Pay-TV subscribers should always be able to find something interesting to watch – at least, when the pay-TV user experience presents viewing options intelligently. In this golden age of television, the amount of content available to viewers has never been greater.
In fact, according to the scheduling data of Gracenote, a leading provider of music and video content technologies and a supplier to many top Pay-TV providers, the average Pay-TV provider features:
- 13,515 pieces of free Video-on-Demand (VOD) content (10,290 are episodic and 3,225 are movies
- 1,551 pieces of Transactional Video-on-Demand (TVOD) content (including Pay-Per-View events), and
- 11,964 free TV broadcast offerings (primarily episodic).
In addition, Pay-TV providers are increasingly offering linear episodes on-demand, soon after the episode has aired. Adding to the complexity of the content discovery quandary, the default mechanism to find something to watch on set-top boxes (STBs) remains the traditional channel guide, a clunky interface that typically does not incorporate all available content such as VOD catalogues or recorded content; nor does this channel guide make it easy to find interesting content airing in the future. This creates a disjointed content discovery experience that requires viewers to use multiple remote control buttons, screens, and user interfaces – all to navigate available content. Content can appear in different formats, too: a grid for linear, a list for DVR, and a set of carousels for VOD. An optimised content discovery-focused video experience delivers simplicity despite the complex underpinnings of multiple catalogues, and unifies multiple legacy user interfaces.
Find out more in this White Paper produced by Digitalsmiths.
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