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  • 19-Aug-2009 by Per Skyttvall
  • TV on Your Terms: Engaging Customers
  • IBC Official Blog
TV on Your Terms: Engaging Customers

One of the tricky aspects for vendors providing TV portals in the digital TV industry is the fact that the technology that is developed and introduced to the market affects the various players in the chain, as well as the end customer, of course, who is portrayed in each and every one of us. Each time a new feature or service is contemplated for the TV middleware, numerous considerations are involved; technological feasibility, complexity and integration efforts, user demand for the specific service, and pricing strategies, just to name a few.

The technological hurdles are relatively easily resolved. Operator flexibility and performance are maximized by taking advantage of the powers of open standards, such as HTML and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), to give operators full control of their TV portals for customization and regionalization. The same thing applies for integration when working with a leading vendor, whose TV middleware is pre-integrated with a wide range of set-top boxes, video servers and CA/DRM systems. The most challenging factor remains: how to increase user adoption of new interactive services and willingness to pay for these services. In order for the new service to be appealing to the customer, it has to bring an added value, or a new type of entertainment that has not yet been introduced. Another important element is the ease in which the user can experiment with the service and start using it. Complicated menus or unclear instructions are bound to deter viewers from adopting new services.

Current standard offering as far as TV middleware is concerned, have gone a long way since the inception of digital TV, yet a lot of services remain underdeveloped and untapped. These include gaming applications, mobile PVR and more. Consider being able to exercise PVR control with mobile devices, giving you the possibility to use a web page or a mobile device to remotely control a PVR Set Top Box in your home. Additional appealing features are personal channel lists, start over functionality and more.

Advanced television and broadband video services will flourish and influence the next generation of entertainment applications only if enough consideration is given to user demands. After all, increasing customer willingness to pay for advanced television features and for a personalized TV experience will further drive the evolution of digital TV, and the operators’ incentive to invest in introducing these services.


About the author

Per Skyttvall


Per Skyttvall is the CEO at Dreampark, the leading provider of Middleware for any platform - cable, terrestrial or IPTV - in the European market. Dreampark’s Dreamgallery™ is the most deployed IPTV middleware in Europe. Prior to joining Dreampark Mr. Skyttvall served as the CEO at Ericsson d.o.o.

Comments

Magnus Persson (27-Aug-2009, 17:31)

We agree with you that we don’t like the trend towards 30-40 buttons. Ultimately we want to create user friendly navigation with only 5 buttons. Dreampark’s goal is to satisfy two types of users/situations, one where a lot of “quick buttons” are used on the remote and a second situation which is a kind of a “dark room scenario”. We also see a trend among remote control manufacturers. The high-end design remotes tend to bring a minimal set of buttons.

In the dark room scenario, we assume that the user cannot read the text on the buttons on the remote, hence he needs to be able to perform any actions with only five buttons, i.e. OK, left, right, up, down (by moving his thumb).

The advantage of IPTV is that the user interface can dynamically change the behavior of these five buttons and visualize current behavior with on screen graphics. The prerequisites for such a navigation is a very fast user interface so that the user does not experience any delay when available options are written on the screen. We have found our new SVG client to fulfill this demand.

Dreampark has come a long way in the development and still sees the goal achievable. The next step will be to try the concept with focus groups and to adjust according to the results. We hope that the new navigation concept will be a part of our first commercial launch of the SVG client in HD resolution.

David H Deans (20-Aug-2009, 21:13)

Per, perhaps it's time to take a more holistic look at the notion of Television 2.0 -- beyond isolated views of middleware, EPG or hand-held Remote Control design.

The user experience is impacted -- positively or negatively -- by the sum-total combination of design elements, and how they work together (or not).

As an example, is there any logical reason why current generation STB remotes have 30-50 tiny buttons -- many with cryptic labels? I think not.

My point: perhaps the "next generation" needs to discard what's known to be an un-friendly user interface from the prior generation. The term user-oriented should be more than merely a buzzword, it should be a design philosophy.

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