Improving end-users engagement through Accurate EPG
The context
In a fast-moving world, Pay-TV is becoming more and more complex. An interesting phenomenon that is happening right now in the tv industry, is that people have a much better access to professional content than ever before.
On one hand, consumption habits are continuously changing, and the end-users’ demand for catch-up services is significantly growing.
On the other hand, the competition among TV operators is severe in the streaming wars, and content is not always the only metric that determines an OTT platform’s success in the end.
To ensure end-users’ satisfaction and retention over time on a single platform, it is necessary to serve the urging for on-demand content with advanced functionalities for video management and delivery.
What is timestamps inaccuracy?
When offering to their end-users a Replay TV platform, where recordings of linear content are made available over a certain period of time, operators can face the issue of timestamps inaccuracy, which translates into poor user experience.
TV Operators often establish the scheduling of their Replay platforms based on the electronic program guide (EPG) that they receive from traditional EPG suppliers. However, this turns out to be a bad practice since the TV streams are not completely aligned and the EPGs are consequently not matching.
This is due both to the fact that the commercial breaks (that are part of the broadcast streams) are not listed in the EPG; and TV programs might overrun or start behind scheduled.
How Accurate EPG improves end-users engagement to a Catch-up service
The modern media streaming landscape ultimately shaped the end-users habits and expectations over a video service: OTT means high-value content, delivered instantly, on multiple devices, at any time.
To cope with these standards, the operators focusing on catch-up services want to accelerate linear TV channels availability over Replay platforms across devices, thus enhancing viewership and monetization.
“Content consumption is bigger than ever, and operators look to deliver a mix of live and VOD content from multiple sources, across different networks, to different screens, including TVs, smartphones and tablets, STB at a minimum cost.
Our experience in TV and video market, understanding our customers’ needs combined with the most performant team of digital and cloud natives, result in quicker time-to-market for new features so that Pay-TV operators can maintain and competitive edge in the marketplace.”, said David le Dantec, CTO at Alpha Networks.
To solve the issue of program guide’s inaccuracy, Alpha Networks developed Accurate EPG.
Accurate EPG is a new product tackling the difficulties that operators face when recording a program for the TV guide and providing an improved user interaction and experience.
Being available as a module in Alpha Networks’ tucanoRED back-end, Accurate EPG analyses the TV streams in order to detect real program start and end times and replace the one provided by the EPG providers.
This module has been developed in order to guarantee an accuracy of 90% of timers’ corrections through a hybrid approach, which successfully mixes up machine learning algorithms and manual treatments to manage negative flows.
The use case: Bouygues Telecom launches the first sharp Start-Over service in France using Accurate EPG
Alpha Networks’ Accurate EPG has been chosen by Bouygues Telecom to launch a Start-over service on Bouygues STBs. Start-over is currently available on 55 channels, delivering world-class TV and exciting user experiences to homes throughout France.
Accurate EPG allows to easily restart a live program from the very beginning and avoid deceptive experience to start it in the middle of an advertisement.
“We are happy to collaborate with Alpha Networks and benefit from the Accurate EPG solution”, said Eric Laurent, TV Content, Services and Fixed Products Marketing Director at Bouygues Telecom. “Thanks to this new feature, Bouygues Telecom continues to ease the digital life of its millions of customers who daily watch TV through its Bbox, by listening to their needs and therefore improving and enriching the services those set-top boxes deliver.”
“Alpha Networks is putting a lot of effort in research and development to create market-leading technologies for TV and entertainment industry”, said David le Dantec, CTO at Alpha Networks. “Our commitment to innovative features and capabilities for our flagship product, tucanoRED, touches nearly every aspect of end-users habitual exchange with their needs and entertainment”.
Learn more about Alpha Networks’ products and services: alphanetworks.tv
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