Both Barrels Communications Ltd

Showcases new capabilities at SxSW Interactive, March 13th-17th 2009

Personalised TV guidance developer Vizimo today launched an API-based service which enables any other service provider easily to add unprecedented TV personalisation and recommendation into its own products – whether on a set-top box, web or mobile.

Vizimo will showcase these capabilities for the first time at the SxSW Interactive trade show [March 14-16].

The three tiers of Vizimo’s new API-based service are:

• V-TV Free, which is open to any service provider, free of charge. A service provider can send a programme reference and V-TV Free will return recommendations based on the standard body of TV content in that particular geography.
• V-TV Plus, which offers additional layers of sophistication including personalisation. Additional functionality includes: the creation and maintenance of profiles using Vizimo’s unique profiling capability; profile-based recommendations; time-sensitive recommendations; and specification of a content source. The latter capability means a service provider can define a bias towards recommendations from specific bodies of content, such as premium or pay-per-view channels.
• V-TV OD, which is an extension of V-TV Plus. Recommendations may be drawn from on-demand sources as well as broadcast schedules. The OD option also enables service providers to specify the current device being used – such as ‘mobile’ or ‘web’ – so recommendations can include content suitable or available to view immediately.

Simon Steward, Vizimo’s CEO, said: “We’ve expended time and effort engaging with the market in order to develop a service that makes sense to the widest possible audience, is accessible to the widest possible audience and delivers unique value.”

Vizimo will also continue to offer consulting services to clients, undertaking some bespoke development aimed at helping partners achieve the most out of Vizimo’s TV personalisation capabilities. Vizimo also continues to develop and enhance its direct-to-consumer proposition under the Tioti brand name, which acts as a test-bed for innovation.

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SxSW Interactive
SxSWi takes place in Austin, Texas, March 13-17 2009. The UK Digital Mission stand is located in the Grand Ballroom, Level 4, Austin Convention Center. The trade show is open March 14-16.

About Vizimo
Vizimo develops personalised TV guidance solutions that tie together TV, the web and, increasingly, mobile devices. Its intelligent, interactive, guidance technology enables viewers to find, discover, manage and watch TV or video programmes that they are interested in.

Vizimo’s solutions make use of sources that include broadcast TV, on-demand and catch-up services, Internet TV and mobile video services, and are designed engage viewers with a genuinely personalised guide that works coherently across TV, web and mobile.

Links and resources

• Vizimo press office
• Vizimo web site
• Overview of Vizimo technology (image)

MOFILM, the world’s biggest global mobile short film festival, has partnered with Vizimo to help enthusiasts discover, and watch, their favourite short films during the MOFILM 2009 Festival. The festival takes place in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress this week.

Personalised TV guidance company Vizimo has created a mobile service for MOFILM which not only limits the amount of time and bandwidth spent streaming films that don’t appeal, but also enables the unexpected discovery of the ‘right’ content that the viewer might not, otherwise, have found themselves. It enables anyone to search for a film based on keywords in its synopsis and, subsequently, to discover other films from the collection that are similar – whether by genre, director or other characteristic.

Phone users may use the service simply by pointing their phone’s browser to http://mofilm.vizimo.com.

Ralph Cochrane, chief operations officer for MOFILM, said: “We’ve attracted a remarkable number of entries for the MOFILM 2009 competition from around the globe. Vizimo has made it possible for all MOFILM fans to watch their favourite films on their mobile phones by genre, and to discover exciting new content easily. We want as many as possible of these films to be seen and enjoyed, and this sort of ‘discovery’ is an elegant, natural way of doing it.”

Simon Steward, Vizimo’s CEO, said: “Vizimo employs a very sophisticated model to ensure it can recommend appropriate content when someone clicks on ‘show me more like this’. Our existing applications for TV content are already popular, but it really comes into its own when the entire collection of content is new, like this; it is unrealistic and less enjoyable to try to discover interesting content simply by watching films sequentially.”

Vizimo powers personalised TV by providing a rich, personalised ‘window’ onto the increasingly complex world of video entertainment. Working across mobile, web and compatible set-top boxes, users are given an easy-to-navigate view of the massive universe of available content – both broadcast and on-demand – and are guided towards items of interest to them.

Vizimo uses existing user behaviour for scheduled TV to stimulate take-up of new, non-broadcast services. In trials, users have employed Vizimo to discover new content of interest, to remotely set a home recorder, to set reminders and to discuss what they are watching with friends.

