Broadcast
Broadcasters are enhancing their online platforms with more exclusive content and greater personalisation, but improving consistency is their main priority.
While video-on-demand isn’t a threat to the EPG just yet, online players are essential for broadcasters, who must continue to evolve the functionality and user experience. Yet getting the technical fundamentals right remains a priority.
“The online expectation is now the same as the broadcast expectation for consumers, but the market is struggling to deliver this,” says Mark Blair, vice-president, EMEA, at Brightcove.
As devices and platforms rise and fall in popularity, new player and advertising formats are rolled out and competition among platforms intensifies, consistency of service remains a challenge.
“Not all digital video players consistently get the basics right: ensuring the player is fast to load, set up to prevent buffering, adapted to every platform, stable and scalable so it doesn’t crash, and Flash- and HTML5-adaptable so viewers don’t get error screens on certain devices,” says Ooyala global director of sales development Sarah Kiefer.
BBC iPlayer is now available on more than 1,700 different connected devices.
“We’ve put a lot of work into developing a standard media player, balancing consistency of experience with optimising the presentation for the input mechanism and screen size,” says head of BBC iPlayer Dan Taylor-Watt.
“We do, though, need more collaboration between different providers in terms of driving a more consistent playback experience. There may also be more consolidation in terms of the number of different services available.”
The answer is not always in a content owner’s hands. Blair outlines what is needed: “Improved codecs to maximise bitrates, improved coding to make sure content is available in appropriate formats, and improved player implementation from CE vendors.”
According to ITV director of online and brands Paul Kanareck, UK broadcasters are “caught between the east and west” of Samsung and Sony and Apple and Google, all of which are trying to ‘own’ the living room. “It’s our job to make sure we remain prominent in all camps,” he says.
One way ITV does this is via Freeview Play, the subscription-free platform it shares with the BBC, Channel 5 and Channel 4.
“This is our collective attempt at presenting UK catch-up services to global manufacturers as a coherent category, so that we have scale in our conversations, and so they better understand the importance of adopting a local approach to reach local audiences, balanced with global content aggregators like Netflix,” says Kanareck.
Next-episode cueing and autoplay is increasingly prevalent. On iPlayer, 90% of users have chased one episode with another. “What happens when there’s no next episode?” asks All 4 head of product Sarah Milton. “Onward journeys are a big area for us.”
Options include reminding users what’s in their watch list, or presenting a set of recommendations or trailers for related shows. “We could set a link in a trailer which, when clicked, will add the show to their watch list,” Milton says.
As VoD services reduce reliance on catch-up and offer more exclusive content, there will be fewer natural prompts from linear TV.
“The automatic download of episodes or series to mobile, and the redownload of an expired item for viewing offline, all make for a better user experience,” says Milton.
Downloads to mobiles, especially of long-form content, are dogged by connectivity issues, but this should be erased when 5G networks are rolled out from 2020.
Voice control
Many smart TV apps lack the sophistication of mobile user interfaces and cater to a viewer who controls the experience with a remote or their phone rather than directly with their fi ngertips.
As a result, suggests Kiefer: “In the mid to longer term, we’ll start to see more experimentation with voice control, bringing functionality like that of Amazon’s Echo system, which is currently only available in the US.”
Ostmodern co-founder and chief executive Thomas Williams predicts the death of the conventional remote. “Talking to your telly feels uncomfortable, but gesture and voice is improving.
There will be a lot more cross-platform management of content controlled from an individual’s mobile device,” he says.
All 4’s UI focus is on how to create a simple spatial navigation “which is consistent in the use of vertical and horizontal axis”, says Milton.
“It needs to be incredibly intuitive for a user to navigate to the next step and get back again. We think doing this using ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘right’, ‘left’ and ‘ok’ keys will keep the experience straightforward and enable a user to keep their eye on screen without having to look down.”
“Whether you’re trying to change behaviour or keep up with it, when you are mass market, simplicity is the overriding theme,” says Kanareck. “The less friction there is, the easier things will get adopted.”
The BBC’s focus is on greater visual isation. iPlayer already supports Picture in Picture on iOS, allowing users to write an email at the same time as they catch up on EastEnders.
Coming soon, visual thumbnails will appear for every few seconds of video as users scrub along the timeline.
The ability to return to the beginning of a linear stream is believed to be high on viewer wishlists and will become standard in the mid- to long-term as live video is increasingly blended with digital video services.
BBC iPlayer introduced the function several years ago and a third of users watching live streams now jump back to the start. Having made live TV streaming central to its ITV Hub relaunch last year, ITV says it now accounts for 30% of views. ITV and All 4 will debut live restart soon.
Perhaps the biggest opportunity is in sport, where live restart and other PVR staples like bookmarks of key action are already available on sport-specific players from Deltatre (used by Uefa) and EVS (deployed by Sky Sports). This functionality will be improved further with the elimination of the inherent time delay between an internet stream and the broadcast signal.
“OTT live experiences have always been a poor relation to linear TV,” says Williams. “Buffering of the OTT stream means that TV will always beat an OTT simulcast by between 30 seconds and several minutes.”
