Integrating catch-up services into the EPG

The recent high-profile launches of YouView and Freesat’s new Freetime service in the UK have shifted focus back on to the role that the EPG plays in finding what to watch. Both platforms feature a “backwards EPG”, where users can scroll “back in time” to find programmes on catch-up services as well as seeing what’s on in the future.

There is much to be praised for this approach: a large part of the population still finds it difficult to use the traditional type of catch-up service, because it’s not how they’re used to choosing what to watch. By integrating catch-up services into the guide, that mental barrier gets reduced and makes catch-up TV part of their normal viewing experience.

However, the question that then starts to emerge is “will the grid-based EPG soon have had its day?”
There’s a lot of inertia behind the use of the grid-based EPG (among users and manufacturers), as the amount of available content increases. But, it’s still not really clear if the traditional EPG is the best way of displaying this much information to the user in a way that’s actually useful to them.  The traditional EPG will still be with us for a long time, because linear TV is also going to be with us for a long time.  However, I doubt that the grid-based EPG will remain the primary means of finding something to watch past the current generation of user interfaces that we’re seeing from companies like Freesat and YouView. 

This brings us full circle back to the integration of catch-up services in to the guide, because familiarity is a powerful tool, but sometimes our current tools just aren’t powerful enough to face the demands of the future.

Smart TVs Help TV Overtake PC For Online Video Viewing

A recent study from the NPD group in the US has revealed that the television has now overtaken the PC as the preferred device for viewing over-the-top (OTT) media. The rapid adoption of smart TVs obviously has a large part to play in this, but we’ve also seen that many smart TVs have ease-of-use problems and so the growth in smart TVs alone may not be enough to account for this trend.

Smart TVs have some obvious benefits over the PC for viewing media content – the large screen and the “lean back” user experience are pretty much essential for watching content that’s longer than a few minutes.  As a regular user of iPlayer, I much prefer to use it on the Wii (for those times when the entire family wants to watch something) or on my iPad (for when I’m the only one who wants to watch something) because they’re more convenient and comfortable to use.  While I could connect my laptop to the TV and use that, the difference in resolutions and the hassle of getting audio set up properly means I simply don’t bother.  I’d rather watch a standard-definition version of the programme easily than deal with the messing around required to watch the HD version on the big screen.

As online media services become more widely deployed through smart TVs and set-top boxes (with both YouView and Freesat doing this in the UK, and various HbbTV-based catch-up TV services available in Germany), viewing OTT content is eventually going to become just another part of the TV experience, in the same way that PVR functionality already is today.

At the same time, there’s still a long way to go – recent figures have revealed that three quarters of YouView boxes sold so far have been used to view on-demand content for more than three minutes per session.  Given that the current purchasers are by definition the early adopters, who are more likely to be familiar with catch-up TV services, this is not a very impressive set of numbers.  Seeing how these numbers grow as YouView and Freesat’s Freetime service become more widely deployed will give a good indication of how this trend will develop in the UK.

The Sky’s the limit for brand new Now TV service

This week we have seen another contender enter the arena to battle it out for our on-demand attention. BskyB launched its own streaming service – Now TV – challenging the dominant players in the market, Netflix and LoveFilm. Now TV will be made available on PCs, Macs, smartphones, iPads and YouView. Consumers will be given the option to either watch unlimited films for £15 a month or pay up to £3.49 for individual films, with the "pay and play" option. With the launch of the new internet service, Sky is going beyond its pay-TV subscription roots. It’s a smart way of maximising its premium catalogue.

Having seen LoveFilm and Netflix make a huge splash this year, the launch of Now TV is a bold step for Sky to take. The move is a sign that Sky’s looking to get more from what it already has. More bang for essentially the same buck.

Whilst the launch is exciting news for consumers who don’t want to subscribe to Sky’s packages but do want access to Sky’s content, it’s also an interesting development for the digital TV industry overall. The launch is another sign that the market for on-demand services is rapidly growing.

A big “phew” from the people behind YouView

YouView is finally set to launch. Chairman Alan Sugar and Managing Director Richard Halton showcased the new television service backed by territorial broadcasters (BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV) and three communications companies (Arqiva, BT and TalkTalk) to the press for the first time this morning. While trials continue, YouView has committed to the first STB’s being available to buy at the end of the month, around two years later than originally planned.