[ends]

About MOFILM
MOFILM celebrates the intersection of art, commerce and technology in the fast-evolving sector of mobile entertainment. The first MOFILM Film Festival will debut on February 18th and 19th, 2009 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (February 16th-19th). This unique film festival will celebrate amateur and professional film-making for movies of 5 minutes (or less) in length which would be ideal for viewing and sharing on mobile phones.

The GSMA is partnering with MOFILM to produce this unique programme, promoting short film to the global film, mobile and entertainment industries. The GSMA is the global trade group for the mobile industry, representing over 750 mobile operators from 218 countries.

The Mobile World Congress, held annually in Barcelona, is the world’s leading communications industry event. The Congress has become a focal point for the convergence of the mobile and entertainment industries, attracting leading film makers and artists – including Robert Redford, Isabella Rosselini and the Oscar nominated Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) among others in recent years – which have come to explore and contribute to the discussions surrounding short films and the opportunities of the mobile medium.

About Vizimo
Vizimo develops personalised TV guidance solutions that tie together TV, the web and, increasingly, mobile devices: intelligent, interactive, guidance technology that enables viewers to find, discover, manage and watch TV or video programmes that they are interested in.

Vizimo’s solutions make use of sources that include broadcast TV, on-demand and catch-up services, Internet TV and mobile video services, and are designed engage viewers with a genuinely personalised guide that works coherently across TV, web and mobile. For more information visit the Vizimo press office and www.vizimo.com.

Personalised TV guidance company Vizimo is one of nine launch partners announced today by mobile marketing services group Gigafone at the introduction of its Ochre digital advertising solution. Vizimo will provide targeted, profiled ad inventory within its mobile TV guides, to brands and their agencies, via the Ochre solution.

Gigafone’s Ochre tackles the issue of market fragmentation which, to date, has largely prevented the development of effective and creative digital campaigns. Ochre will unify, into a single solution, the four major parts of the mobile advertising ecosystem: campaign creation, planning, distribution and result measurement, providing brands, agencies and mobile operators a holistic and simplified view of the advertising ecosystem.

With demography requirements and purchasing characteristics changing on a campaign by campaign basis, Ochre has been designed to address the issues associated with mobile advertising. Advertisers will be able to switch delivery channels at the click of a button, making sure content-rich information gets to the right person at the right time. In turn this means consumers will receive relevant and timely information about products that they are interested in, and advertisers can reduce wastage generated from blanket campaigns.

This dovetails neatly with Vizimo’s mobile capabilities, whose personalised TV guide enables Vizimo to build up a profile of each user’s personal viewing preferences. Simon Steward, Vizimo’s CEO, said: “In conjunction with Vizimo, the Ochre solution will enable advertisers to effectively target people who watch TV, but without the inherent wastage of normal TV advertising. Instead, content delivered will be personalised and targeted, based on user preferences, and provide a high degree of measurability.”

Vizimo also white labels its capabilities to TV guide publishers. “The combination of three elements – the quality of our profiling, the highly personal nature of TV viewing and what TV guide publishers know about their own readers – means that together we can build up an even better profile of a user. So ultimately, via Vizimo, such publishers will own their own ad inventory which they can populate with highly targeted, contextual adverts, via Ochre,” added Simon Steward.

[ends]

About Gigafone
Gigafone, the mobile marketing solutions group, enables operators to monetise mobile marketing. It employs more than 100 mobile technology and marketing experts around the world with offices in Russia, Asia-Pacific and Europe. It is a member of the Mobile Marketing Association and an Associate Member of GSMA. For further information, visit www.gigafone.com.

Definitely not the Queen’s speech, it seems

iPhone users appear to be avid BBC watchers, according to unusual statistics from next-generation guidance company Vizimo. The company – whose Tioti TV+ application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch devices enable people to remotely programme their Sky+ box to record programmes – found that no less than 39 of the 50 most-recorded programmes over the Christmas holidays were screened on BBC channels.

Seven places were taken by Channel 4 programmes with just four ITV1 programmes making up the top 50. Only one non-BBC programme – Harry Hill’s TV Burp Review of the Year, shown on Boxing Day on ITV – made the Top Ten.

The most recorded programme was the Doctor Who Christmas Special, which aired at 6pm on Christmas Day on BBC1. All of the Top Five were BBC1 programmes, with all of the top four airing on Christmas Day.

Half of the Top 20 most frequently recorded programmes were broadcast on Christmas Day and eight of those – the exceptions were Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (4.30pm) and Top of the Pops Christmas Special (2pm) – were broadcast after 6pm.