Technology from Swedish developer Net Insight is claimed to have overcome this by frame-accurately timing both the TV and second-screen signals, and could be introduced by Sky Sports for its Formula 1 coverage next season.
It’s not confined to sport: this breakthrough could be applied to music or talent shows. “It means that editorial teams no longer have to think about how a single feed is going to be piped to TV as a lean-back experience,” says Williams.
“Now they can look at all content sources – camera angles or in-game data – and begin to present to all screens as one platform.”
Digital video services will go beyond broad recommendations based on what’s popular or trending to create personalised, channel-like experiences for each user.
“Players will increasingly make use of detailed analytics about viewer habits and preferences to decide which content to make and buy and how to format it,” says Kiefer. “Those insights can encourage riskier commissioning choices now that niche audiences that might not have been picked up with panel-based measurement can be identified and better catered to.”
The move to more analytics-based decisions will have an impact on all elements of digital video services, from user interfaces to content presentation, payment models and advertising frequency.
“Recommendations will become more sophisticated, but we will need to strike a balance between an algorithmic use of data and a human editorial voice,” says Milton, who cites Spotify as an example. “There shouldn’t be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach,” confirms Kanareck.
“If you don’t watch soaps, you shouldn’t see Emmerdale when you land on ITV Hub.”
The power of social media
As social platforms focus so heavily on video, it is becoming trickier for digital video services to know whether they are best viewed as Broadcasters are enhancing their online platforms with more exclusive content and greater personalisation, but improving consistency is their main priority
While video-on-demand isn’t a threat to the EPG just yet, online players are essential for broadcasters, who must continue to evolve the functionality and user experience. Yet getting the technical fundamentals right remains a priority.
“The online expectation is now the same as the broadcast expectation for consumers, but the market is struggling to deliver this,” says Mark Blair, vice-president, EMEA, at Brightcove.
As devices and platforms rise and fall in popularity, new player and advertising formats are rolled out and competition among platforms intensifies, consistency of service remains a challenge.
“Not all digital video players consistently get the basics right: ensuring the player is fast to load, set up to prevent buffering, adapted to every platform, stable and scalable so it doesn’t crash, and Flash- and HTML5-adaptable so viewers don’t get error screens on certain devices,” says Ooyala global director of sales development Sarah Kiefer.
BBC iPlayer is now available on more than 1,700 different connected devices.
“We’ve put a lot of work into developing a standard media player, balancing consistency of experience with optimising the presentation for the input mechanism and screen size,” says head of BBC iPlayer Dan Taylor-Watt.
“We do, though, need more collaboration between different providers in terms of driving a more consistent playback experience. There may also be more consolidation in terms of the number of different services available.”
The answer is not always in a content owner’s hands. Blair outlines what is needed: “Improved codecs to maximise bitrates, improved coding to make sure content is available in appropriate formats, and improved player implementation from CE vendors.”
According to ITV director of online and brands Paul Kanareck, UK broadcasters are “caught between the east and west” of Samsung and Sony and Apple and Google, all of which are trying to ‘own’ the living room. “It’s our job to make sure we remain prominent in all camps,” he says.
One way ITV does this is via Freeview Play, the subscription-free platform it shares with the BBC, Channel 5 and Channel 4.
“This is our collective attempt at presenting UK catch-up services to global manufacturers as a coherent category, so that we have scale in our conversations, and so they better understand the importance of adopting a local approach to reach local audiences, balanced with global content aggregators like Netflix,” says Kanareck.
Next-episode cueing and autoplay is increasingly prevalent. On iPlayer, 90% of users have chased one episode with another. “What happens when there’s no next episode?” asks All 4 head of product Sarah Milton. “Onward journeys are a big area for us.”
Options include reminding users what’s in their watch list, or presenting a set of recommendations or trailers for related shows. “We could set a link in a trailer which, when clicked, will add the show to their watch list,” Milton says.
As VoD services reduce reliance on catch-up and offer more exclusive content, there will be fewer natural prompts from linear TV.
“The automatic download of episodes or series to mobile, and the redownload of an expired item for viewing offline, all make for a better user experience,” says Milton.
Downloads to mobiles, especially of long-form content, are dogged by connectivity issues, but this should be erased when 5G networks are rolled out from 2020.
Voice control
Many smart TV apps lack the sophistication of mobile user interfaces and cater to a viewer who controls the experience with a remote or their phone rather than directly with their fi ngertips.
As a result, suggests Kiefer: “In the mid to longer term, we’ll start to see more experimentation with voice control, bringing functionality like that of Amazon’s Echo system, which is currently only available in the US.”
Ostmodern co-founder and chief executive Thomas Williams predicts the death of the conventional remote. “Talking to your telly feels uncomfortable, but gesture and voice is improving.
There will be a lot more cross-platform management of content controlled from an individual’s mobile device,” he says.
All 4’s UI focus is on how to create a simple spatial navigation “which is consistent in the use of vertical and horizontal axis”, says Milton.