YouView is some four years in the making having been known initially as project canvas in 2008, with a view to launch in 2010. It will allow viewers to access 100 digital TV and radio channels as well as a selection of on-demand content from BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5. Today’s launch focussed on its EPG that enables users to scroll backwards in time as well as forwards, so they can catch up on shows they may have missed in the last seven days. You can see some glimpses of the EPG here.  Subscription packages are yet to be announced and may hold the key to whether the service is able to offer anything that isn’t already available in the market today. Subscription free STBs will cost £299, meaning it’s very much a premium product. 

After some technical delays, the product is now ready to go to market. Crucially, it will miss the anticipated pre-Olympics surge in TV device sales. But it’s thought the new TV service will also provide film studios and TV production companies with the ability to set up their own channels, an interesting development for the UK market.

Adobe abandons Flash for TV

Much has been made of Adobe’s recent announcement that it is halting development of the mobile and TV versions of Flash, but it’s worth looking a bit closer to see what this really means for the TV market.

While some pay-TV operators have used Flash, they have been in the minority. HTML, Java and native solutions have been the most common approaches to UI development. Most Flash content on the web is not suited to TV displays or TV remote controls, and so Flash has often been a “tick list” feature in the TV market rather than a must-have. This becomes especially obvious when you start asking the question “what revenue stream will cover the costs of licensing Flash?”

Many people have asked what this means for YouView: the answer is probably “not much”. What Adobe have actually stopped supporting is Flash Player for web browsing: the focus has shifted to AIR and to applications. This is the category the YouView user interface falls into, so is likely to be unaffected by the announcement.

This is probably a wise move by Adobe: it enables them to concentrate on their key products (AIR and development tools) while minimising the pain of supporting companies with porting Flash to new platforms and integrating with new browsers. As HTML 5 and related standards have become almost ubiquitous, the demand for Flash has decreased in the Web world. This announcement lets Adobe strengthen their position in the world of app stores and in the changing mobile market. Flash-based technologies will still be a force in the TV world for some time to come.

By Steve Morris

People want to watch TV, not search

According to a recent report from Strategy Analytics, one of the reasons consumers haven’t taken to Google TV is the need to search for content. Content discovery has been a hot topic in the industry for a long time – it’s considered a key part of YouView, for instance, and is generally one of the major factors in trying to monetise “long tail” content. What’s surprising about this report isn’t that people don’t like having to work to find something to watch; it’s the fact that Google didn’t pick up on this.

Part of the reason, undoubtedly comes from its history as a search engine provider, but there’s also a different understanding of how people behave when watching the TV. The Google TV approach (and the traditional PC approach) is a “lean-forward” model of interaction, requiring active participation by the user – one that’s common in the computer industry, but much less so in the TV industry. By comparison, T-Bone, the new company launched by ex-CTO of YouView Anthony Rose, is taking a “lean-back” approach, which is much closer to a traditional TV experience and has been christened “veg 2.0”.

Many people simply want to simply sit back and relax when watching TV, not scroll through reams of content to find what they are looking for. As one of the participants in the Strategy Analytics survey said: “I don’t want to come home and have to search for content. It is too much effort. I want a Smart TV to know me. Smart TV, to me, is not me doing more work but me doing less”.

Making content easy to find is key, and search is not always the answer to that. Can Google overcome this? Maybe – but other providers are already working hard in this area, and some of them have a big lead. Search is one approach, but having a strong editorial voice that people can trust may prove to be the best long-term solution.

Project Canvas announces ‘YouView’

This week Project Canvas marked the next phase in its development, announcing the brand name for its connected TV offering. ‘YouView’ will be a free-to-air service and will launch in H1 next year, delivering viewers digital TV, on-demand services and internet content.

YouView set-top boxes are set to include a variety of services including: a programme search function, a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) and an applications store.

The current Project Director Richard Halton has now been appointed as Chief Executive Officer and will be working with Chairman Kip Meek. Unsurprisingly, the news has drawn a fair bit of attention in the press, with Halton stating that the service will “change the way we watch TV for ever”. A slick video has been added to the homepage of the new YouView website, click here to watch it.