Analytics

Daren Gill, VP of products, advanced search and recommendations for Rovi Corp., pulls few punches when talking about the current state of TV content discovery.

TV content search and discovery is so far behind how content is found via the Web and apps, it’s “sad,” he said, a term he used repeatedly to describe how traditional TV navigation systems continue to struggle to keep pace, speaking March 3 at the BroadbandTV conference.

“We’ve always had the same discovery issues, and the reality is linear is taking a back seat,” he added. “More and more, people know what they want to watch.” It’s just finding it via their pay TV service that’s proving difficult, he said. Recognizing the difference between Chicago the city and Chicago the band, user intent recognition, context recognition … these are all areas where pay TV search is lacking. “TV search has become one size fits all,” he lamented.

There’s cause for concern if you’re a pay TV operator: According to research done by Rovi, three out of 10 pay TV users the company surveyed don’t know if they have a search engine for the service, and two out of 10 don’t know whether or not their pay TV service uses intelligence recommendations for what they want to watch.

Considering that 70% said they would extend their pay TV service contract if a better search engine was offered, the importance of a better search engine can’t be understated.

Voice-enabled, conversational interfaces, using natural language processors, may be just the ticket, Gill said. “More and more users in a search experience are starting to use natural language, and it represents an opportunity for the industry,” he said. “It really should be a Google-like approach to content discovery.” Intelligent semantics, when applied to content search, looks beyond the titles and genre, and recognizes context, he said.

Both the Xbox One and Amazon’s line of Fire products have made gains in the voice-controlled content discovery space, Gill said, but their search engines are command-based. “What we’ve been working on is a way to make it much more natural,” he said of Rovi’s progress in the space. “Voice and more semantic systems give us better discovery.

An intelligent conversational interface paired can figure out the ambiguity and nuances of language, picking entities, user intent and context. Paired with voice control, it’s a powerful search model, for an industry that could use any boost it can get.

“We need to set the bar higher, because the TV experience at home isn’t as powerful as it should be,” Gill said.