ITV is the biggest commercial broadcaster in the UK, known for its diverse range of shows like news, entertainment, drama, and reality TV. It’s a well-known name, reaching millions of viewers across the country.
To enhance viewer Quality of Experience (QoE), ITV selected Dolby’s THEOplayer after a comprehensive evaluation of commercial video players by an independent external party. THEOplayer was chosen not only because of its outstanding performance in the technical tests, but also for the team’s proactive and innovative approach as a player partner. This strategic partnership enhances ITV’s ability to deliver a premium viewer experience across platforms, accelerates their OTT app releases, and brings cost reductions in transcoding, packaging, and video player maintenance.
The Challenge
Recognizing the inherent complexity, time, and cost associated with cross-platform video playback development and integration, ITV aimed to identify the best solution to deliver a consistent and high-quality media playback experience across the devices that carry their OTT services. These devices encompass a wide range, including Web, Android, Android TV, Fire TV, Fire Sticks, Apple TV, Chromecast, LG Freeview (HbbTV), iOS, LG WebOS, Roku, Samsung Tizen, Hisense, Vestel, SkyQ and Xbox.
While ITV had developed its own video player based on open source, they initiated an evaluation to determine whether to retain it or transition to a commercial video player. To facilitate this decision, ITV engaged a third party – Spicy Mango – for an independent video player evaluation, comparing their in-house player with three commercial alternatives, including THEOplayer.
The evaluation included both quantitative testing and qualitative review of materials shared and published by the commercial video player vendors. Areas covered included, amongst others:
● Automated testing (more than 1,200 tests) across 5 devices and browsers: Safari, FireTV, SkyQ, Samsung Tizen and LG Freeview (HbbTV);
● Assessment of integration capabilities with third parties;
● Quality of documentation and support.

The Solution
Following a six-month testing project, Dolby’s playback solution demonstrated itself as the most suitable commercial video player for ITVX. Notably, Dolby’s playback solution stood out in three key areas:
1. Seamless third-party integrations
2. Compatibility with Smart TVs
3. Professional technical and business support
Open source connectors with third-party analytics, DRM, and ads solutions
ITV prioritizes seamless integration with third-party solutions to accelerate time-to-market and reduce maintenance effort for their OTT app. THEOplayer stood out thanks to its ready-made connectors for Conviva for analytics and Yospace for Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI). As these connectors are open-source, they offer ITV more control when integrating these third-party solutions without having to dive into the underlying technical complexities of the video player.
Best commercial video player for Smart TVs
Based on the automated testing performed, THEOplayer outperformed other video players with an impressively higher pass rate when it comes to Smart TVs. Testing included Freeview LG (HbbTV), Samsung Tizen and Amazon FireTV. Freeview (HbbTV) was selected as it has widespread popularity in the UK. However, maintaining a high viewer Quality of Experience (QoE) on these devices can be challenging due to Freeview’s diverse range of supported devices, spanning from low-spec to modern big-screen devices.
The test scenarios included:
● Basic playback functions (play/pause/stop/resume)
● Ad-to-content transitioning
● Event modeling – codes and messages
● Sidecar processing – subtitles and captions
● DRM and encryption handling
● Sidecar processing – subtitles and captions
● Multi-track audio
● Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) switching and processing
● Integration interactions
Proactive support from video experts
The THEOplayer developer hub and support from video experts received positive evaluations during the video player assessment, offering a well-curated selection of sample code and actively maintained GitHub repositories for developer guidance. The responsiveness and continuous support from the Dolby team throughout the evaluation process were seen as exemplary.
With an experienced collaborator in the field, the Dolby team serves as ITV’s creative sounding board, facilitating discussions on new ideas and innovative product enhancements. Whether spurred by technological advances or user needs, ITV and Dolby continuously explore the latest trends and opportunities, collaboratively shaping the future.
“We love the simplicity of the product (THEOplayer), it has been so easy to get it integrated into ITVX. It has got some amazing plug-ins for some of our key partners, especially around video analytics and advertising.”
The Results
Fast time-to-market for ITVX
Thanks to THEOplayer’s pre-built open-source connectors for third-party DRM, ad, and analytics solutions, ITV can speed up its time-to-market. Dolby handles the complex technical aspects, empowering ITV’s in-house team to focus on branding and other aspects of their OTT application.
Enhanced agility in ITVX development
With THEOplayer, ITV ensures high-quality viewer experiences cross-platform, backed by rigorous systematic testing and comprehensive developer support. ITV previously relied on external partners to certify software releases and updates. Yet, upon closer examination of the testing scope and Quality of Experience risks, they found that many of the problems could be traced back to the video player. By leveraging THEOplayer’s frequent releases and automated testing, ITV can now focus its testing efforts primarily on the other parts of ITVX than the video player, reducing complexity and costs, and accelerating release cycles with enhanced agility.
Reduced costs thanks to end-to-end advisory support
Our video experts collaborated with ITV to optimize the end-to-end video workflow. ITV employed multiple variants of the same stream to ensure device coverage, resulting in duplicate transcoding and packaging costs. With THEOplayer, ITV can streamline its approach by deploying a single cross-platform video player and reducing the number of stream variants required for device coverage. This optimization leads to cost reductions in transcoding, packaging, and video player maintenance.
Summary
ITV achieved significant benefits by adopting Dolby’s THEOplayer for its OTT service. The solution accelerated ITVX’s time-to-market through pre-built open-source connectors for analytics, DRM, and ads, enabling seamless third-party integrations. Enhanced cross-platform viewer experiences were ensured with robust Smart TV compatibility and rigorous testing, reducing maintenance complexity and Quality of Experience (QoE) risks. Streamlining transcoding and packaging workflows led to cost savings by minimizing duplicate stream variants. Additionally, proactive support and frequent releases from from Dolby’s playback solution improved ITV’s agility, enabling faster updates and a focus on other development priorities, solidifying a premium and efficient OTT delivery.