Pay TV operators and the connected home - Digital TV Europe [PDF]

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Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Contents April/May 2015

12. Making the most of Things With the Internet of Things ultimately expected to be worth up to US$7 trillion, operators need to invest now to remain relevant, reports Adrian Pennington.

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16. Going over the top

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16

Over-the-top and direct-to-customer offerings are becoming increasingly common among pay TV and channel operators alike. Andy McDonald looks at some of the most interesting recent developments in this space.

22. Good behaviour Applying user behaviour analytics to ensure quality of deliver and shape service offerings has been a hot topic in the quality assurance world for some time. But can big data be too much data? Stuart Thomson reports.

28. TV Connect 2015: the preview With the TV Connect show due to kick off at London Excel exhibition centre on April 28, DTVE highlights some of the innovations that will be on display.

22 32

32. ANGA COM 2015: the preview German broadband trade fair ANGA COM gears up for its 2015 show in Cologne this June.

Regulars 2 This month 4 News digest 33 Technology 38 People 40 Final analysis

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This month > Editor’s note

Issue no 318 Published By:

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

The shape of Things

Informa Telecoms & Media Mortimer House 37-41 Mortimer Street London W1T 3JH Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5000 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7017 4953 Website: www.digitaltveurope.net Editor Stuart Thomson Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5314 Email: [email protected] Deputy Editor Andy McDonald Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5293 Email: [email protected] Contributing Editor Stewart Clarke Contributors Kate Bulkley, Andy Fry, Adrian Pennington, Adam Thomas, Anna Tobin, Jesse Whittock Correspondents France: Julien Alliot; Germany: Dieter Brockmeyer; Italy: Branislav Pekic Sales Director Patricia Arescy Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5320 Email: [email protected]

The

Internet of Things has been on the minds of multi-play service providers of late. The impact and intersection of the Internet of Things with the connected entertainment world has yet to be fully worked out. How big is the opportunity for content companies and operators? One of the big questions is whether consumer electronics vendors including Apple, Sony and Samsung – those with varied hardware in the connected home ecosystem – or multi-platform service providers will best placed to capitalise on the IoT opportunity. What is the actual revenue generation opportunity for service providers? What practical strategies should they be adopting now for an IoT future? In this issue of Digital TV Europe we look at the role pay TV operators and media companies could play as the connected world takes shape. While they have an eye on the long-term prospects of universal connectivity, the threats and opportunities posed by OTT are perhaps of more immediate concern to pay TV operators. More and more service providers are in fact using OTT technology to deliver service packages of both live and on-demand channels – examples include Sky’s Now TV and Telefónica’s recently launched smart TV app-based version of its Movistar TV service. How far down the OTT route do operators feel they can go in delivering TV as part of a wider offering? In this issue, we look at some of the considerations pay TV players face in addressing the OTT opportunity. Quality assurance has, until relatively recently, been a second-ranked priority for many service providers, who have relied on customer complaints to deal with problems as they occur or, in the case of OTT service providers, have delivered best effort services without a guarantee of quality. But the use of IP delivery now means that service providers have the opportunity to delve in much greater depth into patterns of user behaviour and the responses of users to different experiences on different platforms. Also in this issue of Digital TV Europe we look at the challenges and opportunities presented by the wealth of data that is potentially available. Finally, we look at some of the technologies that will be on show at TV Connect, now relocated to London’s Excel with new April dates, and look forward to some of the highlights of this year’s ANGA COM in Cologne. l

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Stuart Thomson, Editor [email protected]

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Take Center Stage with the AMOS Satellites

Spacecom’s AMOS satellite constellation, consisting of AMOS-2 and AMOS-3 co-located at 4°W, AMOS-4 at 65°E and AMOS-5 at 17°E provides high-quality broadcast and communications services across Europe, Africa, Russia, Asia and the Middle East. With the upcoming launch of AMOS-6, Spacecom is expanding its coverage over Europe and Africa. The result: greater capacity, high-throughput Ka multibeam capabilities and affordable end-to-end satellite services. Spacecom. Expect More.

