With your voice and an Amazon Alexa-enabled device, you can now search for TV shows and films on YouView. This makes finding your favourite programme as simple as saying, “Alexa, search for Love Island”.
Voice enabled search is initially being made available to a range of devices within YouView’s base of retail set-top boxes and will be coming to BT TV and TalkTalk TV homes soon. Users that have one of these boxes and an Alexa-enabled device will be able to pair the two together by following simple instructions in the Alexa app. Once paired, users will be able to make spoken search requests as a seamless enhancement to their regular use of the YouView service.
“YouView provides access to 100,000s of titles and search is a great way to navigate this catalogue,” said Sion Wynn-Jones, Director of Product, YouView. “So, the introduction of voice enabled search makes it even easier for users of the service to find what they’re looking for.”
YouView was one of the first partners in the UK to work with Amazon on the integration of the Alexa Video Skill capability, leveraging YouView’s knowledge of the UK media landscape and its expertise in delivering connected TV experiences.
“Reliable speech recognition is clearly critical to any voice control service, so it’s been fantastic to have been working with Amazon on this,” said Jeff Hunter, Chief Architect, YouView. “A successful user experience requires the end-to-end voice interaction to feel natural and responsive, which was key for us getting this experience right for YouView customers.”
John Richardson, Head of Cloud Services at YouView, takes up the story. “We knew delivering fast performance to our customers at scale would be critical to our success, which is why we decided to use AWS IoT. AWS IoT provides scale to YouView boxes globally all while providing an exceptional and secure experience for customers.”
