Dutch streaming service NLZeit and video understanding experts Media Distillery have announced a partnership aimed at improving the customer experience through topic-based content discovery.
NLZIET is the Dutch OTT streaming service owned and operated by the country’s three major broadcasting groups (NPO, RTL and Talpa. It provides live TV, catch-up (replay) and on-demand content It has adopted the latest Media Distillery solution Topic Distillery to give viewers faster access to relevant content.
One of the challenges NLZIET faces is that, especially for non-scripted live programmes like news, talk shows, actuality shows and sports programming, there is a lack of descriptions of the actual topics inside a programme. Due to the nature of these shows, the programme description provided in a TV guide is typically limited to generic information.
An example might be the news: EPG descriptions typically state that a news programme contains news of the latest national and international stories and the weather, instead of more specific topics such as, for instance, the war in Ukraine, the Eurovision Song Contest, or the Champions League Final.
Topic Distillery is able to detect such topics and add them to the metadata.
“With Topic Distillery, users no longer need to watch a whole programme to find their desired content, and content consumption is much easier. This solution could really transform the non-scripted live TV watching experience. By making more content easily discoverable, Topic Distillery prolongs the lifetime value of the content,” said NLZIET CTO, Sander Kouwenhoven.
Between them and NLZEIT have been looking at improving and expanding the range of search recommendations.
“We’ve only just begun to grasp the myriad ways AI can provide consumers with more personalised, user-friendly experiences, and we’re excited to discover more,” said Media Distillery CEO Roland Sars.
The partners are currently testing several additional new features. New forms of chapterisation are in development as well as improving the search functionality by means of topics detected by Media Distillery.
This would allow viewers to quickly navigate in the playbar to specific topics without needing to search and to watch items in a shorter clip-based format.