Recently I have found myself doing a Mandalorian. This does not mean I have become an inter-galactic bounty hunter or started walking around with a bucket on my head that I refused to take off in public. I'm referring to how I consume subscription VOD services. Read more →

A route map of 'The Running Book' by John Connell. Read more →

March is a bit late to offer up a retrospective on the previous year, but I’ve wanted to write about what I think was the most interesting TV event of 2018, for a while. For the me the most interesting event was Bodyguard. This was a BBC 1 drama starring Keeley Hawes and Ricard Madden. Keeley is currently one the UK’s best actresses and is in everything that Oliva Coleman isn’t. Richard Madden is best known for Game of Thrones where he was last seen being dispatched during the Red Wedding. The first thing to note about Bodyguard is the... Read more →

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Sky Tech Summit, now in its 3rd year. The agenda had multiple tracks covering content innovation, superior streaming, people & skills and emerging tech. But, for me, across these there were two bigger themes linking them all together, which were Artificial Intelligence and Inclusion. #skytech2018 Read more →

In this article in the Future of TV Tech series, I’m looking at the future of television remote control. Note, this is not about TV remote control devices, as I don’t believe the future will involve dedicated handheld devices, So the headline picture is wrong. I believe the future of TV control will be voice (which will be obvious to most readers) and micro-gestures (maybe not so obvious). Read more →

It is hard to have missed the fact that Amazon have scored one of the two remaining English Premiere League TV packages. The other being picked up by BT. But just scanning the headlines can mean you may have missed what package they actually picked up. The article is a follow-on from my article back in February: Will the Internet Giants Ever Take the Rights to English Premiership Football? Amazon has acquired package F which is a total of 20 games a year for the next three seasons. The UK rights consist of 200 live matches per season split into... Read more →

Last week I attended the DTG summit at the Royal School of Medicine. This article is a review of the event, looking at the key themes discussed. For those who don’t know, the DTG is the Digital Television Group, an industry association for anyone involved in the delivery of digital TV in the UK, including broadcasters, operators, television equipment manufacturers and technology vendors. The DTG sees itself as the centre for collaboration amongst its 125 members. The DTG summit brings its members together to discuss trends, consider direction and to celebrate success stories. This year’s theme was “Transforming TV”. Read more →

Pretty much since the launch of the Apple App store back in 2008, there has been a consensus that the future of TV interface was app stores. App Stores provide a model for personalization, innovation and protection of content owner’s brand identity. But does the app store model and applications in general really work for TV? Is there an alternative? Given the success of app stores for mobile devices it is hard to challenge them, but I don’t think they work well enough and are not the future of TV interfaces. I do however have an alternative. Read more →

Today, amongst TV service providers, there is an ever-increasing focus on content discovery and recommendations. Some say that content discovery is the new battle ground for TV service providers, both traditional and new entrant. I still strongly believe that the content itself is still king, but service providers need to work to keep consumers finding and viewing the content that differentiates them. This article looks at TV recommendations, do they work, what is the future for them and how this affects the TV service provider landscape. Alert: In this article a media executive looks at his own behaviour and uses... Read more →

Back in December 2009 I attended two-day a user experience workshop in a Chateau near Paris. It was a great session where pay-TV executives from across Europe looked at user interface issues and discussed solutions to challenges they faced. This workshop was the first time I had been presented in-depth research on digital natives. The research looked at their changes in behaviour and their changing relationship with media. I was captivated by this very real shift in human behaviour and the impact it was going to have as these digital natives joined the workforce and gain purchasing power. The term... Read more →