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News > digest

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

News digest > 4 Vivendi chief secures victory in double vote battle > 5 Internet to replace TV in 20 years, says Hastings > 6 Darroch: Sky setting sites on further innovation > 8 EBU renews call for safeguarding DTT spectrum

Vivendi chief secures victory in double vote battle By Stuart Thomson > Vivendi chairman Vincent Bolloré has secured victory in his battle with rebellious shareholders over the application of France’s Florange law to give him double voting rights. Vivendi’s annual general meeting voted down a resolution tabled by shareholder PhiTrust and supported by a number of other investors to prevent the application of the law, which gives double voting rights to shareholders of more than two years’ standing, in Vivendi’s case. The resolution secured 402.5 million votes in favour, with 401.6 million against. The support of more than two thirds of shareholders is required to secure exemption from the law, which the French government designed to protect domestic investment and employment. Bolloré has built up his po-

Belgium CAB > Telenet buys BASE Liberty Global-backed Belgian cable operator Telenet has agreed to buy domestic mobile operator BASE Company for €1.325 billion from Dutch telco KPN. Telenet said that the definitive agreement will provide it with long-term mobile access to “effectively compete for future growth opportunities in the mobile market.” It said the acquisition will allow it to meet rising demand from

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Bolloré: Dailymotion is an example of how synergies can be realised.

sition in the company over the last two months and now holds 14.5% of the company’s shares, up from 5.15% at the beginning of March. Bolloré earlier neutralised the opposition of hedge fund P. Schoenfeld Asset Management to the double-vote application by promising to increase the amount Vivendi pays out to shareholders over the next two years. Vivendi agreed to pay out approximately €6.75 billion to shareholders in the form of an additional distribution of €2 per share, with €1 to be paid out in the fourth quarter of this year and €1 to be paid out in the first

residential and business customers for the full range of fixed and mobile services. Telenet launched its ‘King’ and ‘Kong’ mobile offers in the Belgian market in 2012 and more recently launched ‘Family Deal’ packages, offering a monthly discount on multiple SIMs in the home for existing and new triple-play subscribers. Telenet said that the combination of Telenet and BASE Company will create a “leading integrated communications provider” in the Belgian market, with a combined 2014 adjusted revenue of €2.4

quarter of 2016. This will be in addition to Vivendi’s existing proposed payout of €1 per share for the 2016 and 2017 financial years. Schoenfeld for its part agreed to accept Vivendi’s core media strategy, abandoning its call for the sale of Universal Music Group, and acknowledged the role played by Vivendi supervisory board chairman Vincent Bolloré in creating value. The hedge fund withdrew the draft resolutions that were to be put to Vivendi’s annual general meeting calling for an exceptional payout of €9 billion, and said it would vote against the PhiTrust resolution. At the shareholders meeting, Bolloré hailed Vivendi’s proposed €217 million acquisition of an 80% stake in Dailymotion, Orange’s video sharing site, as “a formidable opportunity” that would one day generate a lot of

money. He said that it would enable the delivery of synergies across Vivendi’s properties by providing a channel for the distribution of short-form content generated by Canal+ and music from Universal Music Group, as well as opportunities for advertising sister company Havas, in which Vivendi holds a 60% stake and which is headed by Bolloré’s son Yannick. Vivendi development director Stéphane Roussel said that Dailymotion would become “an alternative to YouTube”. Bolloré said that Vivendi would not rest with the acquisition of Dailymotion this year. Vivendi’s management is expected to identify potential targets next month. Orange has held 100% of Dailymotion since January 2013, following its initial acquisition of 49% of the company’s capital in April 2011.

billion and Adjusted EBITDA of €1.1 billion. The deal is subject to the approval from the relevant competition authorities.

year, neither the overall business nor its main channels were on the block. However, he added that the disposition of CME’s non-broadcast assets was still ongoing: “We sold [distribution company] Bontonfilm in the Czech Republic last year. We have already disposed and are still in the process of selling several of our non-core activities in Romania.” Asked whether CME would consider investing in new channels, Mainusch said: “We constantly analyse the structure of our channels’ portfolio and the positioning of the individual chan-

Czech Republic PROG > No sale for CME The sale of any of CME’s core assets is “not on our agenda” according to company co-CEO Christoph Mainusch. In an interview with Czech newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes, Mainusch said that despite sale speculation from last

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News > digest

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

nels in their respective market environment. “This might lead to further channel launches in the future. It is, however, too early for any announcement in that respect as no final decision has been made yet. First we will continue to invest primarily in high quality content within the group of our existing channels.” Praising CME’s recent performance, which has seen it move back into the black, Mainusch said: “The last year has been a very successful one. We managed to increase our advertising market share from 49% in 2013 to 60% in 2014 and we returned to significant operating income.” However, he cautioned that “the turnaround will need more than one year,” predicting that that CME will “regain some additional advertising market share we lost two years ago.”