The Queen’s Christmas Message, broadcast at 3pm on Christmas Day as always, did not make the Top Fifty.

“The Top 20 contains several instances of conflicting, popular programmes. One possibility is that people used Tioti TV+ on their iPhone to programme their Sky+ boxes in order to avoid an argument with another member of their household – a perfect use of Sky+. Or, some people may have recorded a programme simply because they didn’t want to spend their Christmas Day watching TV, but just wanted to watch the programmes later,” said Simon Steward, Vizimo’s CEO.

“The presence of Doctor Who in first place might be down to the show’s popularity, or it might be down to the fact that at 6pm on Christmas Day many families are still only halfway through their turkey so are recording it. Anonymous statistics get us so far, but more qualitative research would be needed to establish more detail,” he added.

Individual shows aside, the heavy presence of Auntie in the top fifty could also have a number of explanations. “This data doesn’t confirm what people are watching per se, but it does give a good idea of what people really don’t want to miss,” explained Steward. “The recording bias seems to suggest that the BBC has more unmissable content than other broadcasters – or perhaps that it got the scheduling wrong and aired its most popular content when people wanted to be doing something else.”

More than 400 TV channels are now available in the UK, and more than 90% of households now have at least one form of multi-channel digital TV service – digital TV receiver, satellite or cable.

Steward concludes: “Given the choice available it seems astounding that the BBC all but cleaned up where recording programmes is concerned. It’s also slightly ironic that people are using their Sky+ box to record programmes, yet not a single programme made the top fifty that wasn’t free-to-air in some form.”

[ends]

Apple, iPhone and iPod are trademarks of Apple Inc, registered in the United States and other countries.

Top 20 programmes (recorded using Tioti TV+ on an iPhone or iPod touch to set a Sky+ box)

1. Doctor Who, BBC1, Christmas Day, 6pm
2. Wallace and Gromit, BBC1, Christmas Day, 8.30pm
3. The Royle Family, BBC1 Christmas Day, 9.30pm
4. Blackadder Rides Again, BBC1, Christmas Day, 10.30pm
5. Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special, BBC1, Christmas Eve, 10pm
6. Harry Hill’s TV Burp Review of the Year, ITV1, Boxing Day, 7pm
7. Top Gear Vietnam Special, BBC2, December 28th, 8pm
8. Madagascar, BBC1, Boxing Day, 4.10pm
9. Match of the Day, BBC1, Boxing Day, 11.05pm
10. Top Gear, BBC2, Christmas Day, 9.30pm
11. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, BBC1, Christmas Day, 4.30pm
12. Dragons’ Den Around the World, BBC2, Christmas Day, 8.30pm
13. The 39 Steps, BBC1, December 28th, 8pm
14. Top of the Pops Christmas Special, BBC1, Christmas Day, 2pm
15. Shrek the Halls, BBC1, Christmas Eve, 7.30pm
16. 8 Out of 10 Cats Christmas Special, Channel 4, Boxing Day, 10.50pm
17. Wallace and Gromit, BBC HD, Christmas Day, 8.30pm
18. Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special 2008, BBC1, Christmas Day, 7pm
19. Fonejacker Christmas Special, Channel 4, Boxing Day, 11.40pm
20. Have I Got News for You Christmas 2008, BBC1, Christmas Eve, 9.30pm

Notes to editors

1. Tioti TV+ Screenshots
2. Tioti TV+ for iPhone and iPod touch, from Vizimo, helps to work out how best to see everything that you want to watch, and enables discovery of new content that you may also be interested in but didn’t know about. Launched in December 2008, Tioti TV+ may be downloaded from the App Store for just £1.79.
3. Users of other mobile phones may use the service by visiting wap.tioti.com on their handset.
4. The software displays programme schedules for the week ahead across dozens of channels. Choose the programmes you’re interested in, channel by channel, without having to remember what you’ve chosen. Then, when you’ve explored as many channel listings as you want, choose ‘My TV’ – and the software produces what is, in effect, a personalised TV channel for you, telling you which channel you need to be watching and at what time.
5. With just a couple of clicks, iPhone and iPod touch users can even programme their Sky+ box to record specific shows, helping to resolve schedule conflicts: watch one channel while recording another. Vizimo’s iPhone and iPod application will programme your Sky+ box over the internet so you can do it from anywhere, anytime.
6. No individually-identifiable data was collected by Vizimo.

