TV Genius » TV Genius Software Release Notes

2010 Build 4 – performance, SEO, and thumbnail improvements

Tom Weiss — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:26:29 +0000

We have just deployed a new build of the content discovery platform, including the following changes:

SEO enhancements: better keyword injection and SEO friendly URLs
Performance improvements: completely re-worked database interface layer for the whole content discovery platform for increased performance
Improved thumbnail handling: now offer generic width x height thumbnail rendering
Bug fixes:
- Include option to always show flags in accessible component
- Now include recommendations in shows linked from recommendations in small screen fee
- Now always show the full number of episodes and showings for shows with multiple repeats and episodes
- Reminder confirmation now includes full details of the reminder that has been set up
- No longer create empty title attributes on link elements

Twitter support, Google Sitemaps and More

guillermo.christen — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:50:40 +0000

We have just deployed a new release of the content discovery platform. The changes include:

Enhancements:

Improved formatting for Show Details to display an external channel Link if available.
Navigation in Show Details: links added to navigate to previous/next show on the same channel.
search engine optimizations for the EPG:
- Programme summaries are now search engine friendly.
- Support for Keyword injection in the EPG.
EPG navigation improvements: user can now navigate EPG to morning, afternoon, evening or night.
Improved thumbnail management and delivery.
New search option to include repeats within search results.
Users are no longer limited to 30 favourite channels.
Now support filtering by channel language on ‘all channels’
Twitter integration: search supports searching for top tweeted shows on TV today.

Bug fixes:

Fixed issue affecting searches that contained the ‘live’ flag.

Recommendations enhancements, improved flags, and genre filtering

Tom Weiss — Tue, 04 May 2010 07:32:13 +0000

We have just deployed a new build of the content discovery platform with the following changes:

Enhancements:

Improved formatting for show details to display cast members in a list
Improved formatting for TV flags, such as Subtitles and HD
Now support filtering by genre on “my channels” as well as “all channels”
Support for shows to be “also available in HD” on other channels
Enhanced recommendations
- New rule: always recommend the next episode in a series
- New option to restrict recommendations to a specific time period, for example “recommendations for primetime”
- Support for displaying prices next to VoD items
- Support regionalisation in clips component
- Small screen enhancements
  - Support for show rating
  - Support for cross broadcaster recommendations
  - Support for email reminders from the rated shows component

Bug fixes:

Add the ability to highlight the episode title in the search results
No longer incorrectly log contact types for single sign on.
Accessible component now respects tvgShowLinks
Now support tvgShowDetailsDiv from the picks component
Now support multiple sources for show tagging in a recommendations engine set

New build – performance, search, and remote record improvements

Tom Weiss — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:38:39 +0000

We’ve just released a new build of the platform, that contains the following updates:

Performance improvements across all components for the web and mobile epg services
Now display when show was last on if no search results were found
New remote record API
Bug fixes and minor enhancements
- Fix date inconsistencies when selecting early morning viewing
- No longer display the light box when a popover contains select element (IE6 workaround)
- Changed content type for small screen XML feed from text/xml to application/xml
- Removed spurious doctype references from some web epg components
- Support for more than one word in the day name (Danish support)
- Optionally include the show category in the show mouse over
- Support for customised phone number validation

Last build of 2009 – show rating and TV recommendations

Tom Weiss — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:55:34 +0000

New functionality: support for show rating and recommendations in the web API
Updates to recommendations component to differentiate recommendations by ratings, reminders, or an individual show
Minor updates and bug fixes:
- Enhanced email address validation
- Changed structure of CSS in video search component to avoid IE bugs
- Include more characters in channel logo file names
- Minor changes in capitalisation
- Better SEO of listings component magazine view
- Now highlight the users email address when they are logged in and signing up for reminders

New release – show rating, top shows, rss, and further SEO

Tom Weiss — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:52:00 +0000

We have just deployed a new release of the TV Genius platform including the following new functionality:

Show rating in search and recommendations components, including Storing of rating against user profiles and use in recommendations
A new show widget, providing details for a specific show.
A new top shows component that displays the top shows on TV over the next few days
A new channel view displaying one channel at a time with navigation to other channels
Full RSS support for searches and email reminders
SEO support: link from the listings grid to full details for a particular channel with a SEO friendly URL
Initial support for semantic HTML in accessible and show details components

This release also includes the following bug fixes:

Improved accessible component with enhanced structure for screen readers, new navigation options, and improved performance
Support within the listings component for advertising or other content within the grid
New day navigation options for the listings grid
Added option button pop-up option for changing region and broadcaster
New lightbox functionality to allow greying out of background when pop over functionality is displayed
iTunes affiliate tracking support
Now support top shows in clips component
Now changed hour drop down to a range of times.
Added support for pixel tracking to german out of the box
Now rename package “Sky & Cable” to “Satellite & Cable2
Added some additional structure to the accessible component to ease navigation using screen readers
Optimised the performance of localised Javascript
Fixed situation where some episode and repeats searches started on page 2.
Deprecated tvgHighestRank parameter
Deprecated explicit search for flagged listings from small screen XML feed – now only uses enhanced search syntax
Deprecated channel zoom div from the listings component
Improved Ajax error handling
Added extra classes for search slices to ease styling
Fixed some bugs in cache handling
Now support tvgClockStyle in accessible component
Fixes to SSO integration to ensure support for storing tvgContact and tvgPasswordHash in a cookie
Improved performance of XML channel list
No longer show repeats links if repeats:on
Improved day handling in search nav component
Improved handling of parameters in querystrings
Updated formatting for search component when sorting scheduled shows by start.
Updated new reminder component to support tvgContact not being set
Now include search phrase in quotation marks
Changed encoding for all Javascript to UTF-8 to prevent problems with foreign characters
Optimised channel list and now use local time not UTC time when displaying days
No longer include empty episodes links in show details component
Now localise All Channels / My Channels button
Added localisation support to new reminder component
now clear the listings category when setting the channel genre
Listings component now retains the visible time frame in magazine view when scrolling between channels
Support for channel logos in xml feeds
Now link previous/next weeks buttons to primetime
Added a span to the recommendations title
Added flags to small screen XML feed

New build: Recommendations Engine and Web EPG enhancements

Tom Weiss — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:03:00 +0000

We have just deployed a new release of the TV Genius content discovery platform which includes the following:

recommendations engine
- Support for show rating
- Can now force a specific number of shows to be recommended
- Hybrid TV recommendations across shows, user ratings, and most popular
web epg Listings enhancements
- Can now include any HTML for in grid promotion
- Support for completely customisable days links
Other Web EPG enhancements:
- Favourite channels component now adds new channels at the bottom rather than the top
- Now include digital EPG channels numbers in accessible component
- Improved show selection functionality in accessible component
- New RSS feeds for online video and IPTV
- Brand new picks component for the Web EPG
Mobile and IPTV EPG support for catch up TV
Improved in caching and performance optimisation for all Web EPG, mobile epg, and IPTV services
Completely reworked interactive documentation for the Web EPG components
Reduced the size of tvg_ajax.js file

Platform update

Tom Weiss — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:37:00 +0000

We have just deployed a maintenance release of the TV Genius platform, including

Support for question marks “?” in URLs
Support for EPG view in the listings component when tvgLoadWholeDay=Yes
Support for alternating column colours in magazine view
Bug fix for show rating in the small screen XML feed
Optimisations to paging functionality when tvgListingsGenre is set

New build: search hints, slicing, and recommendations enhancements

Tom Weiss — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:13:00 +0000

We have just deployed our latest build of the TV Genius platform to production which includes the folllowing:

Product enhancements
- search
  - Now support search hints in search boxes
  - Search slicing provides drill-down functionality on search results
  - Support for enhanced search terms in small screen XML feed
- recommendations
  - Multiple sources for picks and manual prioritisation
  - Manual recommendations
  - Filter recommendations by source
  - Support for enhanced search terms and top shows searches in small screen XML feed
  - Show rating and active recommendations
- Continuing SEO enhancements
Bug fixes and minor enhancements
- Listings component: now support tvgShowWholeDay in grid view
- Listings component: Performance enhancements on listings grid and scrolling
- Search: improved search found text for enhanced search parameters
- Search: support for graphical repeats and episodes links
- Search: support for my reminders in search menus
- Search: clips search now includes previous links
- Search: improved synonym handling and tracking
- General: renamed three Javascript variables with “tvg”
- General: cookie precedence now respected with personalisation
- General: now support question marks in URLs, e.g. tvguide.html?type=search
- Out of the box site: fixed occasional page refreshing bug
- Reminders: in some cases email reminders were restricted by channels agains the users request
- Reminders: users now always receive an SMS confirming their subscription
- Online TV: some links to whole shows were not working

Platform update – related content, improved performance, and more SEO

Tom Weiss — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:08:00 +0000

We have just deployed a new buld which includes the following new items:

Related content – web pages and shows matched using tags, for example, searching for “Hugh Laurie House” rather than just “House” for matches against the show House.
Improved performance – better load balancing, and caching across browser sessions
search Engine Optimisation – Further SEO of details and search components as part of our SEO programme

There are also three bug fixes:

Now always revert to first page of the listings when changing broadcaster or region
Search menu now works with customised results text
Correct wording on small screen XML feed with enhanced search