France IPTV > Orange fibre plan Orange is aiming to reach 100% fibre deployment in nine new French cities by the end of 2016, as part of its ambitious multi-billion high-speed broadband plan. The French operator said that Bayonne, Brest, Caen, Lyon, greater Lille, Metz, Montpellier, Nice and Paris will become “100% fibre” cities. The plan is part of a €4.5 billion fibre investment scheme by Orange, of which €3 billion will be spent in France. Orange said that the aim of this programme is to go from four million connectable households in April 2015 to 12 million in 2018, and 20 million in 2022 – the final year of France’s very high-speed broadband plan. Orange said it

plans to deploy fibre in 3,600 communities by 2022, covering all of France’s large and medium-sized cities, or nearly 60% of French households.

DTT > TDF acquisition A group of investors comprising Brookfield Infrastructure Group, Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), APG Asset Management and Arcus Infrastructure Partners have completed the acquisition of transmission services provider TDF in France. The closing follows an offer to acquire the company in August last year. CEO Olivier Huart said: “TDF’s new shareholders are longterm investors, all with a solid experience in infrastructure. With these new investors, TDF begins a new and very promising chapter in its history.”

Internet to replace TV in 20 years, says Hastings By Andy McDonald > Over the next 20 years internet TV is going to replace linear TV as the way that people consume video, according to Netflix president and CEO Reed Hastings. Speaking on the firm’s first quarter earnings call, Hastings said that after linear TV’s “amazing 50-year run” the industry is now transitioning with “everyone scrambling to figure out how do they do great apps.” For the quarter, Netflix revealed that it had surpassed 60 million global subscribers and said that members streamed 10 billion hours of content – “evidence that consumers around the world are embracing the internet TV revolution.” Also speaking on the earnings call, Netflix’s chief financial officer David Wells re-iterated the firm’s ambition to launch globally in 200 countries by the

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Hastings: the TV industry is in transition.

end of 2016, claiming there will be some “significant” launches in the second half of this year. Netflix also hinted at an upcoming Polish launch, with Hastings twice referring to the market during the call, noting “Netflix is not yet in Poland.” Discussing competition in the online TV space, Hastings and Wells said in a letter to shareholders that the recently launched HBO Now service in the states is not a substitute for Netflix given the different content available. “We view ‘internet MVPD’ offerings like the rumored Apple offering, Sony’s Playstation Vue and DISH’s

Sling TV as more competitive to the current pay TV bundle than to Netflix which is lower cost, has exclusive and original content, and is not focused on live television,” said the pair. The execs noted that piracy remains a “considerable longterm threat, mostly outside the US.” Discussing users accessing Netflix from countries where it is not yet live using virtual private networks, Hastings said: “Because we are focused on getting global very quickly, I think we will see this issue disappear and it will disappear because we will be able to meet the demand directly in all the countries.” In the first three months of the year, Netflix passed 40 million members in the US and 20 million internationally after adding 4.9 million new users in the quarter, beating its forecast of 4.05 million new members.

Events FT Digital Media Conference Date: April 28-29 2015 Venue: King’s Place, London, UK W: www.ft-live.com TV Connect 2015 Date: April 28-30 2015 Venue: ExCel, London, UK W: tvconnectevent.com Broadband TV Connect Asia (co-located with CDN Asia) Date: May 12-13 2015 Venue: Suntec, Singapore W: broadbandtvconnectasia.com ANGA COM 2015 Date: June 9-11 2015 Venue: Köln Messe, Cologne, Germany W: www.angacom.de NATPE Europe 2015 Date: June 22-25 2015 Venue: Hilton Hotel, Prague, Czech Republic W: www.natpe.com/europe Digital Home World Summit Date: June 23-24 2015 Venue: Royal Garden Hotel, London, UK W: smartworldhome2015.com CTAM Europe EuroSummit Date: August 27-28 2015 Venue: Amsterdam, The Netherlands W: www.ctameurope.com IBC 2015 Date: September 10-15 2015 Venue: Rai, Amsterdam, The Netherlands W: www.ibc.org MIPCOM 2015 Date: October 5-8 2015 Venue: Palais des Festivals, Cannes, France W: www.mipcom.com

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News > digest

Global Wrap The total number of subscribers to online streaming services will pass 100 million globally this year, according to research by Ovum. Describing a “new era of streaming entertainment”, it pointed to growing appetite for emerging on-demand platforms as evidence of the swing away from downloads and pay TV. Some 57% of consumers in US broadband households subscribe to an OTT service like Netflix or Hulu Plus, according to Parks Associates. The research claims that the average US broadband household now spends US$9 (e8) per month on internet video, up from US$7 in 2012. Illegal downloads of episodes of Game of Thrones increased more than 45% yearon-year in the weeks before its season five premiere, according to data collected by content security firm Irdeto. Episodes of seasons one to four of the HBO fantasy drama were illegally downloaded more than seven million times between February 5 and April 6, 2015 according to the research, compared to 4.9 million times during the same period a year earlier. Amazon Prime subscribers in the US are more likely to use Netflix than Prime Instant Video, according to new research by Strategy Analytics. The report claims that 63% of Amazon Prime subscribers used Netflix in the previous month compared to 59% who used Prime Instant Video. YouTube has confirmed plans to launch an advertising-free version of YouTube that users will be able access by paying a monthly fee. In a letter sent to YouTube content creators, the Google-owned site said that the new offering will supplement its ad revenues.

