Hi,
Today we are taking out of preview, bringing new benefits like collections and better discoverability options and making it the default experience. We have spent the last 10 weeks working through the feedback you have provided and adding some final polish to ensure it is to the high standard expected of 主播大秀 iPlayer.
I would like to share some of the feedback we received and how we looked to address it with some quotes that illustrate the major themes.
鈥淚t looks nice, but the back button does not work鈥�
This is an example of how our users can teach us things we didn鈥檛 know. We always aim to minimise clutter and functionality that isn鈥檛 being used, and we thought we might have an example here 鈥� but because we weren鈥檛 entirely sure, rather than remove it completely, we did put in a few minimal back journeys to see how they would be used - turns out quite a lot!
Consequently, we have now restored full hierarchical back journeys so you can navigate back through the application and even exit with the back button. From playback, you can return to the screen you came from whilst the video continues playing so you can easily find more from that channel or category. If you want to remove the playback controls quickly, you can simply push down twice and it will clear the screen.
We have also standardised some of the journeys so that they are more consistent, for example, the expanding of episodes in the Category A-Zs is now vertical rather than horizontal to make it easier to get back.
A to Z in the new iPlayer for TV
鈥淟ike the new design 鈥� the 鈥榝avourites鈥� needs some more work though.鈥�
There was some feedback about the changes to favourites. Whilst some of you like its new prominence on the home screen, others have been frustrated that we are limiting the number of favourites, that favourites have not been migrated and that you can only favourite from within playback.
Firstly, I can confirm that we are migrating favourites from the old version to the new version. However, we are reducing the number of favourites you can hold as we are moving to a location storage model. I understand that this will be disappointing news for some of you but it is a necessary change we have to make to preserve our server infrastructure. The feedback from users who like to favourite multiple programmes without watching them and then watch them later took us by surprise. It is not the main use case for this functionality but I can see how it would be useful. We are working on addressing this but hopefully with the ability to discover over playout, you can continue to do this easily.
Favourites are migrating from the old version to the new version
鈥淚t seems slower than the old version鈥�
There is no doubt this new version is more graphically rich and requires more from your device. However we are keenly aware that TV viewing is primarily a visual experience, and since we built the first version of iPlayer for TVs, the capability of devices has taken a big step on. We want to embrace the opportunity this gives us, and to make 主播大秀 iPlayer on TV as engaging and high quality as we can.
The technical team in Salford has been poring over memory dumps and performance monitors to reduce the unnecessary weight in the application and remove any memory leaks. The keen-eyed amongst you might notice a simpler background, a few less gradients and other minor visual changes that all went to improve performance. I believe it is markedly better but we are still working on how we can improve performance to ensure the best possible.
The new home page
鈥淎ny idea when we might see this rolled out to Virgin's Tivo boxes?鈥�
And I might add YouView devices, XBox 360 , NOW TV - the list could go on.
We see this as *the* 主播大秀 iPlayer experience going forward and are working to bring it to as many devices as possible. Some have HTML 5 stacks and it is a matter of testing, applying some tweaks where required and deploying, others we are further off with. We are hoping to bring this to YouView and Virgin Media TiVo devices this year and are working with the relevant companies to make this a reality.
鈥淭V works, but there's no radio. Is it hidden and I can't find it?鈥�
We have decided not to include radio within this new version of 主播大秀 iPlayer 鈥� I appreciate this is not the response some of you wanted. This is because the effort required to support on-demand radio listening via TVs is significant but TVs are not a significant way that people are using to listen to on-demand radio content. You can continue to enjoy live radio on all Freeview, Freesat and YouView devices and live and on demand radio via on computers, tablets and smart phones.
As always we are interested in hearing your opinions to improve the product. So please let me know what you think 鈥� either via the comments below or using the
Marcus Parnwell, Executive Product Manager for 主播大秀 iPlayer on TV.