- Features
- Live TV
Channels People Can Actually Flick Through
Live television only works if changing channel is faster than thinking about it. Vodlix puts the player, the channel list and the categories on one screen, with the guide a tap away, so browsing feels like television rather than like a website with a video on it.
Linear Television Is a Browsing Habit, Not a Delivery Method
People do not watch live channels the way they watch films. There is no deciding, no reading a synopsis, no adding anything to a list. There is a channel, and if it is not interesting within a few seconds there is the next channel. That behaviour is centuries old in television terms and it is the thing most streaming apps get wrong, because they build live TV as a page you navigate into and out of rather than as a surface you move around inside. Vodlix keeps the player and the channel list on screen together, so changing channel does not mean going back. That single decision is most of what makes a live section feel like television instead of like a video embedded in a website.
The channel you are watching plays while the list of everything else stays visible beside it. Flicking through is a single tap rather than a navigation, which is exactly how a remote control behaves.
What is playing right now sits above the list, and the full schedule is one tap away rather than a separate destination. Most viewers only ever need the first of those, and they should not have to ask for it.
A channel found on a phone can be thrown at the big screen without restarting anything, which is how live viewing actually starts in a lot of households.
Categories Are How a Long List Stays Usable
A dozen channels can be a list. Two hundred cannot, and every operator ends up with more channels than they expected because carriage is cheap and dropping one annoys somebody. Categories are what keep that manageable, letting a viewer narrow to news, or sport, or the local channels, without scrolling past everything else. Search sits alongside them for the people who already know what they want. Neither is exciting and both are the difference between a channel list somebody uses and one they give up on. Channels carry their own numbers as well, which matters more than it sounds in markets where people have known a channel by its number for twenty years and will type it rather than browse for it.
Switched On Per Platform, Not All at Once
Live television does not have to arrive everywhere on the same day. It can be enabled for the television apps separately from everywhere else, and the guide can be turned on for mobile and for TV independently, which is what you want when your schedule data covers some of your channels and not others. Advertising in live streams is its own switch, because the commercial arrangement around a linear channel is rarely the same as the one around your catalogue. There are presentation choices too, such as showing the channel list as circles on the home page or running a wall of live channels, and a control to refresh the guide when a provider has sent a correction and you do not want to wait for the next poll. The schedule itself is covered under EPG, advertising under advertisements, and catching up on something already broadcast under network DVR.
Where This Sits Against the Rest
Three things are easy to confuse and worth separating. Getting a signal into the platform in the first place is live streaming. Delivering channels over managed networks to set top boxes is IPTV. This page is the third thing, which is what the viewer meets, the list and the guide and the player on whatever screen they picked up. They are usually all in play at once, and they fail in different ways, which is why it is worth knowing which one you are actually asking about. Live channels sit beside your on demand catalogue rather than in a separate product, so a viewer moving between a channel and a boxed set never leaves your app, and both are covered by the same monetization models.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions about taking advantage of this limited-time offer? Check out the FAQ for answers.