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Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

PROG > TF1 premium VoD French commercial broadcaster TF1 is launching a new premium video-on-demand brand dedicated to movies not distributed theatrically in France, eCinema. TF1 Video aims to provide an exclusive offering of films in line with the premium VoD concept it has already deployed for the distribution of US series with MYTF1VOD. eCinema will launch on May 1 across the country’s major VoD portals with an offering of movies as close as possible to their threatrical release dates in their countries of origin. Movies will be offered in French or in their original language with French subtitles. The initial line-up will include, from May, Julius Avery’s Son of a

Gun, starring Ewan McGregor and Brenton Thwaites and Lee Toland

Krierger’s Adaline starring Blake Lively and Harrison Ford, with Joe Lynch’s Everly, with Salma Hayek, to follow in July. Films will be offered in HD, and will be available at launch both in SD and HD from €6.99, with availability limited to 45 days. TF1 will also offer a download-to-own option from €12.99. Titles will be accompanied by DVD-like bonus features. The service will be available via ISPs’ TV boxes as well as via PCs, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs and game consoles. TF1 Video president Régis Ravanas said that eCinema would be complementary to the current system of distribution, which limits the VoD window to 36 months after the theatrical release of movies, and would provide an outlet for movies that do not currently gain a wide theatrical distribution.

Germany DTT > OK for DVB-T2 pay Competition regulator the Bundeskartellamt has given a green light for transmission services provider Media Broadcast to build a pay platform for the country’s new DVB-T2-based digital-terrestrial infrastructure. Media Broadcast plans to build a pay TV platform for HD services in particular as the country’s DTT infrastructure transitions to DVB-T2, probably from next year. Commercial broadcasters RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1 are expected to offer encrypted HD services on the plartform, while other broadcasters could offer a range of encrypted SD and HD services. Public services will remain unencrypted.

Darroch: Sky setting sights on further innovation By Andy McDonald > Innovation will continue to be at the heart of Sky’s business, with the company constantly seeking to renew itself and embrace change, according to company CEO Jeremy Darroch. Speaking at MIPTV in Cannes, France, Darroch said that while the whole experience of in-home entertainment has already got “so much better” in the past 10 years, this trend is only going to continue. “There’s never been a better time to be in the industry that we’re in. The demand from customers for great content seems to be insatiable. They want more of it, and a broader range of that content, I think, than ever before,” said Darroch. Citing previous developments like Sky+, Sky HD and Sky 3D, the Sky boss said that “innovation in the viewing ex-

Darroch: no better time to be in the industry.

perience has always been at the heart of what we’ve done as a business,” and that this has been driven by Sky’s appetite to “raise the bar”. “Just as we innovate on the satellite platform, we’ve got lots of plans to innovate over-the-top in some of our new services like Now TV or Sky Online or Sky Mobile,” said Darroch when asked about Sky’s future innovation plans. “I think the future is less about any one singular idea and about our ability to do multiple things. And in doing multiple things to really expand the whole market in which we compete and operate.”

Darroch claimed that Sky’s aim is to reach as many customers as possible – be that directly through its own retail services, through its satellite service or using OTT distribution. He also failed to rule out more investments in production companies, following Sky’s acquisition of a 60% stake in USbased Jupiter Entertainment in March, and its purchase of 70% of UK-based Love Productions last July. However, he said doing more of these deals was not an imperative. “Largely that will be driven, I think, by Sky Vision and [the] broadening out [of] our distribution arm. It’s something that I’m open-minded to but in terms of the content that we actually want to acquire to put on screen, we really want to be very flexible and agile and work right across the industry,” said Darroch.

