A Bespoke cable box VOD platform

NBC is one of the largest television production and distribution companies in the world and their main client base is in Northern American. They have been a company at the forefront of technology within this sector however due to the size and complexity of their operation, legacy technology has become a burden. That is where this new VOD team has been created to help create new and exciting propositions for every customer of the NBCU landscape

NBCU has a wide array of users throughout the USA, all at varying subscription and equipment levels. The smaller locations within the USA using cable boxes was the market that they wanted to increase for upcoming events.

Cable providers and boxes have a varied level of technology, therefore the solution needed to be accessible to the lowest common denominator, making sure to give a acceptable user experience.

This proposition was to take inspiration from previous iterations of VOD platforms such as their hugely successful paid VOD platform Peacock. We began by investigating the technology and understanding our constraints, it was obvious we could take guidance from the flagship VOD carrier but our platform would vary in technical ability due to the cable box hardware our users operated on.

With this in mind we could still make use of HTML standards but the premium touches and animations could not be utilised due to the hardwares capabilities.

The team was based in 6 different time zones truly being global showing that even under the worst of situations humans can succeed. During this period I explored ways to help the team understand the design decisions and flows using a small company called Loom. A simple Chrome plugin that helped the team through screen casting. So much so that NBCU introduced the platform into their main suite of products.

The platform had a great uptake, which allowed us to return to iterate into future events such as the Beijing Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup. Having worked on a VOD platform around this time of World Crisis was a joy and to date one of my favourite projects.