FiOS TV subscribers in the Northeast woke up Tuesday morning (Jan. 10) to a new way of interacting and enjoying their TV experience. The new benefits are the result of Verizon’s continued transformation of FiOS TV viewing by bringing the next generation of its FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide to subscribers in the company’s New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island service areas.

More than 4.2 million households in these states can now take advantage of award-winning FiOS TV and the advanced IMG. Introduced in 2007, the FiOS TV IMG was the first broadband platform to pull together content from broadcast TV, the Internet and users’ own personal media into one media-management system.

It has since evolved into an in-depth, interactive TV experience, with applications for advanced/intuitive search, social networking, Internet video, personal media streaming, high-definition music, remote DVR controls, account management and billing functions, multi-screen/mobile viewing and much more.

The company used customer feedback taken in through its product development labs, field trials and online consumer forums to create many of the more than 25 new upgrades to FiOS TV’s advanced IMG that are now available to subscribers in the tri-state area. The enhancements include greater personalization and customization, easier navigation, deeper search, bigger storage options and optimization for new 3D technology.

“Customers are at the center of everything we do, and that includes how we develop our products and services,” said Susan Retta, vice president of marketing for Verizon’s Northeast area.

“FiOS TV isn’t about passive video watching – it has evolved into an entertainment and information destination. Our new generation of FiOS TV is all about simplicity of design, increased user interactivity and ease of use. It’s yet another way we want our customers to get the most out of their FiOS services.”

Highlights include:

• Improved search capabilities, which provide a smarter search function that predicts what the customer is looking for and automatically provides potential matches. FiOS TV customers also can filter and sort by channel, and more easily locate favorite programs.
• DVR enhancements, which give FiOS TV customers more control with the following:
• DVR chaptering, giving viewers DVD-like capabilities to jump ahead or resume viewing at a particular moment of recorded programming by using on-screen thumbnails in 10-minute increments, providing more visual navigation.
• Multi-hub DVR, which turns any DVR or HD set-top box in the home into a “hub,” allowing customers to record and manage DVR settings from any room in the home, provided one of the DVRs is a multi-room DVR.
• eSATA external storage device compatibility, available with most FiOS TV DVRs, allowing for increased overall storage capacity. The eSATA hard drives can be purchased at most consumer electronics stores and will automatically record customer selections once plugged into the DVR.
• New ”play all” and “delete all” options, allowing customers to play episodes back-to-back and automatically delete all episodes of a show with the push of a button.

• Personalization features, which let FiOS TV customers enjoy entertainment on their own terms, including:
• New parental control options that make monitoring children’s viewing even easier, with the ability to block out portions of programming by rating during key hours of the day, like homework time, and schedule certain times for Parental Controls to be automatically turned on and off for greater flexibility.
• Guide customization, enabling a variety of settings, with a mini guide on the bottom of the screen, a half guide on the right side of the screen, and a full guide with a look at more hours of scheduled programming.

• 3D content software, which automatically detects when a customer tunes to a 3D program or channel and instantly changes the necessary settings for watching those programs on a 3D television set.

Verizon’s FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide can be accessed with the FiOS TV remote control or by using Verizon’s FiOS Mobile application, which turns an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or Android device into a remote control for a FiOS HD set-top box, making parental controls, customized interactive applications and program recording options easy to access.

The next-generation FiOS TV is built upon a long series of innovations, including Flex View and FiOS TV Online, which extend FiOS TV beyond the home to the Internet and a range of mobile devices; free interactive applications including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, HSN Shop By Remote, TMZ and others;

Media Manager, which allows customers to access on their TVs personal photos, music and videos from their computers; and In-Home Agent, which frees customers to use simple online tools to diagnose and resolve a range of service issues.

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Daily deal sites, although attractive, have been showing signs of possible decline. People’s love for deals, which has made this market saturated with businesses old and new, trying to get their foot into this expanding industry.

There has been some speculation on the industry’s success and what the future looks like for it. Bloomberg reports show that more daily deal services were closing down as opposed to opening. In July, 38 daily deal sites closed down while only 36 opened up. During this time the industry also encountered a 7 percent drop in revenue.

A study done by Rice University shows that only 56 percent of businesses are making profit from deals, while 26.6 percent lost money and 17.9 percent broke even on their promotions. Findings also show that only roughly 20% of customers are returning to these businesses for full price purchases.

Groupon posted that they have lost $103 million in the second quarter. One of the problems that Groupon faces is that people purchase deals offered on their site only to never use it. It then expires and money is returned back to the customer.

Another sign was a Facebook announcement on August 26, in which it disclosed that the networking website will be discontinuing its special deals program. Facebook felt that it should abandon the idea of Facebook deals, which was only available in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco.

Greg Sterling, an analyst at Opus Research Inc. in San Francisco suggests that the competition may have been too intense for Facebook. They will continue to offer existing services and check in deals will still be available for users.

Following Facebook, Yelp, a website that reviews local businesses, have decided to cut down on the number of staff members working on the deals offered on their website.

Half of the employees are now cut from the team. Groupon CEO, Andrew Mason, announced to employees regarding Yelp, “Yelp is small and is not growing. In the 15 markets where we compete, our daily deals are 500 percent of their size.”

With all this happening, Groupon and Living Social continue to remain the leading daily deal sites in the industry.

The article Facebook Deals and Yelp Daily Deals no Match for Groupon appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.