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Q&A: Charles Dawes, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Rovi Charles Dawes, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Rovi talks about the latest developments in content search and recommendation. What are Rovi’s customers’ key priorities for the next year and how are you responding to these? Rovi operates across many different areas of the Media and Entertainment Industry and each sector has slightly different priorities depending on where they are in the value chain. However, some common themes we see include the continued integration of OTT services with more traditional forms of entertainment, new visually rich discovery experiences and an increased interest in how ‘big data’ can be used to help inform business decisions. Rovi is well positioned to help our customers meet the challenges of launching new services with its strong background in discovery and monetisation. Is programme-related metadata being used to its full potential and what types of revenue-earning services could it enable? A rich set of programme metadata has become a minimum requirement for anyone looking to build a strong discovery experience. This requires excellent curation of content to make the most of the programme information and metadata available, with full descriptions and links to similar content, actors and genres being important. Many broadcasters and TV operators are aware that if you want your content to be viewed and generate revenue then it needs to have the right level of data. The more progressive content owners are using full sets of metadata, such as those provided by Rovi, to ensure that content is appropriately linked to other content and is available to the end consumer. What are the key components of a content search and recommendation system and how can these boost TV platform operators’ businesses? Many operators have launched basic Search and Recommendations systems that could be termed v1.0. These typically provide content based links and are limited to the content catalogue that is available from a service. Rovi already offers next generation search and recommendation technology and has invested over half a million hours of research and development to build the Rovi Knowledge Graph – a key enabler of a successful next generation search and recommendation offering. This marries advanced machine learning and natural language understanding to monitor over 100,000 information sources and continuously adjust the relationship between over 100 million entities related to entertainment. When this is combined with rich hand-curated metadata it delivers the next level of search and recommendations that is no longer limited to interactions based on prior purchase history in a limited catalogue. Drawing on the real world and social media, next generation content discovery will provide immediacy and accuracy on a personalised basis. How useful a part of search and recommendation is voice control? Rovi is leading the way with integrating voice control into advanced discovery experiences. Using Rovi Conversation services we can step

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beyond the command-based voice control that we have seen up to now and just speak to a service and it will understand the content and the context of the sentence. Voice interaction, especially as part of a discovery experience, makes something that was cumbersome incredibly simple. Trying to do anything other than a very basic search is very difficult using a remote control or even a keyboard. Imagine trying to find The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel when all you can remember is that it’s about some retired people in India and it stars ‘M’ from Skyfall. You don’t need to know that M was played by Judi Dench, but the combined power of the Rovi Knowledge Graph and our Conversation Services means you can literally say “What’s that film about some retirees in India that stars M from Skyfall?” and you will get the right result. Likewise you can ask when ‘The Gunners’ next play, get the results for all Arsenal’s games and even hone in on the crucial north London derby by following it up with “When do they play Spurs?”. It is crucial that conversational services understand the context of ambiguous words such as ‘they’ and ensure that the customer knows when the match will be, even if it’s further than the 14 day TV schedule. How far are TV operators and content owners currently tapping in to the potential of user behaviour analytics to enhance their businesses? The existence of advanced analytics for TV operators and content owners is starting to take off, with many businesses having had their expectations set by the levels of information and knowledge that is available on the Internet. More and more services are connected and are capable of providing a rich set of information about a customer that can be analysed and used for various purposes to provide useful, actionable information to businesses in the TV sector. This could include helping them proactively identify who is likely to churn from a service so they can prevent them from doing so or using the information around viewership when negotiating content deals. Data analytics can also be used to optimise and streamline advertising to boost accuracy, something that Rovi has worked to address with our Ad Optimiser, Subscriber Analytics and Operator Insights products that build on some of the concepts mentioned above. What in your view is the longer term potential of big data for audiovisual media companies? Rovi is a firm believer that ‘big data’ will continue to play an important role in the development of both existing and new services in the Media and Entertainment space. As more and more companies collect and intelligently use various sources of data to enhance their business and decision making, we will see more and more value attributed to ‘big data’ and the benefits that it can provide to both consumers and businesses. As competition heats up in the content space, businesses will need to ensure that they are making the most of every weapon available to stay ahead. This will give ‘big data’ a central role in future strategy.

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News > digest

Italy OTT > Sky deal with TI Telecom Italia and Sky Italia are to market a joint offering, whereby Sky’s services will be made available online via Telecom Italia’s network as part of a quad-play deal. Telecom Italia has committed to distribute decoders to support the service, to be called TIM Sky. The move follows an agreement stuck between the pair last October. The full range of Sky’s services are to be made available via the Telecom Italia high-speed network, which provides connections at speeds of 30Mbps and above. Sky will use the agreement to target homes that are unable to receive its offerings via satellite dishes. Telecom Italia is also likely to strike a distribution deal with Sky’s rival Mediaset. CEO Marco Patuano told journalists at a festival in Perugia that the telco is in advanced talks with Mediaset over a TV deal and that Telecom Italia’s network was an open platform for content providers. Patuano also said that Telecom Italia is open to a deal with Vivendi, which is set to become the operator’s largest single shareholder, with an 8.3% stake, as a result of its sale of Brazilian operator GVT to Telecom Italia shareholder Telefónica. Vivendi expects to finalise its agreement to join Telecom Italia’s shareholders early this summer.

