Nuance brings voice to Virgin Media cable TV in Ireland
Thursday, November 9th, 2017Nuance Brings Voice to Liberty Global Cable TV Offering
- Subscribers of Virgin Media in Ireland can now find and play films and TV Channels simply by speaking
BURLINGTON, Mass. — Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading provider of voice and language solutions, today announced that its Dragon TV voice technology is powering Virgin Media TV Anywhere App. Liberty Global Group, the largest international cable company, has integrated Nuance’s voice technology to allow Virgin Media subscribers in Ireland to search and access films and TV channels by simply clicking the microphone icon located in the app and speaking into their smartphone microphone. The new service launched in Ireland in late September and is available to all customers with a Virgin TV package and Android/iOS device.
The Virgin Media TV Anywhere app leverages Dragon TV to enhance usability and discovery of Liberty Global TV offering. Rather than typing in content keywords by letter or scrolling through hundreds of channels, the app supports commands “Find the Commitments”, “Play TV3” or “Record Dr. Who”. Dragon TV leverages advances in deep learning and natural language understanding to create this conversational interface for subscribers.
“We want our subscribers to have easy access to all of their favorite content – and it needs to be simple to find and use. With all the content we offer across sources like live TV, replay TV and on demand, we need to ensure our subscribers can easily discover their next favorite show or movie. By developing a voice interface in partnership with Nuance, we’ve created a new conversational interface that is intelligent and intuitive. We believe voice will grow to become an important means for our subscribers to interact with our entertainment products and services going forward, from apps to devices and smart home appliances.” said Mark Giesbers, VP, Entertainment Products at Liberty Global.
“Voice transforms the traditional TV interface and is making content fully accessible – creating new opportunities for the subscriber and for the operator with new revenue and engagement potential,” said Dan Faulkner, senior vice president and general manager, Communications Service Providers, Nuance Mobile. “Working closely with Liberty Global, we’ve integrated our AI-driven speech recognition as part of a remote control that delivers an amazing experience for their subscribers – fully optimized to find and deliver content across thousands of titles, names and programs.”
Dragon TV – already used in more than 60 million households today – is part of Nuance’s Smart Home portfolio of solutions for service providers, designed to create an intuitive and conversational user interface that transforms the electronic program guide into an interactive experience. It leverages Nuance’s advancements in in deep learning and natural language understanding to create an interface that listens and responds, providing subscribers with a content experience that is remarkably easy to use and intuitive. Dragon TV recently won a Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award in the “Contextual Voice Navigation for Discovering and Interacting with TV Content” category. It supports both embedded and cloud-based voice technologies for integration within set top-boxes, remote controls and second screen mobile applications, giving service providers the ability to create customized experiences that best meet their needs. And because Dragon TV is optimized for TV and media content, the solution can recognize and speak thousands of show titles, programs, movies, genres and content and is fully customizable across more than 40 languages.
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