US cable operators are giving subscribers the ability to return to the top of the show when they’re late home and SeaChange is bringing the functionality to Europe. Julian Clover reports
Ten years since VOD made its debut it’s now generally accepted that VOD is not necessarily a money-maker, but it is a key tool in hooking viewers into a service, and reducing churn along the way. The other churn-busting device has been the personal video recorder and for the past few years US operators have been looking at combining the two.
Startover TV or Restart TV gives viewers a chance to return to the start of a programme if they get in late or fall victim to a schedulers whim. Time Warner’s chief marketing officer Sam Howe spoke about the success of the format at the Cable Congress in Madrid last month.
“The idea is that providing the operator has negotiated with whoever owns the rights you could go into your electronic programme guide and restart the programming from the beginning, says Alan Hoff, senior director of VOD, SeaChange, which is demoing the its Restart product at The Cable Show in New Orleans next week with a reprise at the end of the month at Anga Cable. “The most common business model is where providing it is still within that it is still within the original broadcast window the end user is given the ability to pause, rewind and resume play as if it was a DVR recorded piece of content but of course they haven’t had to do the DVR programming.”
A digital video recorder might provide a buffer to rewind a programme that hasn’t been set to record, but that functionality requires the device to already be on a particular channel.
Hoff says content providers are willing to participate in the functionality because the fast forward facility is shut off during commercials. Actually many DVRs, such as NDS’s widely distributed XTV is already capable of this, just that the functionality has never been deployed leaving the genie well and truly out of the bottle.
Startover has so far only been widely deployed by the one major operator, Time Warner, and even then in only about a half dozen markets. Sister company Brighthouse has also begun deployment in Tampa Bay and Comcast announced its own plans at the beginning of the year.
“There’s always an expectation from the customer over what’s new,” said Hoff “They’ve seen the BBC iPlayer and now want to know what’s next. When you’re an operator tying to understand the tastes and preferences and you can get an idea from Restart TV related offerings so much the better.”