Luxembourg PROG > RKTV launches Adult content provider Playboy Plus is launching a new channel, Reality Kings TV (RKTV) in Europe and has struck a deal with pay TV operator M7 Group, which sees the continued carriage of Brazzers TV Europe and the immediate launch of RKTV in Benelux and central and eastern Europe. To Facilitate the launch, Playboy Plus

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Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

has partnered with M7 Platform Services for satellite distribution, monitoring and customer support to third party operators. The channel will be available 24-hours a day via Astra 3B at 23.5° East. Following an initial test phase, RKTV will be rolled out alongside the Brazzers TV Europe Channel to M7 Group subscribers in Benelux, via Canal Digitaal, Online. nl and TV Vlaanderen; and in CEE, via Skylink. In addition, Brazzers TV Europe will be available to M7’s DTH subscribers in Wallonia, via TéléSAT; and in Austria, via AustriaSat.

The Netherlands CAB > Horizon on Ziggo Liberty Global has launched its Horizon advanced TV service on

Ziggo’s network in The Netherlands. The company has also adopted the Ziggo brand for all its Dutch assets, with UPC Netherlands’ services rebranded as Ziggo from today. Ziggo subscribers can now view all Horizon services via the Horizon Mediabox, including catch-up TV, enabling them to view content from a wide range of channels for seven days after their initial broadcast. Ziggo Customers are also able to view content on multiple screens thorugh the Horizon Go app and have access to the MyPrime on-demand service. Horizon is being rolled out step-by-step across Ziggo’s footprint and is being marketed as part of a new series of Connect and Play packages, with Connect used as a catch-all for internet and telephony services and Play used for TV.

Romania CAB > HBO Go on Digi Premium programmer HBO’s TV Everywhere service HBO Go has extended its reach in Romania with a launch on Digi Net and Digi TV. HBO Go is available to authenticated customers of the RCS&RDS-owned Digi pay TV services that have the Maxpak package or pay for HBO as part of their subscription. They will get on-demand access to 2,000 hours of HBO fare, including its regional original docs and dramas, including In Deriva and Umbre as well as the big US franchises including Game of Thrones, Girls and Veep. New episodes of the US series will be available on HBO Go from the time of their international premieres.

EBU renews call for safeguarding DTT spectrum By Stuart Thomson > The EBU has renewed its call for the safeguarding of the interests of digital-terrestrial TV viewers as the European Commission closed its public consultation on the Lamy Report on the future of the UHF band. The EBU emphasised the conclusion of the Lamy Report that broadcast TV “will continue to play an essential role as a...distribution platform for the foreseeable future. Its sustainable development is dependent on spectrum in the UHF band, which gives it capacity to further innovate and develop and...remain viable and competitive.” The EBU is concerned that recommendations have been made to release the 700MHz band currently used by broadcasters for mobile broadband applications by around 2020, arguing that this is too early.

“As the Commission is developing a long-term strategy for the future use of the UHF frequency band, we emphasise that this band is the only globally harmonised spectrum for DTT and is crucial for the provision of free-to-air TV services. It is vital that the EU strategy provides long-term certainty of spectrum access for DTT in order to facilitate investment and the future viability of the terrestrial broadcasting platform. This certainty should be safeguarded in the relevant EU legislation, including the future Radio Spectrum Policy Programme, and the EU policy objectives for the ITU WRC-15 and subse-

quent WRCs,” said EBU technical director Simon Fell. “The EBU is concerned about recommendations that the 700MHz band be released by 2020 with the flexibility of +/- two years. This is too early for a mandatory EU deadline because the transition of DTT out of the 700MHz band must take the situations of individual member states into account.” The Lamy Report and the consultation will feed into the EC’s position for the forthcoming WRC-15 conference, where the future of the UHF band is set to be a major topic. Mobile operators association the GSMA has meanwhile argued that the EC needs to show “greater flexibility” in making 700MHz available for mobile broadband and should support the release of UHF spectrum between 2018-2030 “and potentially earlier”, or risk falling behind other advanced markets.

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20/04/2015 20:24

Perfecting the Media Experience CLOUD

4K HEVC

LIVE

VM

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Software-defined video processing and delivery solutions from Elemental provide flexibility, scalability and performance via turnkey, cloud-based and virtualized deployment models. Pay TV operators, content programmers, broadcasters and enterprise customers around the world rely on Elemental to bring live and on-demand video to any screen, anytime – all at once.

