Green button live restart added to STV Freeview service

STV has become the first commercial broadcaster in the UK to launch a live restart function on its channel.

Powered by broadcast infrastructure company Arqiva, and first spotted by viewers in the STV region a few weeks back, live restart enables Freeview users to press green to restart the current programme via the STV Player. Users of older Freeview receivers that don't support this functionality won't see the prompt.

After a soft-launch on STV SD in December, the option to press green to restart programmes is now also being extended to cover STV HD (Freeview channel 103 in Central and Northern Scotland).

The service is available on pre-recorded programming across the STV broadcast schedule, such as Emmerdale, Coronation Street, all upcoming dramas, Catchphrase, The Masked Singer and a range of factual programming.

Until now, only the BBC has offered such a service on Freeview. But STV says it is "exploring other platforms to extend the service to other users across Scotland".

Richard Williams, MD, Digital, at STV, commented:

 Providing an enjoyable, flexible and intuitive viewer experience is paramount to us and we are delighted to now offer a restart service on our SD and HD channels on DTT and Freeview – seamlessly taking viewers from the linear schedule to the STV Player platform with ease... Thanks to Arqiva’s heritage in the broadcast industry and its proven expertise in delivering Hybrid TV services, it developed a solution that met our ambitious requirements in a very short timeframe.”

Meanwhile, Drew Hosie, Head of Product at Arqiva, said:

 We are thrilled to collaborate with STV to support the launch of its restart service on DTT and Freeview Play, offering an innovative service to help it stay ahead of what is an immensely competitive and challenging environment. Our flexible offering allows STV to precisely control the availability and launch of their HbbTV applications to their viewers. As well as offering a Hybrid TV solution, Arqiva manages the complexity of deploying, monitoring and associated data analytics, so STV doesn’t have to. Enhancing the viewing experience is always front of mind for our customers, and this is an exciting development for our Hybrid TV product which we expect to see more broadcasters taking advantage of in the future.

[Images: Arqiva/STV PR]