Streaming services have a discovery problem—and Tony Huidor believes Cineverse has the solution. In this interview, Huidor, President of Technology and Chief Product Officer, reveals how cineSearch, built on the company’s Matchpoint platform, is rethinking metadata from the ground up. Rather than relying on legacy TV-guide-style descriptions, cineSearch uses AI to analyze films at the scene level, enabling smarter, more intuitive content discovery. The platform can surface movies like Die Hard when users search for “holiday classics,” all without relying on outdated tags.
Cineverse isn’t keeping this solution to itself. Matchpoint is now a standalone division and SaaS product, aimed at helping other media companies improve their search and personalization capabilities. As Huidor explains, the streaming industry is lagging in innovation around metadata, smart content recommendations, and user experience. With VOD becoming a dominant viewing mode, cineSearch and Matchpoint offer a timely fix to a growing pain point. Looking ahead, Huidor hints at upcoming investments in ad tech, children’s content, and emerging formats like microdramas—areas ripe for disruption with the right technology.
David Bloom:
Hi, I am David Bloom with the XTMT here at the StreamTV Show at the live studios with Tony Huidor, who is the President Technology and Chief Product Officer for Cineverse. One of the more interesting companies out there in the video space, I think. Tony and Cineverse made some big announcements recently about a new spun-off division built around Matchpoint. And Matchpoint is your all's effort to rethink the way search and discovery is done. So talk to me about Matchpoint, where you guys are going with it and the problem you think you have solved.
Tony Huidor:
Great, great. Thank you, David. Thank you for having us. We've been developing Matchpoint for the last 10 years and it's really become the foundation for how the entire company runs. This has allowed us to really focus on next generation initiatives, and one of them that we've just announced recently that we've been working on for four years is cineSearch, where we believe we've solved the problem with search and discovery, using AI and using Matchpoint components to really create a new system for solving the search and discovery problem.
David Bloom:
And what is it that's different about cineSearch and Matchpoint behind it that's solved that answer? You did a lot of blocking and tackling, very fundamental work to reconsider what programming is, right?
Tony Huidor:
Right, right. Really the challenge, and this is an area I feel really strongly about, is we as an industry are relying on metadata that was developed 75 years ago.
David Bloom:
Terrible metadata.
Tony Huidor:
Terrible metadata.
David Bloom:
They didn't even have the word, did they?
Tony Huidor:
No, exactly. And that's called descriptive metadata and that was really intended to be used for TV listings.
David Bloom:
TV guide.
Tony Huidor:
TV guide, and the back of a VHS cassette.
David Bloom:
Right.
Tony Huidor:
It wasn't intended to be the sole material used for searching. So the approach we're taking is, we have scanned movies and entire catalogs to understand a film intrinsically at a scene-by-scene level, so that we're not relying on the metadata for search, but we're relying on what's inside the film to search for it. So one of the examples I use a lot is, search for best holiday movie on any streaming service and they will all fail. In our example, you get It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and most importantly Die Hard because through our understanding of film, we know that Die Hard is set in the wintertime during Christmas.
David Bloom:
Your understanding of Christmas movies, I have to say, is both, I think, culturally appropriate and completely oblique to me because I don't think of Die Hard as a Christmas movie, but I apparently am the only person in America.
Tony Huidor:
It is definitely a topic of debate, but I would say for us, it's not like we selected that, the AI brought that up.
David Bloom:
That's how folks think though, yeah.
Tony Huidor:
And that's what's interesting about this AI data, that relationships you didn't know were there will suddenly become very visible.
David Bloom:
Right, and I find that really interesting. I mean just the fact that we went from TV guide and not metadata, but meathead data, to something a little smarter and more nuanced and deep inside the soul of the show as it were. And I think that's really important. You're going to be on two panels in the next couple of days here at the show and thank you for that. But what kind of stuff are you going to be talking about? Mostly this stuff, or where you're going?
Tony Huidor:
A lot of the topics I will be sharing and discussing is really how do we move forward as an industry. And one is obviously moving beyond traditional metadata to more advanced and rich metadata, to really solve a couple of things, user experience, personalization. These are areas that we as an industry really are behind on. We have smart TVs that aren't very smart, and in order to get there, we need to start moving forward with personalization. And that's just been an area that no one in the business is really focusing on at the level that we should be.
David Bloom:
They're hard questions to solve, right? I mean, I think that's part of the challenge. And so you have been really focused on this in a somewhat different approach, which is great. Now Matchpoint and cineSearch are, your biggest client is Cineverse, but it's not going to be your only one.
Tony Huidor:
Correct. And part of what we are now focused on in my new role is taking Matchpoint and the technology that we've developed specifically for the streaming industry and making it available as a SaaS product to bigger media companies who are all struggling. Being here at the show, one of the themes I hear is VOD has become the new hot thing and everyone is struggling on delivering VOD, and that is what Matchpoint was developed to solve five years ago. And so we feel we have the right solution for the right time and the right industry.
David Bloom:
Well, if it's video on demand and you demand a video that can't be found or doesn't understand what you're asking, it's useless, right?
Tony Huidor:
Exactly. And that's what's interesting between cineSearch and Matchpoint, the entire solution was designed to help find content, help distribute content more widely, to make content more available for the consumer to have more choice. And that's really what our focus and what we feel that as Matchpoint we enable within the industry.
David Bloom:
Cool. So where do you go from here? I know that you've always got something brewing in your little skunkworks there at cineSearch. Where do you go next?
Tony Huidor:
Thank you for asking. The advantage that we have is we've solved the day-to-day problems of running a streaming service, so it allows us to focus on next generation initiatives. Given that we're in an ad supported market, ad tech is an area that we will be investing in heavily. We think there's opportunities there. There's certain segments of the industry that aren't being properly addressed. The kids market, for example, is one area where we think there's room for innovation. And then of course there's new types of content as viewing behavior shifts and changes, we're starting to see areas in the business such as microdramas, where there's an opportunity for us to enter a space early because we feel we have the right foundational technology.
David Bloom:
Sure. The microdramas, I think are really interesting. It'd be fun to see what you guys do, but that's actually what they also call this show, The Microdrama. With that, I think we'll wrap it up. I'm David Bloom with the XTMT here at the StreamTV Show with Tony Huidor, the President, Technology and Chief Product Officer for cineSearch. Thank you, Tony.
Tony Huidor:
Thank you David.