Sunrise Enhances Content Discovery with AI-Powered TV Highlights

Case study

Swiss telco Sunrise has transformed the way its customers discover content by implementing TV Highlights powered by Media Distillery’s Previews. Instead of static thumbnails, Sunrise viewers now see dynamic video snippets that make browsing and content selection faster and more engaging.

The Challenge

With a vast library spanning live, replay, catch-up, VOD, and OTT services, Sunrise customers have an abundance of choice. But too much choice can create “decision fatigue,” where users spend more time searching than watching.

Although Sunrise already offered strong recommendation and personalization engines, the company wanted to give customers a more visual, intuitive way to preview what’s on: one that would be effective in Switzerland’s multilingual market and consistent across all devices. Wanting to use video snippets to improve content discovery, but aware that manual clip creation was not scalable, the Sunrise team looked for an automated approach.

The Solution

To address this, Sunrise deployed the machine learning and AI-powered Previews, part of Media Distillery’s award-winning Search and Discovery Suite. Previews automatically generates short video previews from live broadcast TV and VOD assets.

Each day, Previews creates around 100 clips, each spoiler-free and around 15–20 seconds long, from Sunrise’s 50 most-watched channels. Previews are generated from live broadcasts in near real-time. These highlights give viewers a quick sense of what a program is about - whether it’s a documentary, talk show, or sporting event - without the need for human editorial input.

TV Highlights are fully integrated into the Sunrise TV App experience

Home screen placement: Clips enrich the main carousel and a dedicated highlights row.

Personalization: Every viewer sees a unique array of highlights based on their behavior.

Cross-platform: The feature is available across mobiles, tablets, smart TVs, Apple TV, and web apps.

Our customers have so much interesting content to choose from in our TV service, but we know that some viewers can find it difficult to decide what to watch. Our research shows that if we present short highlights to the users, it helps them decide faster, and as such, it increases engagement.

Christoph Richartz

Chief Consumer Officer Main Brand, Sunrise

Results

Accelerates content discovery

Highlights make it easier for customers to identify appealing content quickly, reducing frustration and time spent browsing.

Enhances engagement

By encouraging exploration and providing personalized previews, Sunrise has increased viewing satisfaction and strengthened loyalty.

Builds differentiation in the market

In Switzerland’s competitive TV market, Sunrise stands out by combining recommendation engines with automated highlights that enrich the user experience for a multilingual audience.

Power of partnership

Previews was integrated with Liberty Global’s Horizon platform which powers the Sunrise TV services. “With the support of Media Distillery’s advanced AI technology, we can deliver accurate and engaging TV highlight clips that transform content discovery,” says Chris van der Linden, Director Entertainment Platforms at Liberty Global. “By combining Liberty Global’s product vision with Media Distillery’s deep video understanding, we’re delivering a future-ready platform built around user value, performance, and flexibility.”

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