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Project Overview
The new Freesat App is designed to enhance the viewing experience for UK television viewers, and make life simpler for consumers of Freesat’s subscription-free UK television service by helping them manage their TV-viewing. The Freesat App allows viewers to access on-demand content, using Freesat’s Freetime service to roll back over the past 7 days of TV, as well as to see what’s coming up, and to set reminders and recordings inside and outside the home. Viewers can even use the Freesat App as a replacement for their remote control giving them a more interactive experience with the TV they love.
Organisation
Team
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Project Brief
Freesat’s core goal is to open up subscription-free TV to everyone, and the Freesat App is a great way to do this. The Freesat App is the first fully connected app available from a free-to-air TV platform in the UK, giving viewers the scope to think about and control how and when they want to watch TV. By enabling the remote record function, the app helps viewers to spend less time watching TV in the standard linear way, and choose to watch TV they want, when they want it. The unique Showcase section allows viewers to look through the best TV shows on offer via Freesat, and easily click to set recordings and reminders whether they’re at home or out and about.
Each section of the Freesat App is colour coded, in the same scheme as Freesat’s Freetime platform on set-top boxes (STBs) and TVs, making it easier for viewers to see which section they’re in and guiding them through each area. This makes the TV-viewing experience as simple and intuitive as possible, ensuring Freesat viewers’ experiences are easy, simple and fun.
Project Need
The team at Freesat wanted to design a mobile companion app that would be easy, simple and fun for viewers to choose the subscription-free satellite TV they want to watch, using a more natural and seamless way of controlling the TV, and it would be more than just a remote control or traditional TV Guide. To do this, Freesat conducted in-home research to look at viewer needs around TV viewing, to better understand the key challenges for viewers, while also being a broadcaster friendly platform.
The research showed viewers want easy access to the most popular TV shows, in a simpler way than other TV planning and managing methods. The resulting Freesat App was custom-designed to make it easy to use, rather than just being a purely functional interface. A key part of this was to create a reference to a traditional TV Guide, but not present as a pure grid-based system that other TV companion apps follow.
When connected inside the home, viewers can use the app as a remote control to change channel, set recordings and reminders, as well as full access to the free on-demand players on TV, or on an iOS device. The app also features Freesat’s unique Showcase service, which provides recommendations for the best shows available on TV and on demand. Outside the home, viewers can use it to set remote recordings and reminders. Non-Freesat viewers can also use the app as a free TV guide, and get advice on the best shows around.
User Experience
The Freesat App is revolutionising how free-to-air TV viewers watch shows they love, enabling a connected TV experience by linking it via Wi-Fi to a set-top box, to provide four key features:
• Remind and record – Viewers can manage their TV viewing from inside and outside the home, setting reminders and creating recordings of upcoming shows directly from the app
• Remote control – Viewers can effectively replace their remotes with an iOS device, allowing them to control their set-top box, including changing channel, accessing on-demand content and pausing and rewinding live TV
• Access on-demand content – When viewers are at home and their device is connected to a Freesat with Freetime box, they are able to access and control on-demand content over the past 7 days. Away from home, viewers can access on-demand content using the app as a portal to the UK’s top free on-demand players including BBC iPlayer, ITV Player 4oD and Demand 5
• Roll Back TV Guide – Freesat and non-Freesat viewers can use the app as a TV guide to find out what’s coming up on TV and see what’s available on-demand thanks to the 7 day roll back guide
Project Marketing
For the launch of the Freesat App, the Freesat team produced an ‘unboxing’ video with TV presenter Rick Edwards to guide viewers through the app, which was distributed virally.
Freesat also held one-to-one demos with influencers and press in the run-up to the announcements, to take them through the app, giving them the best possible exposure prior to the launch. This coupled with the press announcement led to over 40 pieces of coverage across trade, consumer and national media.
At launch, the Freesat App received accolades from a variety of leading publications and on social media, including:
Daily Telegraph
Freesat new app for iOS plans, remotely records and reminds to watch your favourite programmes as a companion to the Freesat box
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10577358/New-Freesat-app-launched-for-remote-TV-recording.html
Pocket-lint
Freesat launches iOS app for viewing control and remote recording
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/126599-freesat-launches-ios-app-for-viewing-control-and-remote-recording
Broadcast
Freesat taps into mobile devices with app launch
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/multiplatform/freesat-taps-into-mobile-devices-with-app-launch/5065402.article
See here for additional press coverage of the Freesat App launch:
http://releasd.com/6a39
“Ooh, the Freesat app's out and it's pretty sweet. Instantly launching iPlayer shows from my iPad's going to take a while to get old.”
https://twitter.com/JimMcCauley/statuses/424295399994982400
“The @freesat_tv app for iPhone is excellent on first impression. As functional as TiVo app and nice design. Better remote too.”
https://twitter.com/ljmb2/statuses/423947364794396672
Rick Edwards explains how the new Freesat App works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=budVmY9VbSg
Project Privacy
Freesat takes viewer privacy seriously, and actively takes steps to the data it collects is secure, including separating out viewing information and personal data, and keep them within secure environments. Freesat also offers viewers the opportunity to opt out of email and marketing alerts, enabling them to enhance their privacy settings.
Television/Movies
This category relates to applications that promote television and the digital living room.
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