It's been a busy few months on the product side, so we thought it was worth pulling everything together into one place. Here's what's new across the Simplestream platform.

New Next-Gen Apps

We've started moving our Smart TV and mobile apps onto NextGen, a rebuilt framework using React that replaces the ageing architecture our apps have run on for years to support legacy devices. It's already live for several of our customers, and it has allowed for quicker load times, a smoother interface, and a much better foundation for us to keep building on. It also opens the door to things like 4K, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, which takes our apps to the next level.

OpenSearch V2

Search has had a proper overhaul too. We've moved onto AWS OpenSearch, which brings fuzzy matching and predictive search as standard, along with much better visibility into what people are searching for on our customers' platforms.

Schedules that build themselves

We’ve also developed a new way for FAST channels to be run without manual input. Channel Studio now talks directly to MediaGenix, pulling content straight out of the CMS and building the schedule and EPG automatically. This means instead of spending an afternoon manually building a week's schedule, everything is now automatically everything in sync with what's in the catalogue.

Log in with your phone, not a new password

We've also integrated with Toolbox, allowing a new authentication layer that lets subscribers sign in using their existing mobile provider credentials instead of creating another account. It's designed to work with telco partners generically, so as our customers expand into new markets with telco billing already in place, this scales with them rather than needing to be rebuilt each time.

More room to choose your own ad tech

On the advertising side, our server-side ad insertion setup, built on AWS MediaTailor, now works with Publica as well as Google Ad Manager. If a customer's already committed to a particular ad server, or weighing up a switch, there's a lot less friction getting it working with us.

Accessibility Integration

We've also been building out accessibility support in line with the European Accessibility Act. Screen readers can now read out image and thumbnail descriptions, voiceover works across buttons, playback and navigation on Roku, iOS and tvOS, and text resizes properly without getting cut off. We've also added a way for customers to publish their own accessibility statement directly into the apps. It's an area we'll keep investing in as standards evolve, not a box-ticking exercise.

We can’t wait to show you all of these advancements at IBC 2026, so if you want to have a look, please get in touch.  

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