“It needs to be incredibly intuitive for a user to navigate to the next step and get back again. We think doing this using ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘right’, ‘left’ and ‘ok’ keys will keep the experience straightforward and enable a user to keep their eye on screen without having to look down.”
“Whether you’re trying to change behaviour or keep up with it, when you are mass market, simplicity is the overriding theme,” says Kanareck. “The less friction there is, the easier things will get adopted.”
The BBC’s focus is on greater visual isation. iPlayer already supports Picture in Picture on iOS, allowing users to write an email at the same time as they catch up on EastEnders.
Coming soon, visual thumbnails will appear for every few seconds of video as users scrub along the timeline.
The ability to return to the beginning of a linear stream is believed to be high on viewer wishlists and will become standard in the mid- to long-term as live video is increasingly blended with digital video services.
BBC iPlayer introduced the function several years ago and a third of users watching live streams now jump back to the start. Having made live TV streaming central to its ITV Hub relaunch last year, ITV says it now accounts for 30% of views. ITV and All 4 will debut live restart soon.
Perhaps the biggest opportunity is in sport, where live restart and other PVR staples like bookmarks of key action are already available on sport-specific players from Deltatre (used by Uefa) and EVS (deployed by Sky Sports). This functionality will be improved further with the elimination of the inherent time delay between an internet stream and the broadcast signal.
“OTT live experiences have always been a poor relation to linear TV,” says Williams. “Buffering of the OTT stream means that TV will always beat an OTT simulcast by between 30 seconds and several minutes.”
Technology from Swedish developer Net Insight is claimed to have overcome this by frame-accurately timing both the TV and second-screen signals, and could be introduced by Sky Sports for its Formula 1 coverage next season.
It’s not confined to sport: this breakthrough could be applied to music or talent shows. “It means that editorial teams no longer have to think about how a single feed is going to be piped to TV as a lean-back experience,” says Williams.
“Now they can look at all content sources – camera angles or in-game data – and begin to present to all screens as one platform.”
Digital video services will go beyond broad recommendations based on what’s popular or trending to create personalised, channel-like experiences for each user.
“Players will increasingly make use of detailed analytics about viewer habits and preferences to decide which content to make and buy and how to format it,” says Kiefer. “Those insights can encourage riskier commissioning choices now that niche audiences that might not have been picked up with panel-based measurement can be identified and better catered to.”
The move to more analytics-based decisions will have an impact on all elements of digital video services, from user interfaces to content presentation, payment models and advertising frequency.
“Recommendations will become more sophisticated, but we will need to strike a balance between an algorithmic use of data and a human editorial voice,” says Milton, who cites Spotify as an example. “There shouldn’t be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach,” confirms Kanareck.
“If you don’t watch soaps, you shouldn’t see Emmerdale when you land on ITV Hub.”
LEVERAGING THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA
As social platforms focus so heavily on video, it is becoming trickier for digital video services to know whether they are best viewed as distribution partners, marketing platforms or straight-up competitors.
“Digital video services need to think carefully about when and how they leverage the power of the reach and data of social platforms,” says Ooyala’s Sarah Kiefer. “Instead, they could try to build their own loyal customer base and a database of information about viewers, to better tailor their offerings.”
While tweets can be surfaced alongside on-demand and live video as it is played out around certain entertainment programmes, All 4’s Sarah Milton is doubtful that this can be done at scale.
“Users tend to engage with conversation around TV on social platforms and any attempt to pull them onto your own platform may be fruitless,” she says.
For most broadcasters, social is viewed as a marketing tool. For example, sharing a link to a moment in a programme on social media is possible on the iPlayer website by adding a timecode to the end of the URL.
After breaking 100 million requests on ITV Hub in June and achieving “well over” 100 million requests on YouTube and Facebook in the same month, ITV has signed exclusive content from youth producer Awesomeness TV.
Since more than half of all 16-24s in the UK are registered on ITV Hub, the broadcaster plans to use this original programming to drive engagement.
ITV will also be extending Hub+, its ad-free subscription service for iOS users, onto new platforms including PC.distribution partners, marketing platforms or straight-up competi“Digital video services need to think carefully about when and how they leverage the power of the reach and data of social platforms,” says Ooyala’s Sarah Kiefer. “Instead, they could try to build their own loyal customer base and a database of information about viewers, to better tailor their offerings.”
While tweets can be surfaced alongside on-demand and live video as it is played out around certain entertainment programmes, All 4’s Sarah Milton is doubtful that this can be done at scale.
“Users tend to engage with conversation around TV on social platforms and any attempt to pull them onto your own platform may be fruitless,” she says.
For most broadcasters, social is viewed as a marketing tool. For example, sharing a link to a moment in a programme on social media is possible on the iPlayer website by adding a timecode to the end of the URL.
After breaking 100 million requests on ITV Hub in June and achieving “well over” 100 million requests on YouTube and Facebook in the same month, ITV has signed exclusive content from youth producer Awesomeness TV.
Since more than half of all 16-24s in the UK are registered on ITV Hub, the broadcaster plans to use this original programming to drive engagement.
ITV will also be extending Hub+, its ad-free subscription service for iOS users, onto new platforms including PC.
