IPTV World Forum 2008: technologies to help consumers find content

We already have hundreds of channels of digital TV and the private network long-tail is growing (reports John Moulding). The integration of online video services into the Pay TV walled garden environment could increase content choice further but there is a danger that consumers will be overwhelmed by the volumes of content and avoid on-demand libraries altogether, or at least keep using their current favourites - in which case a great opportunity to enhance their experience has been lost.

Helping consumers find what they want is going to be crucial. Helping them find things they didn't know they wanted will be a valuable - and potentially revenue generating - exercise for platform operators, too. At IPTV World Forum, two important technologies were on display that should help overcome the navigational challenges of next-generation TV.

Milan-based Neptuny highlighted its ContentWise recommendation software and announced its new 'hosting service', which means smaller IPTV providers can harness an Internet-based recommendation engine rather than install the system in-house. ContentWise gathers user behaviour from the set-top box middleware client, content metadata and EPG information and then processes the data to generate recommendations. Using the new hosted service, the data is sent to the Internet-based engine and the results returned for display within the set-top box user interface. The suggested viewing could encompass both live and on-demand assets on a service provider platform.

Fabio Violante, Founder and CEO at Neptuny, says there are two main ways to provide recommendations, the first being collaborative filtering, the Amazon-style approach where 'customers who liked this, also liked this'. Here the system finds similarities among a pool of users. The second main approach is content based recommendation, where the system finds similarities based on content metadata [e.g. genre or actor].

Violante says consumers tend to watch 10-15 channels, even when given the choice of hundreds, while it is proven that VOD purchases are strongly influenced by the design of the user interface. "If there is an alphabetical search for titles, people get bored by the letter 'c'," he says. "With recommendation, you enable users in a few clicks to discover content that they never thought was available."

The Neptuny ContentWise Saas (Software as a Service) edition is also being marketed at Internet TV/VOD portals. "Smaller providers of IPTV and Web TV-VOD who used ContentWise SaaS edition will integrate with Neptuny's highly-available, fully redundant carrier-grade infrastructure and therefore do not have to buy and manage any additional hardware themselves," the company adds in a statement. The system includes authentication and security mechanisms to protect the service provider's data.

Elsewhere, Hillcrest Laboratories showed what a point-and-click remote control can do for the viewing experience - and highlighted some statistics that suggest a better user interface could pay for itself many times over. The company was demonstrating its Freespace 'pointing and motion-control' technology, which allows users to point the remote at the television screen and use the resulting on-screen curser, combined with remote control key clicks, to navigate around applications including a VOD library, home photos and television platform set-up pages.

This technology adds a great deal to the user experience, making it much faster to access content like a long-tail movie. Parag Sheth, VP Corporate Marketing, says independent research carried out by Hillcrest (and including a 400-strong consumer trial) shows that viewers will buy three times more on-demand movies using the new remote-TV interface. "We know that consumers will pay at least $10 per month to get this service and they will switch operators for it," he added.

Freespace was displayed on the Universal Electronics (UEI) stand at IPTV World Forum, UEI having just agreed a licensing deal so it can investigate ways to integrate the point-motion technology into its next generation of remote controls. Sheth says the technology would add "a few dollars" to the overall cost of customer premise equipment (generally borne by the network operator, of course).

"The important thing is what it buys you," he stated. "Consumers are bombarded with content, not only from service providers but personal content and broadband content, so how do they find what they really want? The moment they start using content, operators start making more money. The ease with which consumers can find the content they want, when they want it, translates into revenues."

The Freespace software client has to be integrated with the existing operator middleware. Hillcrest licenses the framework for the technology and this includes application source code. Using a software development kit, service providers can then create applications themselves to utilise the new point-click environment. Parag Sheth said the target client market is HD-capable receivers today (like HD-DVR), while the company is also marketing to CE manufacturers for retail products.

From our sister site New Video Technology (www.newvideotechnology.net)