Of all the services that Telenet offers, television is probably the most visible one. The TV Engineering Delivery department is responsible for the technical side of the television services. Michel Roofthooft, Manager TV Engineering Delivery at Telenet, explains: “Our department is responsible for all the technical developments of the software in the backend (engineering, testing of all television apps and bringing it live). In addition, we also take care of everything that people get to see at home on their digicorder and in the Yelo Play apps.”
Technology evolves very fast, and on the Yelo Play website, some problems gradually arose. “You should know that the website is the largest Yelo Play-platform that customers use. However, the website was outdated and in some browsers, such as Chrome, the streaming services (via SilverLight) were no longer supported. A transfer to HTML5 was becoming inevitable, and this offered us the opportunity to completely renew the website, killing two birds with one stone. In addition, with the new Yelo Play, we wanted to focus more on the discovery of programs, series and movies.”
Wide expertise
Some developments are executed by Telenet itself, for others they call upon external parties. The search for a partner to develop the new web app went quite fast. “icapps had several solid references and we were immediately charmed by their no-nonsense approach. Moreover, they had already developed a proof-of-concept for a mobile app for us, and we knew from a previous collaboration that they have a wide expertise in everything that involves mobile technology”, Michel Roofthooft continues.
icapps’ mentality was also greatly appreciated at Telenet. “From Day 1, the team was very well-organized: they had their tools and processes in order, and the collaboration with our freelancers went smoothly. The icapps team also tried to come up with their own solutions whenever a problem arose, because they realized very well that the deadline was fixed.”
“What was also very important for me, was icapps’ expertise. They are not a partner that focuses solely on the requested specifications, but instead they constantly think ahead proactively. The icapps team for example came up with its own ideas about how to use react native, and they also thought about Apple TV. We were glad we could also use their expertise for our iOS and Android applications, and we look forward to continuing to collaborate with them for all three platforms – web, iOS and Android – in the future!”.
“You just notice that icapps’ technical expertise extends beyond what you learn at school”, Michel Roofthooft concludes.
What we did for Telenet Yelo Play:
In house development
A group of seasoned developers and scrum masters teamed up with several Telenet specialists to build the new Yelo Play web platform. The combination of Telenet expertise and insights with icapps’ extensive digital experience made sure the development process went smoothly. The collaboration with a large number of people with different backgrounds proved to be a challenge at times, but it also was a huge enrichment.
A technical masterpiece
It was not an easy task that was laid out in front of the team. Though the front-end web platform is very intuitive, simple and user-friendly, the back-end is more complex. The biggest challenge lay in the extent of the project. The web platform had to be able to stream video content on a myriad of video players and this within all the different browsers, taking DRM into account as well.