TV schedules too complex for normal people, say experts – but there is a solution

This year’s Christmas television schedules will leave more people more disappointed than ever, listings experts claimed today – although not, perhaps, for the most obvious of reasons.

The dramatic increase in the number of channels available means that people will actually miss more programmes of interest than ever before– despite many families now using systems such as Sky+ to record programmes when there are viewing clashes or when they’re out.

More than 400 TV channels are now available in the UK, and more than 90% of households now have at least one form of multi-channel digital TV service – digital TV receiver, satellite or cable. Consequently, even though many people try to catch up with popular programmes using services such as Channel 4’s 4oD and BBC’s iPlayer, they will always be fighting a losing battle.

“Planning your TV viewing with any certainty is now beyond people,” said Simon Steward, chief executive of listings technology company Vizimo. “There are so many channels and so many sources that it’s virtually impossible to find and remember all the programmes that you might want to watch so you can plan your day or evening in front of the TV. You’re going to miss stuff you wanted to see, and that’s frustrating, especially at Christmas when there’s a lot of good stuff on.”

However Vizimo – a British technology company – has come up with a solution that will enable all of us to spend more time this Christmas watching programmes we like instead of ‘filler’ that we don’t.

The company has developed software for mobile phones which helps families or individuals to work out how to see everything that they want to watch, eliminating – or at least reducing! – family tensions. Versions include a downloadable, advanced application for Apple’s popular iPhone and iPod touch. Those with a different mobile phone use the service by visiting wap.tioti.com on their handset.

The software displays programme schedules for the week ahead across dozens of channels. Choose the programmes you’re interested in, channel by channel, without having to remember what you’ve chosen. Then, when you’ve explored as many channel listings as you want, choose ‘My TV’ – and the software produces what is, in effect, a personalised TV channel for you, telling you which channel you need to be watching and at what time.

With just a couple of clicks, iPhone and iPod touch users can even programme their Sky+ box to record specific shows, helping to resolve schedule conflicts: watch one channel while recording another. Vizimo’s iPhone and iPod application will programme your Sky+ box over the internet so you can do it from anywhere, anytime – even from holiday abroad.

“It sounds quite clever, and of course it is,” continued Steward. “What it means for everyone is something very simple: we don’t need to worry about what we chose to watch at 8.30pm from the choice of umpteen channels, and we don’t need to worry about missing something we wanted to see, because it’s all worked out and remembered for us.”

iPhone and iPod touch users can download the application, named Tioti TV+, from the App Store for just £1.79. Those with a different mobile can access a free version of the service by visiting wap.tioti.com on their handset.

Both services are available now, ensuring people have plenty of time to get familiar with it ahead of the TV-heavy Christmas holiday period.

[ends]

Links and resources

• Screenshots
• Vizimo web site
• Tioti TV+ for iPhone/iPod touch

About Vizimo
Vizimo is a leader in developing personalisation and discovery technology to help users navigate the overwhelming universe of content on TV, the web and mobile. It works with TV service providers and platform providers, mobile operators and publishers to create innovative solutions to the discovery problem. For more information, visit http://vizimopressoffice.blogspot.com/.

Apple, iPhone and iPod are trademarks of Apple Inc, registered in the United States and other countries.

Enabling TV fans both to schedule in the programmes that they like and discover new programmes that they might like, Tioti TV+ from Vizimo went live in the App Store today.

On start-up, Tioti TV+ immediately displays ‘now and next’ information for all UK TV channels. Precisely which channels are displayed is completely customisable; choose to display only those channels available to you according to your TV package, or choose channel-by-channel which ones to display or ‘turn off’.

Opening a particular programme causes the typical listings-style programme information to be displayed. But this is the point at which Tioti TV+ starts to shine.

You can choose to ‘mark’ programmes, then, after perhaps marking multiple programmes across multiple channels, you can select ‘My TV’ – which promptly causes Tioti TV+ to display your personal TV channel, showing which channel to be watching, and when, in order to fit in everything you marked.

If you’re not going to be at home or even if you’re on the other side of the world on holiday then, if you have the Sky+ service, you can use Tioti TV+ for the iPhone to remotely set your Sky box to record any programme with just two clicks, ready for viewing when you get home.

If all of this is insufficient assistance, or you’re bored, then try ‘You may also like…’. This function links to a selection of programmes that are about the same topics as the one you are looking at – so you may, indeed, also like them. Having discovered new programmes in this way, you can mark it or set it to record – and on you go again.

If, in following recommendations, you come across some content available via the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service, Tioti TV+ also enables you to stream it directly to the handset. with no searching and no messing around.

