India’s leading Direct to Home (DTH) operator Tata Sky has introduced a new Smart Guide feature that will enable personalized content recommendations for each user, based on what they watch. This feature has now been rolled out for all High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD) set top boxes (STB). The Guide feature on these STBs has been updated to include these recommendations. A user has to press the Guide button on the Tata Sky remote to access this. The Tata Sky Smart Guide is being rolled out for all DTH users with HD and SD STBs, irrespective of the channel subscription packages they may have subscribed to at this time. These features are being rolled out as part of a software update.
The channel guide screen will offer thumbnail views of the most watched channels for each user, the most popular genres and the platform services that have been subscribed. There will be categorizations including ‘Your Top Channels’, ‘Trending Channels’ and ‘Favourite Genre’. The software update allows Tata Sky STBs to offer content and channel recommendations based on what you have been watching. “While digital platforms have developed the ability to personalise experiences, on broadcast television this hasn’t been offered so far in a significant way. With the latest software upgrade, our HD and SD set-top boxes now offer smarter recommendations based on a subscriber’s content consumption patterns leading to an enhanced TV viewing experience,” says Pallavi Puri, Chief Commercial and Content Officer, Tata Sky.
Do remember though, these Smart Guide recommendations are based on the usage behaviour for each STB—which means if your home is a multi-TV subscription, the recommendations on each STB will be based on the channels and content you have consumed on that STB. Tata Sky says that the software update also enhances the Linear Search feature which now allows users to search for channels with the channel name. In case your Tata Sky STB has not received this software update just yet, we would recommend giving it a few days, because this will be a phased rollout and should reach all STBs in the next few hours. Tata Sky says that the software update has been completed on 15 million STBs already.
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