User Experience, Voice Navigation, Costs Challenging to MVPDs, Panelists Say

bar" they expect, Thun said. Devices, content distribution options and competitors that didn't exist 10 years ago were joined by changes in the past 18-24 months in user experience trends, challenging MVPDs, said Parks analyst Brett Sappington. Deeper focus on TV viewing is needed to make voice navigation successful for video viewing, said Thun. On the top challenges facing MVPDs, Thun said TiVo research finds in testing video services, consumers inevitably bring up Netflix functionality, and a typical comment might be: “I don’t see those in my pay-TV experience.” Sappington and Thun said more MVPDs are using Google Android TV apps to improve user experience. A typical video customer might interact with two or three pay-TV interfaces over a three-to-five-year period compared to “dozens, perhaps even hundreds” of mobile app experiences, he said: That creates a “much broader landscape” influencing consumer perception of where innovation is happening and how fast. MVPDs looking to new infrastructure are hampered by costs of repurposing their networks' spectrum, replacing set-top boxes, developing software and running separate networks for different delivery mechanisms, said Sappington. Costs aren’t trivial to a “massive transition,” which musn't alienate consumers, Sappington said. “They have to do it in a way that the consumer doesn’t feel it at all because if subscribers end up feeling the pain of transition, they’ll just go somewhere else.”