TVNZ to Launch VOD Apps for Smart TVs and Tablets
November 14, 2012 
3 Comments
As part of its new-season roll-out, TVNZ tonight announced it would become the first commercial broadcaster in Australasia to offer a video-on-demand app for Samsung smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.
According to the press release, TVNZ will extend its popular TVNZ Ondemand app to smart phones, tablets and connected TVs in a series of innovations due to hit the market in the next quarter.
Before Christmas, TVNZ will become the first NZ broadcaster to launch a video on demand app on Samsung Smart TVs.
Soon after, TVNZ will be the first NZ broadcaster to launch an on demand app for iOS devices (iPad, iPhone and iTouch) and Android (Samsung Galaxy tablets, phone and note).
TVNZ has teamed with video platform solutions leader Brightcove to deliver the world’s first solution of its kind for smartphones and tablets.
The platform is completely cloud based, from the encoding of the video to the security (Digital Rights Management) and to the apps themselves.
For advertisers, video content mobility opens up new opportunities to reach customers with increasingly personalised and targeted campaigns.
For viewers, TV is becoming increasingly personal and portable — they want their shows on the go.
The not-so-good news is the apps won’t be HD-capable.
“As a mass product we were concerned about blowing caps,” TVNZ’s general manager of digital media, Tom Cotter, told ScreenScribe.tv.
“We did quite a lot of analysis on the optimum bitrate to picture quality and we found that 1.1M was the most efficient use of someone’s cap.”
As to whether the app will extend beyond Samsung TVs, Cotter says: “We have a roadmap but its relative to what standard/version of video platform and DRM [digital rights management] they enable.”
He says more announcements will be pending in the new year.
TVNZ says viewer demand for video is growing exponentially:
• Average weekly stream views are up +42% year to date.
• Over 20.2 million stream views YTD.
• Highest number: 130,000 total entertainment stream views was recorded on 10 September – thanks in the main to New Zealand’s Got Talent. Before that, the record stood at 99,800 streams in a single day.
NZ trends:
• It is estimated between 44% to 50% of Kiwis now have smartphones.
• 10% of New Zealanders own a tablet – 200% growth is projected within 6 months.
• 12% of NZ smartphone owners stream video at least once a day (18% of 16-29s do this).
• 48% of smartphone owners have downloaded an app for streaming video (56% of 16-29s have done so).
• 21% of NZ smartphone owners would like to check in to TV shows within their social network via their smartphone.
International trends:
• Consumption is shifting from PCs to other devices: BBC is close to the tipping point of having more streams from non-PC devices than PCs.
• In larger, more mature markets like the US or UK, traffic from smartphones is 15% – and growing.
• At the ABC they recently crossed that barrier with more than half of their streams coming from tablets, smartphones and Smart TVs.
In a nutshell:
- 2007 – TVNZ first broadcaster in Australasia to deliver a video on demand service.
- 2010 – TVNZ first commercial broadcaster in the world to launch video on demand on the PS3.
- Late 2012 – TVNZ will be the first NZ broadcaster to launch a video on demand app for Samsung Smart TVs.
- Early 2013 – TVNZ will be the first commercial broadcaster in Australasia to deliver a video on demand app for smartphones and tablets.
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November 14, 2012 at 7:47 pm
When is TV3 going to step up and start making their streamed content avaliable on tablet / gaming systems?
“The not-so-good news is the apps won’t be HD-capable.” Even YouTube is HD capable.
If it’s not HD by now, it’s a dead duck.