Why is Tioti TV+ a great app? Not just because it helps us to do, better, something that we’re actually going to do at some point each day anyway, but because the dramatic increase in the number of channels available means that people actually miss more programmes of interest than ever before – despite many families now being able to call on the use of a HDD system to record programmes when there are clashes or when they’re out.

In fact there are now more than 400 TV channels available in the UK, and more than 90% of households now have at least one form of multi-channel digital TV service – digital TV receiver, satellite or cable. Consequently, even though many people try to catch up with popular programmes using services like Channel 4’s 4od and BBC’s iPlayer, they will always be fighting a losing battle.

Simon Steward is chief executive of Vizimo, the developer behind Tioti TV+. He said: “There are so many channels and so many sources that it’s virtually impossible to find and remember all the programmes that you might want to watch so you can plan your day or evening in front of the TV. The situation is made even more complex by catch-up content, which means content from the last seven days is available to us if only we knew where to look. How are we supposed to remember, 20 pages of a listings guide or 20 pages of a website later, what we chose some 300 channels ago for 8.30pm? Now, we – iPhone users at least – don’t have to.”

[ends]

Links and resources

• Screenshots from Tioti TV+ for iPhone
• Vizimo website
• Vizimo press office

About Vizimo
Vizimo is a leader in developing personalisation and discovery technology to help users navigate the overwhelming universe of content on TV, the web and mobile. It works with TV service providers and platform providers, mobile operators and publishers to create innovative solutions to the discovery problem. For more information, visit the Vizimo press office.

# # #

Apple, iPhone and iPod are trademarks of Apple Inc, registered in the United States and other countries.

‘Next generation guidance’ company Vizimo today announced the acquisition of TIOTI, the popular, interactive, TV social networking website. Vizimo plans to use TIOTI as a shop window in which to pioneer, demonstrate and test new functionality and tools that tie together TV, the web and, increasingly, mobile devices.

TIOTI – an acronym for ‘Tape It Off The Internet’ – launched in Spring 2007 to considerable media interest and has attracted a substantial, loyal user base since then.

In the same period, Vizimo has been quietly developing ‘next generation guidance’ solutions: intelligent, interactive, guidance technology that enables viewers to find, discover, manage and watch TV or video programmes that they are interested in. Vizimo’s solutions make use of sources that include broadcast TV, on-demand and catch-up services, Internet TV and mobile video services, and are designed engage viewers with a genuinely personalised guide that works coherently across TV, web and mobile.

TIOTI’s approach proved to be innovative and it made significant strides in terms of the social aspects of content discovery and guidance. This is a great fit with Vizimo’s approach to content discovery which relies on Vizimo’s underlying technology for content analysis. The TIOTI proposition will be able to use Vizimo’s technology to enhance its proposition, while Vizimo will be able to extend the range of capabilities on offer to partners through leveraging some of TIOTI’s social capabilities.

Simon Steward, CEO of Vizimo, said: “A shop window is by far the best way of demonstrating to the whole TV ecosystem – broadcasters, content owners, device manufacturers, mobile operators, publishers and even existing guides – what they could be doing if they elected to incorporate functionality such as recommendation and personalisation into their own offering, fronted by their own brand.”

“Meanwhile we get to measure customer reaction to functionality, which aids the development and refinement process; TIOTI customers get a really valuable and entertaining service from us; TIOTI will also extend the range of capabilities that Vizimo can offer partners on the B2B side; and the ecosystem gets a view of the whole process,” he said.

Steward explained why Vizimo’s developments are crucial for the TV ecosystem. “If users can watch anything at any time on any device, how do they decide what to watch? Existing TV guides for broadcast content – such as EPGs [electronic programme guides] on set-top boxes or TV listings in newspapers, magazines and on the web – are no longer relevant when consumers have access to content from so many sources and on multiple devices. They need ‘next generation’ guidance, and that’s what Vizimo delivers,” he said.

An all-new TIOTI website, incorporating the latest developments from Vizimo, is expected to replace the current site within three months. Existing TIOTI users will be entirely unaffected by the acquisition, save for having access to exciting new functionality such as ‘personalisation’ and ‘recommendation’.

[ends]

About Vizimo
Vizimo is a leader in developing personalisation and discovery technology to help users navigate the overwhelming universe of content on TV, the web and mobile. We work with TV service providers and platform providers, mobile operators and publishers to create innovative solutions to the discovery problem. For more information, visit www.vizimopressoffice.blogspot.com.