By Chris Lee

On-demand TV is on the up in the UK. According to a study out early this year, 6.9 per cent of UK TV viewing is “time-shifted”, in other words watched on-demand either via recording or online playback.

With all major TV channels in the UK now offering on-demand TV, the debate has come down to usability, as well as the quality of the content. One company which has been monitoring the on-demand TV user experience is Webcredible, which monitored the top six on-demand broadcasters and measured them according Webcredible’s own best practice guidelines.

The company released its “Video on Demand: Playing Catch Up” report this month, and found that the BBC iPlayer provided the best overall experience to users with 88 per cent, followed by Scottish broadcaster STV’s STV Player with 76 per cent. At the bottom of the pile was Sky Player with just 55 per cent, complicated somewhat by a more complex commercialised offering, according to Webcredible. Also analysed were Channel 5’s Demand Five, Channel 4’s 4oD and ITV Player.

Player ratings

The BBC was the first mover in the on-demand TV space, which might go some way to explaining its superior user experience, according to Webcredible’s Yeevon Ooi.

“What the BBC has is a product which has been improved and refined over the years,” Ooi said. “In a way, it has been around for a long enough period of time to understand what users want and don’t want, and being the first mover, it has also set the trend for how video-on-demand (VoD) websites work, which naturally shapes consumers’ expectations when they transfer this knowledge to other VoD providers.”

According to Ooi, video-on-demand users want simplicity as they just want to watch programmes they’ve missed or want to see whenever and wherever they want.

“Having easy-to-use video-on-demand websites or players to support these key tasks are essentially what the majority of consumers want,” she added.

But what about going forward? Where is on-demand TV going to be in two or even five years time? According to Ooi, it’s going mobile.

“TV on demand is now definitely going mobile and onto other portable devices such as the iPad, with BBC iPlayer again taking the lead on this,” she concluded. “In addition, the ability to watch movies via different subscription packages, such as those provided by Demand Five and Sky, has the potential to encourage people to watch movies wherever and whenever they want as well.”

You can hear Webcredible discuss the findings of its report here.