By: Bruce Bahlmann - Contributing Author (your feedback is important to us!)

Created: November 8, 2008

The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) has long been the nemesis of video services. A key application delivered to video service consumers, the EPG has become an increasingly complex user interface and yet the foundation for program information, recommendations, and interactive applications on Set Top Boxes (STB)s and now on Consumer Electronics (CE) devices. Much of these features provided by the EPG fall under the general category of “guidance” and while content and applications for video services have multiplied like rabbits, the EPG has been slow to develop. The purpose of this article is to offer some insight into what is holding up progress as well as opportunities that are brewing as a result.

Challenges

Although the EPG is the face of video services as we know them, significant challenges exist within their ongoing development and support including:

Total control – The largest video service providers (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon) insist on building the EPG themselves rather than customizing a commercial EPG product. The basic idea behind in-house EPG development is total control over development priorities, release schedule, look-n-feel, and exclusive use/ownership. In-house development additionally struggle with the following issues:

• Competition for the best resources – Since in-house efforts are started with the notion “we can do it better and/or cheaper and/or faster”, attracting the best and brightest product managers and software developers is a difficult prospect for such an organization.
• Competition for EPG – Since in-house efforts don’t compete against other commercial EPG products, it’s only a matter of time before the in-house development organization becomes complacent.

Continuous Improvement – Consumers have also become complacent when it comes to EPG improvements to the point where they become alarmed (concerned) when changes do occur. Rather than having been trained to look at “change” as a positive (e.g. ”Cool, there is now a new feature in my guide”), they react negatively and flood the call centers with questions about what is wrong with their EPG.

Resource Constraints – EPGs operate within one of the most unconventional environments from a programming perspective. Instead of forward software engineering (simply adding new features), the platform must constantly deal with give and take – giving up certain features for other new features due to the limited memory and processor speed available.

Backwards Compatibility – Unless video service providers want to support multiple program guides, they must develop new software releases down to the lowest capable device – a lowest common denominator approach to software development. In addition to this, new software releases need to maintain complicated customer configurations stored within devices such as parental controls, favorite channels, preferences, and even DVR recording schedules.

Lack of Manufacturer Support – Up until fairly recently has Cisco (Scientific Atlanta) sold their own EPG called Scientific Atlanta Resident Application (SARA) with its STBs. However it has since dropped support for this platform leaving operators who have been relying on a steady stream of updates to look elsewhere. Motorola, the largest STB vendor doesn’t offer an EPG with their product.

Lack of Cross Selling – Subscribers generally have a hard time finding what is on. In the day of three networks, each network did a good job of keeping their audience informed about what they were doing (cross promotion spot). Today, you can’t really do that because there are just too many channels and it’s not like anyone settles on a single channel and watches that for more than a single show. Cross selling is also complicated by commercial zappers, TiVo, etc. that permits users to skip advertisements promoting future programming. Even with today’s best in class guidance technology, there is a lot going on that is available from cable, satellite, or telco that subscribers are not even aware of. As a result, there is no way, the way (based on typical use) for an individual to come across things by kismet.

Challenges such as these, work against the EPG being anything but a Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment so major software releases take years instead of months and smaller point releases take months instead of weeks.

Opportunities

In spite of all these challenges, the opportunities in the guidance market are heating up. The combination of Cisco dropping support for SARA, the bar raising on EPG functionality and look-n-feel (e.g. Verizon releasing a fairly significant jump in EPG functionality and Netflix finding new inroads into the living room via Samsung, Tivo, and X-box), and a dramatic increase in programming and available entertainment quality video from multiple sources is challenging the status quote of slow, reliable changes to the EPG.

Commercial EPGs will become an increasingly viable option – Challenged with significant lifting of the EPG functionality bar and an increase in demand for better looking and higher performing EPGs, in-house efforts to build EPGs that compete with what is available in the open market will be difficult and prohibitively expensive. I anticipate that within the coming year one of the three major video service providers building their own EPG abandons their effort and within three years there won’t be any video service providers actively building their own EPG – they will all be using customized Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) EPGs.

Core EPG features will become table stakes – Lets face it, all EPGs do pretty much the same core things so why all the investment in trying to differentiate one service from another within an area where they almost have to work the same anyway. Ultimately it will be the applications associated with these EPGs that will differentiate one service provider from another. Sure they will all use different skins, and different orientations of the same data, but beyond that video service providers will need to invest in applications that tie together their services and value added partnerships. Perhaps the way video service providers need to look at the EPG is the way Internet companies look at the Content Management System (CMS) running their company websites. Even if Internet companies use the same CMS, it doesn’t mean they cannot differentiate themselves from a fierce competitor – it is all about the themes, skins, content, etc. that they use to differentiate themselves. If video service providers spend fewer resources on the core development of their EPG, they can afford to spend more on truly differentiated features.

Guide data will eventually differentiate one EPG from another – Up till now if you licensed guide data from one of programming data suppliers such as Tribune Media Services (TMS) or Macrovision (TVGuide) and had unlimited resources and time you could build an EPG every bit as good as anything available. However, as guide data grows to include studio library metadata, Corbis inventory metadata, Netflix recommendations, YouTube library metadata, your video service provider’s VoD library metadata, personal digital library, etc. the challenge to incorporate all this into an EPG becomes gargantuan – perhaps even to the point where such data relationships wouldn’t be exposed by TMS or Macrovision. Instead, the only way video service providers will gain access to these high-value data relationships is through buying an EPG from the data provider who exposes these data relationships. Through these relationships, video service providers can then build applications to better cross promote their unique content.

Conclusions

Without continuous and significant improvement in the EPG, especially within the guidance technology area, the video product becomes less and less valuable over time because the value that is in there becomes more and more difficult to extract from the offering. This results in a chain reaction which ultimately decreases potential audience numbers for programmers. However the most significant outcome from programming choices continuing to multiply like rabbits and EPG development efforts continuing to plod along slowly, is that the resulting delta increasingly provides operating room along with multiple business cases for new comers to rise up and become active participants in not only the guidance of all this content but potentially in the delivery as well.

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