UK’s ITV is to up rate the ITV Player catch-up service and replace ITV.com with a unified digital portal called The ITV Hub. Due out later in the year, The ITV Hub will put live streaming at the heart of the new service.

The Hub will launch across mobiles, PCs and connected TVs, and will debut ITV on Amazon’s Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices and the new connected Freeview Play service.

Paul Kanareck ITV’s director of online, said further details of the new The ITV Hub will be revealed at The ITV Gala in November. “With over 11 million registered users and 726 million long form requests last year alone, our VoD service has come of age, with live TV right at the core of our proposition.”

The ITV Hub will also feature new branding that was created by ITV’s in-house agency, ITV Creative. “We have created an exciting new brand identity for The ITV Hub which will present all of ITV’s family of channels and services front and centre with a distinct, digital look and feel building off the success of ITV’s rebrand.  We are looking forward to fully unveiling it later this autumn,” said Rufus Radcliffe, ITV’s group marketing director.

ITV Player has been criticised in the past for a lack of robustness and useability.

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