Recently, Dutch streaming service NLZIET examined the impact of Media Distillery’s content discovery solution, Topic Distillery, on the user experience during a beta test. The results demonstrate overwhelming support for the expanded title descriptions, shorter chapters, topic-based upgrade of the search catalogue, and other newly added features.
A screenshot of the chapter overview in the user interface during the beta test.
NLZIET is a fast-growing Dutch OTT streaming service owned and operated by the country’s three major broadcasting groups (NPO, RTL, and Talpa), offering the biggest online collection of content from Dutch broadcasters. It provides live TV, catch-up (replay), and on-demand content.
In 2022, NLZIET and Media Distillery started a collaboration to explore the AI potential in the video industry. The collaboration tackles the lack of descriptive metadata - a notorious industry pain point, particularly in non-scripted live content like news, talk shows, or reality shows.
Media Distillery and NLZIET focused on making content chapters visible in the play bar. This feature helps users to quickly see what the program is about and watch only the parts of the content they are interested in.
The AI-powered Topic Distillery™ technology automatically extracts metadata out of video, audio, teletext, and EPG, utilising Computer Vision, Speech-to-Text, and other AI/ML technologies. The real-time processing identifies topics and splits the content into logical segments, adding, on average, 21 topic tags per program.
With the successful implementation, TV operators can prevent churn among users with a preference for snackable content, popularised by TikTok and Youtube Shorts.
“With Topic Distillery, this content suddenly, just 15 minutes after live broadcast, has long-lasting value – it’s a new way of consuming TV. We did consider other providers and technology solutions, but no one we spoke to could do what Topic Distillery does.” - NLZIET CTO Sander Kouwenhoven.
