What's New: Better Search, Tags, and Lower Prices

We shipped a few updates this week, aimed at the two things you do most on PegMedia: finding content and paying for downloads. Here is what changed.

Better Search

Search is faster and a lot smarter. It now looks at the full text of show and episode titles and descriptions, so you can turn up a program even if all you remember is a phrase from it. That helps stations hunting for something to air, and producers who want to see where their own shows land.

Tags

Tags work right alongside search. Tag your shows with the topics they cover, and stations can search those tags to find the kind of content they want. It is a simple way to add some structure to the catalog without forcing everything into fixed buckets, and it sits next to the usual ways to browse by state, popularity, and recent uploads.

Lower Prices

Downloads now cost less. Pricing is still simple and pay as you go: $0.25/GB, capped at $0.50 per download, with no subscriptions and no contracts. We dropped the price because the platform got cheaper for us to run, and a lot of that comes down to how we handle video.

Producers who sponsor their own content get an even better deal. When you cover the download cost so stations can grab your shows for free, you pay a reduced sponsored rate of just $0.10/GB, capped at $0.20 per download. It is the cheapest way to get your programming onto as many channels as possible.

Retiring SD Transcodes

For years, every upload was transcoded into several versions, including a standard-definition (SD) copy. That was the right call back when you could not count on playback gear and internet connections to handle HD. Those days are gone. Modern playback and automation systems all handle HD just fine, and the SD copies mostly sat unused while eating up storage, processing, and bandwidth on every single file.

So we stopped making them. Content now ships in HD, and the money we save goes into lower download prices. Fewer files to store and move keeps the platform lean and the prices down.

A Couple More Things

Two smaller changes shipped too. There is a new Blog and Announcements section (you are reading it) for keeping up with what is happening on the platform, and we refreshed the site colors for better contrast and readability.

It is all live now, with nothing for you to set up. Take it for a spin and tell us what you think.