TV Connect Booth 121

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20/04/2015 16:48

News > digest

Slovenia IPTV > Cinven bids for TS Investment group Cinven has confirmed that it has placed a binding offer to acquire the Slovenian government’s stake in local telco Telekom Slovenije. Cinven said its intentions for Telekom Slovenije are to invest significantly to upgrade the network, to stop the company’s revenue decline, stabilise and then grow revenues sustainably for the long term. The company said it would invest in the operator’s fibre networks to deliver high-speed internet across its footprint and would increase its 4G coverage, with a target to cover 90% of the Slovenian population. Cinven did not reveal any information about the value of Telekom Slovenije implied by its offer, in line with the rules of the country’s privatisation process.

Spain CAB > Vodafone One Vodafone España has unveiled its new converged offering with the brand Vodafone One. The converged packages will be available across all outlets from April 20. The operator is offering four highspeed internet options – 200Mbps, 120Mbps, 60Mbps and 30Mbps, including flat-rate calls to landline phones and 60 minutes of calls to mobiles, along with a range of mobile options ranging from 200 minutes of voice and data packages ranging from 1GB to 4GB a month. TV services will be available for both fibre and VDSL customers, using the Vodafone TV brand from now on for fibre customers, and Vodafone Box for VDSL customers. Vodafone has also confirmed that the offering will be based on Ono’s TiVo platform. In addition to TiVo functionality, including the ability to record up to three channels at a time, get personalised

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Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

recommendations, view internet content including YouTube and access VoD services, Vodafone is offering three packages henceforth. These are Vodafone TV Esencial, with 70 basic channels, Vodafone TV Extra, with over 100 channels, and Vodafone TV Total with 120 channels. Other premium offerings, such as Canal+ Liga are offered on top. Vodafone’s multiscreen offering, Vodafone TV Online, will be available on up to five mobile devices for each customer. Customers who take Vodafone One will be given Vodafone TV Escencial free of charge until the end of December. Customers who opt for the 4GB, mobile data bundle will also receive Vodafone TV extra until the end of the year. The company is offering a single mobile option, with the ability to sign up for up to four additional mobile lines for €9 per month per line. Vodafone has also rebranded its fibre services as Fibra Ono, maintaining the Ono brand from the cable operator it acquired last year. The high-speed network is to be extended to Gijón and Oviedo in Asturias, and Badajoz, Cáceres and Mérida in Extramadura shortly. Later this year, coverage will extended in Bilbao, Irun Vitoria and San Sebastián in the Basque Country and La Coruna, Ferrol, Orense, Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra and Vigo in Galicia.

Sweden SAT > Football deal for MTG MTG has taken the rights to UEFA Champions League football in Finland for the three years starting from the 2015/2016 season, with plans to broadcast matches on the new Viasat Sport Finland channel. MTG said it will show the key matches live and provide local commentary from every Tuesday and Wednesday match day in the group and knock-out rounds, as well as the Saturday final.

Viasat Sport Finland will be the “new flagship sports channel in the country,” according to MTG, available to all Finnish households through Viasat’s DTH satellite platform, as well as third party cable, IPTV and DTT providers. Subscribers to MTG’s online streaming service Viaplay will also be able to watch content from the channel online and on web-connected devices like smartphones, tablets, Chromecast sticks and a range of consoles and smart TVs.

UK OTT > Buy & Keep for all

Turkey

Pay TV operator Sky has extended its Buy & Keep service to all homes in the UK and Ireland via the launch of a new app and availability on a number of other devices. The service, part of the Sky Store offering, which launched in April last year, was previously available via the Sky+ HD box and to Sky customers via mobile devices. Sky Store enables customers to get a movie straight to their TV, stream or download it to their mobile, tablet and laptop and receive the DVD direct to their home a few days later. Sky and non-Sky customers accessing the Sky Store website or app will be able to buy and keep movies to stream or download on their mobile, tablet and laptop. Non-Sky TV customers in the UK will be able to watch movies on their main TV via a Now TV, Roku or YouView box, while those in Ireland can watch via a Roku box. Sky Store users can register up to four devices and any movie can be streamed to two devices at the same time.

SAT > Digiturk acquisition

PROG > Earth rolls out

Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera’s BeIN Sport is expected to acquire Turkish pay TV operator Digiturk for between US$1-US$1.2 billion, according to local reports. Local paper Star Gaztesi reported that finalisation of the sale is imminent, pending approval by the Turkish Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), the body that seized control of former Çukurova Holding’s 47% stake in the operator following a long-running dispute over taxes. Digiturk’s other investor, Providence Equity Partners, has reaportedly already agreed to the sale. Digiturk has about 3.3 million subscribers and holds rights to first division Turkish football until the end of the 2016-17 season.

