BT plans multiscreen and OTT developments

Following the rollout of its BT Sports app this autumn, the UK telco and pay TV operator has plans to add a similar “multiscreen proposition” for its other channels and VoD services, according to BT exec Jerome Tassel. 

Speaking at the OTTtv World Summit this week, Tassel, BT’s TV architecture and security director, said that BT was “absolutely” looking at how it can extend it multiscreen options, building on the early success of its Sport app, which already lets customers the ability to live-stream its BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN channels to their smartphone or tablet.

He also said that BT was looking to experiment with ‘red button’ options so that viewers could switch between IP-delivered content, especially after BT recently took the rights to show Champions League and Europa League football from 2015/16 onwards.

Asked whether BT planned to make multiple Champions League football matches available at the same time and how it would do this, Tassel said: “We’re thinking about red button, blue button, to go between platforms as well – so things like [if] you start to watch something on the sport channel on our IPTV platform and you want to watch something else, it will prompt you that the channel that you want is available on your tablet, through your sport app and things like that. We’re probably going to maybe make more channels available as well.”

Elsewhere, he said that BT was also working to make it easier for viewers to easily find and watch OTT and VoD content, regardless of what app or service it originates from – bringing together “siloed applications”.

“[I] do find it abhorrent that sometimes you have to record content when in fact you’ve got a subscription with an OTT provider where that content is already available. We need to be a lot more clever at merging all those sources of content.”