The choice is in your hands
Iflix 2.0 puts you in charge of what you want to watch.
SINCE it began operations in Malaysia in 2015, OTT (over-the-top) service provider iflix has grown from strength to strength, and is now available in over 20 territories around the world, from South-East Asia to the Middle East and even North Africa.
So, two years later, where do they go from here?
Well, say hello to iflix 2.0, which puts you, the user, in charge of what you want to see.
“iflix 2.0 is a major update of our business,” says iflix global director of product Andy Paterson at an interview at the company’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.
“We’ve introduced a number of different features that focus on personalisation for the user, creating a service that is really, really tailored to a user’s interests.
“We’ve also built a brand new recommendations algorithm, which selects the most relevant content for the particular user based on what they’ve watched.”
What this means is, if you’ve been watching nothing but cheesy 1980s action movies on your iflix, you will be more likely to see movies like Rambo, Commando, or, er, Bloodsport on your personal iflix home page.
According to Paterson, however, the difference between iflix’s algorithm and its competitors’ is that the user is in complete control of what they want or don’t want to see on their homepage.
“It’s completely in the user’s hands to curate and manage what they want to see, and it will be different for every user based on what they watch and what they select,” he adds.
So, how do you start on your iflix 2.0 experience?
“In the app, you are presented with what we call an on-boarding experience, where you have to select your preferences of genres. You can select as many as you want, and that will curate the personalised homepage for you,” Paterson explains.
“On the homepage, you’ll see the channels that are reflective of the genres you’ve selected.
“You’ll get to see a few different rows of channels that we promote through our curation team, that is also indicative of the region you’re in.”
Speaking of channels, this is another new feature which Paterson says is a representation of a brand or a genre, and serves to showcase the most popular content under that banner.
For instance, under a newly inked deal, iflix has the exclusive South-East Asian rights to content from The Walt Disney Company, which includes all the Disney, Marvel and Pixar movies, as well as TV shows under the Disney-owned ABC network.
“It’s all wrapped up in an easy experience for the user whereby the more they watch, the more our algorithm picks up content and makes it more relevant for them,” Paterson says. SPECIAL set of skills or not, Liam Neeson (pic) says he’s finished making thrillers.
In an interview, Neeson said that he plans to stop even though it’s hard to turn down the lucrative offers he gets thanks to his boxoffice success in the three Taken
films, as well as other thrillers. Neeson believes he’s simply getting too old to be an action hero.
“The thrillers, that was all a pure accident,” said Neeson. “They’re still throwing serious money at me to do that stuff. I’m like, ‘Guy’s I’m sixty-five.’ Audiences are eventually going to go, ‘Come on’.”
Neeson still has two upcoming revenge thrillers he’s already shot: Hard Powder, in which he plays a snowplow driver who faces off with drug dealers, and The Commuter, with director Jaume Collet-Serra, who also directed Neeson in Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night.
But, Neeson said, those will be his last. “I’ve shot one that’s going to come out in January sometime. There might be another. That’s it,” said Neeson. “But not Taken, none of that franchise stuff.”
Instead, Neeson has turned back to dramatic work. His Watergate drama Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House
premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival recently.
In it, he plays the high-ranking FBI official who was the Washington Post’s “Deep Throat” source in the scandal.
Neeson has also lined up to co-star in Widows ,by Twelve Years A Slave director Steve McQueen. In December, he starred in Martin Scorsese’s spiritual epic Silence.
Neeson was always surprised by the unlikely turn his career took beginning with 2009’s Taken. He thought the film, he once said, would go straight to video. The three Taken films have grossed US$929.5mil (RM3.9bil) worldwide. – AP