YouView player update for UKTV Play
March 15, 2017
UK multichannel broadcaster UKTV has launched a new player on hybrid platform YouView for its fast-growing TV on demand service UKTV Play.
YouView viewers will have access to the significantly-updated UKTV Play service, which offers a huge selection of TV shows from UKTV’s Dave, Really, Yesterday and Drama channels.
Designed to make viewers’ experience more enjoyable and personalised, the reimagined VoD player features a smart new home screen with tailored recommendations and top shows from across the four channels. Collections bring together specially curated themes, and viewers can also collate their favourite episodes to watch later. The all-new predictive search makes finding a programme or collection extra easy.
“We’re really pleased to bring our new UKTV Play experience to YouView,” declared UKTV’s Head of Digital Products, Oliver Davies. “As with our web, mobile and other set-top box apps, viewers now have at-a-glance access to programmes across all the channels, with both hand-picked favourites and personalised recommendations based on what viewers have watched. We hope the new ways of discovering programmes such as predictive search, channel filtering, bookmarking and A-Z list, together with the improved responsiveness, will make the service even more of a pleasure to use.”
This update, which follows YouView’s reengineering and redesign of the entire platform known as Next Generation YouView, is the latest in a line of carefully-designed product redesigns from UKTV Play, all based on user research data and A/B testing. Since the new app for mobile devices launched in February 2017, views have increased by 38% per cent. When the broadcaster revealed a new UKTVplay.co.uk desktop site in 2016, it contributed to a sharp, 50 per cent increase in views.
UKTV Play continues to grow year-on-year. In week commencing March 6, the service had its best seven-day period ever, with total views up 56 per cent vs the year average, helped by new content including UKTV Originals Taskmaster, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled and Drama’s The Brokenwood Mysteries.
The service boasts a vast and diverse catalogue of quality shows, including exclusive UKTV Originals such as Red Dwarf X and Dara O Briain’s Go 8 Bit. UKTV Originals perform particularly well on the service, with the network seeing 179 per cent growth in direct-to-consumer streams of originals in 2016 compared to 2015.