SK Broadband adds home screens to TV

K-pop singer Henry, left, points to a TV screen at SK Broadband’s press conference on Tuesday where the company unveiled upgraded services. [SK BROADBAND]

SK Broadband will launch customizable home screens for all of its 4.6 million TV subscribers on Aug. 16.

SK Broadband unveiled a series of upgraded TV media services on Tuesday and vowed to increase its offerings of customized content.

“Paid broadcasting services are supposed to analyze the data of customers’ media consumption trends to come up with the services and content that suit them,” said Yoon Suk-am, head of the media business division at SK Broadband at a press conference at SK Telecom’s headquarters in central Seoul. “It will be the first step in raising customer value further.”

Users may choose among three options to set their home screen, which appears right after the TV is turned on - video on demand, a real-time TV channel or a kids’ channel that consists only of content for children. Baseball aficionados, for example, can set a baseball channel as their home screen.

The screen can also recommend content according to age group and based on the past user’s viewing habits, including their favorite TV programs from the past five years. The screen will also show which monthly plan users are subscribed to, valid membership points, coupons and discounts.

SK Broadband said its mobile video streaming app, Oksusu, will offer real-time baseball broadcasts that are up to 20 seconds faster than competing apps.

For children, SK Broadband will offer a custom fairy tale maker to TV subscribers. Kids can add their own voice, face and drawings to a TV screen to make their own TV fairy tale content, using 3D facial recognition technology and real-time facial expression generation technology. Some 250 fairy tales will be available for customization.

When viewers take a photo of their face with a smartphone app and send it to the TV, the photo’s facial expression will take on up to 20 different emotions depending on the flow of the story. Viewers may even turn into the antagonist of one of the fairy tales. Children may also draw paintings that are added to the story and affect its outcome.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun@joongang.co.kr]