Navigating a Sea of Content
Operators and Set-Top Makers Strive to Help Viewers Find VOD Fare
by Craig Kuhl -- Multichannel News, 2/24/2008 7:00:00 PM
With hundreds of thousands of hours and shows becoming available via video on demand, and plenty more on the way, the technology that helps consumers navigate that content is becoming a top priority for cable operators and gear makers.
“The quantity of VOD content and accessibility are both driving the technology to navigate VOD content. But the technology and navigational tools don't help people discover new content,” Cox Communications director of video production development Lisa Pickelsimer said. “As we add more VOD content, that becomes a bigger problem. It's extremely challenging to stay ahead of the technology curve with VOD content navigation.”
One reason: proprietary software stacks. “You must port to set-top boxes and test with vendor cooperation. And new applications must integrate with new [interactive program guides]. So the driver is to quickly develop and roll out new applications via OCAP [OpenCable Application Platform, now Tru2way], and others, like a PC,” she said.
And as with a PC, navigating on-demand content is fast becoming the driver of set-top capabilities.
“The cable industry has had to wait until there's critical mass of advanced set-tops. It's happening, so new technologies are being deployed for navigation and features, and progress is being made with navigational technologies and software,” said Gemstar-TV Guide International executive vice president of product development Steve Shannon.
An example of that progress is Gemstar's My TV Guide, a suite of data and services that uses rich graphics, video clips, hot lists and recommendations, coupled with user profiles.
Connectivity, Shannon noted, is the key technology issue in the VOD content navigational space, and it starts with the Internet. “When the Internet comes into play, it makes a big difference. If browsing for on-demand content on the PC, you expect a richer experience. Now, the quantity of VOD content is driving the navigation technology. When there's tens of thousands of VOD shows, suddenly it becomes challenging to navigate a TV session. No one has solved that challenge.”
But there are some advancements. And using Web-based technology could be one of them, particularly when addressing the increasing amount of on-demand content.
For example, Time Warner Cable recently launched its Twondemand Web site, connecting customers to a catalog of on-demand content, along with the most popular titles in their ZIP codes.
“There's tons of VOD content on the Web, so it has a bigger problem to navigate VOD than cable, where VOD menuing was designed for the set-top box. That's clearly obsolete. Cable should take advantage of more graphically driven, Web-style navigation, and take advantage of what the Web can do,” said ICTV president and CEO Jeff Miller.
ICTV is marketing Active Video, an integrated navigation technology that includes simultaneous live views of multiple channels and Web-like personalization.
What the Web can do, Miller said, is link the VOD content navigation process to the Internet. “If we can duplicate the Web experience, that's the business driver. Why not provide the navigation paradigm that drove people to the Web in the first place? There's no magic bullet. It's all about using what works,” he said.
What doesn't work is a non-integrated guide, according to Bob Gessner, president of 47,500-subscriber Massillon Cable in Ohio (see case study sidebar).
“The problem with our navigation system is that the interface is so clunky. It retards our growth because it's not integrated with our guide. The branding process takes 30-40 seconds, which is enough of a delay to make VOD the last thing checked. So we're working towards an integrated guide using Aptiv's [formerly Pioneer, now Aptiv Digital, a Gemstar company] ShowRunner,” he said.
Most industry experts agree that progress is being made to streamline VOD navigation. Yet technology challenges persist, especially when dealing with the enormous amount of content.
“There's progress with technology, but we're not past the technology part. It's past the first round and it works. But the number of VOD hours in the next few years will dwarf the early numbers. How do you deal with hundreds of thousands of hours in the on-demand world? There are lots of technology challenges going forward,” said Ben Huang, director of product management and marketing for Microsoft Connected TV.
One solution, said Mike Rivkin, CEO of Zodiac, a player in the VOD navigation space, is real-time streaming, which allows a session to be set up for short video clips.
“The technology allows you to change the assets and for users to stream YouTube, etc. We're also developing graphics, zooming and creating technologies so cable operators don't have to work on how to get them, but what they want. The challenge is making sure they run across all set-tops,” he explained.
Digeo's Moxi is also pushing the technology deeper into the video-on-demand navigation space. “The rapidly growing VOD libraries combined with consumer selections on broadband connections is really at the heart of the navigation problem. We learned with Moxi that when consumers want to watch a movie, we should use technology to just go get them all the movies available for them,” said Digeo CEO Greg Gudorf.
Yet with rising consumer expectations for a better navigational system, cable operators such as Cox are looking far beyond the traditional linear navigation to advancing technologies, the Web and integrated applications.
“There is a great need for an integrated experience, so we'll launch ShowRunner, which is an integrated application. It gives us the ability to put different services on different channels so we can tell users to turn to certain channels for a single asset, like a movie. It enables users to get content faster and for us to feature hit movies. We're also building SCIN [Simple Consistent Integrated Navigation] to access VOD, [pay per view], [digital video recorder], linear and [Internet protocol TV] — all set-top applications on a new guide. We'll launch in 2009,” Pickelsimer said.
In the meantime, companies such as Gemstar and others are expected to raise the bar in their search for the next best VOD navigation technology. “We're connecting the TV with Internet-style of navigation and communication because the set-tops are broadcast-oriented when it comes to navigation. As we move to a client/server paradigm, we can deliver richer graphics, trailers and user profiles. Things you expect to see on the Internet. But they're not in place yet,” Shannon said.
Gemstar-TV Guide May Sell Itself
07/09/2007TV Guide to Debut VOD Content
02/24/2005Comcast Plans a 'TV Guide' on the Web
09/03/2006
