TORONTO – The slick-looking user interface of the new shomi service from Rogers and Shaw is purported to be one of the key differentiating features that will allow it to compete against other SVoD players, especially indomitable Netflix.
During its official announcement on Tuesday, Rogers Media president Keith Pelley described shomi’s “really spectacular” user interface as “far superior” to that of any other SVoD service.
“When you actually take a look at the product, it has taken a significant amount of time to actually build the user interface, to have a kind of ‘attitude’ on the user interface and to be able to encode as much content as we can,” he said.
When compared to Netflix, one feature that makes shomi’s user interface unique is the ability to continue to watch an episode of a TV series in the player window at the top of the screen, while navigating through the library of other available episodes along the bottom of the screen.
Viewed on a tablet, the touchscreen features allow users to simply press and hold their finger down to bring up an array of options, such as adding a video to the “shomi later” list or to look up information about the video. In the demos seen by Cartt.ca, the touchscreen navigation of the shomi service appeared both dynamic and very fluid.
In an effort to enhance the user experience, shomi will include curated video content handpicked by in-house entertainment experts at Rogers and Shaw, not just rely on algorithms like other services do.
“It’s a user interface that allows this kind of curation in addition to the algorithms that people have become familiar with,” said Barbara Williams, SVP content for Shaw Media. “It’s that human level on top of the algorithm that makes this user interface and this whole experience unique.”
“You can’t create emotion through code”, Pelley added. “The approach that we’ve taken with our entertainment experts…is not something to be taken lightly.”
Working behind the user interface and all of the shomi programming team’s coding on the client side of the service is a video game-inspired engine from Ottawa-based startup You.i Labs, which markets its product as “the UI engine for TV Everywhere”.
Jason Flick, CEO of You.i Labs, told Cartt.ca that his company helps clients to easily bring to market “beautiful interfaces” that work across multiple platforms. Founded six years ago, You.i Labs has recently chosen to focus its efforts on the television industry.
“Because it’s not about getting one beautiful experience on one device, it’s really getting this experience consistently everywhere”, Flick said. “And so from one code base we get on all the different platforms. Where in the world, in any segment of any (industry), do they have the most fragmentation, where they need to get to the most places to monetize it, and it’s absolutely the TV space.”
shomi may soon have some more competition, Flick hinted. During contract negotiations with Rogers, Flick said that You.i Labs did discuss the possibility of an exclusive deal with shomi for the You.i user interface engine, but that idea was abandoned in the end.
“So we’re not going to be doing business only with Rogers. And it’s not just the infrastructure companies. There are also the media brands. We will have a very big announcement in the next couple of months from some major media brands that are selecting our engine to help them get everywhere,” Flick added.
“It’s going to be different business models, but no matter what approach it is, you’ve got to have a footprint on Samsung, TVs, Xbox, iPhone, Android, Blackberry if you care, and we can help them get to all those from one code base that’s a great user experience and consistent.”
