UK IPTV set top maker Amino, said this week it has partnered with beeTV, which offers a recommendation systems for modern TV bouquets called the Personal Content Channel (PCC). The two will develop a recommendation based personalized TV experience, on Amino’s set-top boxes.
At IBC next week we expect there to be multiple TV recommendation engines or personalized favorites menus, especially becoming relevant as more and more sources for video are uncovered, the web included.
beeTV uses four buttons on the screen fairly simply manipulated by a remote control; Watch, Not Now, Never and Record, and the selections when combined with viewing data, almost immediately begin to create recommendations for personal TV channels for multiple members of a household.
The company talks a lot about the ‘true DNA of content’ and says that it also has a number of ‘contextual algorithms,’ which also allow for mood descriptors such as happy, comedy and sexy to be keyed in to trigger more recommendations. We imagine that time of day should be another context variable, but we’re not sure.
All the recommendations for you can be viewed in a 12 panel display, with any one of them dropping to live video when the remote highlights it, for sampling.
The company says that PCC uses a set contextual recommendation algorithms which identify viewers’ habits, taste, record viewing history, and takes in broader viewing trends. The PCC is a set of logic that has to sit on the set top, so it will take up processing time, rather like, or instead of, an EPG.
Content sources tapped include broadcast TV, subscription TV, VoD, DVR and other Catch-up services and creates a different channel for each individual viewer which does not rely on ‘catalog based ‘ textual description.
beeTV says that using PCC has already been proven to increase VoD consumption, which in a paid VoD environment, or a free one which carries operator advertising, will be a good enough point to sell it, on its own. It goes further to suggest that it improves customer acquisition and retention.
Yoram Granit CEO at beeTV said: ‘We are very excited to be working with Amino, whose name is known throughout the IPTV industry for quality, cutting edge products and innovative solutions. We see tremendous opportunities in working across the entire range of Amino boxes and with different ecosystem partners.’
We assume that at the show one or other or these organizations will announce a client win, a client big enough to make it worthwhile going through this implementation, because that tends to be the way of things in IPTV, with major operator requirements driving R&D expenditure.
Recent numbers in IPTV, especially across Europe, show that telcos have more or less got their heads around the technology and are no longer wondering about their network or access infrastructure and its ability to deliver IPTV. Increasingly they are looking at ways of combining three screens ‘ adding PC and handset function ‘ to the existing TV services, either running the content out to the three screens or using them to control one another. The other thing they are looking for are service differentiators against cable and satellite and recommendation systems are all part and parcel of that.
Back in March this year we talked about a company in the UK Vizimo, which is offering something virtually identical. One of the questions we asked it was about sensing mood swings, at least one of the areas where beeTV has made some effort. The problem is that an ardent sports fan who views action thrillers can sometimes decide to watch Sleepless in Seattle when there is soccer on. How is that predictable? Well at least with the beeTV system he can tell it his mood.
Vizomo also talked about getting to the bottom of what a program is about – its ‘aboutness’ – as a TV program, rather than focusing on one aspect of the program. The Vizomo system works using collaborative filtering, knowing both what a viewer has liked in the past and linking that to an understanding of what similar viewers have also viewed. It can give weighting to the top ten programs viewed by everyone or to what your friends are watching, if you are on a social network.
Similarly a year ago at the IPTV World Forum in March 2008, Italian IPTV software specialist Neptuny launched a recommendation service for smaller IPTV operators based on its existing ContentWise recommendations engine. A kind of hosted recommendation engine, whereas major telcos could build their own. It too used a combination of what viewers have watched before and what everyone else is watching.
This is all embedded in the poor customer retention which some IPTV services have across Europe
So we expect these and other organizations to continue down the personalized TV route at IBC. But in the end why have 300 channels on your TV and pay for them, just so that you have to use this type of software to help you find things. Why not have all this content, even as it is broadcast, on the internet, and use the tool to pull stuff which is both live and VoD off the net. It seems to us a more sensible model and we’ll be looking for that emerging at IBC this year as well.