechanism at once, it is likely a sign that there is a commercial, Kuttner said.

In February, he will be looking for volunteers to come to his office and watch television with the Neato product in hand. Kuttner wants them to test the product, play with the Internet feature and provide feedback. If they have their own Smart TV, they could use it at home.

He plans to open it to the public in a controlled-release this summer and launch a full release in the spring of next year. Anyone interested can contact Kuttner at m-a@neatoentertainment.com.

He first revealed his product at DemoCamp Halifax in September, and it then included a feature that would automatically minimize the TV broadcast as soon as it detected a commercial.

However, he has found that that feature activates about 80 per cent of the time, not enough to release to the public.

It is now on the back burner and may be brought back once it is improved.

Kuttner hopes to produce revenue by producing a static advertisement in one corner of the screen, and is considering other features that could make money.

He has already won several awards, including a Gemini in animation, the Business Development Bank of Canada’s young entrepreneur of the year award and Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 award.

Kuttner said he has been talking to possible investors but gave no specifics on raising funds.