GVIDI, the new and complete metadata service
March 17, 2015
With a undisclosed investment from Merapar and ITNM, a new player has entered the scene of TV metadata.
GVIDI, the smart aggregator
“Stunned by the fact that most EPG providers do not enrich their data with omnipresent information, it has become our ambition to offer Europe’s most advanced platform of TV metadata”, says Tijn Smithuis, Managing Director of GVIDI.
By taking full advantage of industry initiatives such as EIDR and TV Anytime, combined with metadata from the very best sources in the field, it is possible to deliver TV operators a complete metadata set that covers both their linear and non-linear content. This enables TV operators to use metadata to also cover VOD- and Replay TV services.
When creating integrated metadata, recommendation engines and user interfaces will work significantly better and start living up to their promise of maximum discoverability and recommendation. This in itself will lead to an increase in upsell of content for TV operators and will fully exploit the potential of a personalised viewing experience for the customer.
GVIDI, a complete and real-time solution
Richard van Dijk, investor in GVIDI and owner of EPG service provider ITNM in the Netherlands, is equally enthusiastic about the newly created possibilities: “The quality, depth and coverage of rich metadata form the heart of content experience”. Therefore, it is important to deliver the TV metadata real-time. Most people in Europe will know the problem of a failed recording due to last minute changes on the TV channel as another (live) program runs overtime. This should already be a problem of the past, as it is quite easy to update the metadata of a specific channel directly once there is a time change. However, most EPG providers in Europe, still don’t have this mechanism in place due to lack of integration with the TV operators’ back-end systems. This is one of our previous solutions that we will bring into GVIDI to make sure it will ‘lead the way’!
GVIDI, the leading aggregator of rich metadata in the EU market
Harry Koiter, partner at Merapar, sees the immense added value. ‘GVIDI helps clients to optimize their entertainment experience, while maximising pay TV revenues, by guiding customers flawlessly to their TV preferences.’ We are confident that GVIDI may well become the leading aggregator of rich metadata for DTV operators in the EU market in the next three to five years; an investment opportunity we did not like to miss out on.