BBC Worldwide has launched BBC Earth as a linear TV channel in a number of European countries, including Romania and Turkey. The factual channel is now accessible to Romanian audiences via Telekom, RCS/RDS Digi and Digital Cable Systems, and will be available in the local language. In Turkey BBC Earth is available via TTNet and Tivibu. The rollouts came as BBC Worldwide launched BBC Earth and its new factual entertainment brand BBC Brit as linear channels in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. BBC Worldwide announced it would make the Nordic launches in January, marking the second rollout of Brit and Earth after their debut in Poland in February.

Switzerland IPTV > Swisscom HbbTV Swisscom has launched HbbTV services for pubcaster SRG’s channels as part of its TV 2.0 offering. Swisscom has activated the new service, which replaces former Teletext offerings and includes new features. HbbTV will be available in HD programmes shown on SRG. HbbTV is also available on the ARD, ZDF, ORF1 and ORF2 TV channels via Swisscom TV 2.0.

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20/04/2015 20:24

Q&A: Steve Christian, SVP, marketing, Verimatrix Verimatrix’s Steve Christian talks about the impact of cloud-based multiscreen delivery on revenue security for TV operators What are the main ways in which cloud-based delivery, network virtualisation and growing device connectivity are changing the way in which video service providers address revenue security? Because of our heritage in IPTV and IP-based networks, our revenue security solutions have always been built on standard, software-centric technologies (which have helped established Verimatrix as the global number one in video revenue security for connected devices). We are now seeing the benefits of more and more video delivery network infrastructure components becoming virtualised. We recently launched our Verspective Intelligence Center, an innovative cloud-based engine that optimises solution performance and reduces operational expenses through virtualised system deployment, management, monitoring and analytics. Verspective interconnects otherwise isolated operator security instances, capitalising on global management of performance and integrity for a highly distributed world of connected devices. With video distribution channels proliferating, what challenges do operators face in dealing with multiple content security formats and how can this best be managed? As consumers demand support for more devices to access their preferred OTT services, complexity seems likely to increase further, with operators required to support multiple streaming formats and DRMs native to browsers and device families. Outsourcing the management of multiple DRMs on an OTT service to a “black box provider” will avoid diverting attention from these core activities. Working with a security specialist will also ensure future-proofing by staying ahead of emerging security and other relevant technologies. We offer this black box service through our MultiRights branded solution as part of the VCAS security platform, which arbitrates rights management across device types and DRM formats. MultiRights caters to the continuing existence of multiple DRMs, enabling operators to address these complexities and provide their users with a device and technology independent consumption experience, without risks that they will experience any arbitrary restrictions. How can the use of ‘big data’ help video service providers secure their content and revenues more effectively? More detailed subscriber behaviour and usage visibility is essential to improving the quality of experience for their customers. The analytics component increasingly relies on a “big data” approach with computing resources and extra customer data that are required from outside the operator’s network. Security solutions typically have touch points at many of the critical interfaces necessary to gather raw data. The next leap in analytics capability will come from the aggregation of data across regions, which would be achievable with globally interconnected systems.

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What additional revenue opportunities could the use of content security technology unlock for service providers? Verimatrix has always been in the business of securing revenues – and providing the right layer of security to enable different business models. Multiscreen services bring the challenges of catering to different device display and security capabilities, quite apart from having to deliver over multiple networks. The operator must satisfy content providers over security, while ensuring that consumers get the best experience possible. Verimatrix helps enable this through a harmonised and multi-layered revenue security approach that optimises content monetisation for different business objectives, networks and devices, within a single platform. Effective multi-network revenue security that enables a good user experience, while providing robust and effective content protection, will be crucial to successful monetisation of multiscreen. As Ultra HD video services begin to launch, including OTT services, what content security challenges are raised and how can these be solved? Fortunately the security challenges posed by UHD have been widely recognised, at least among content producers. This was reflected in a pivotal moment when MovieLabs announced a new set of security guidelines specifically for UHD content for its members in distribution of premium content over the Internet. Essentially these guidelines translate into three pillars of UHD content security: hardware-based security; trusted software security; and forensic watermarking. These each address different threats. Verimatrix is uniquely placed to provide such protection with a balanced, integrated approach to security that supports all three of these elements. We have the right complementary technologies, including encryption, authentication and device revocation, to establish secure chains of custody. Equally importantly, Verimatrix has established the right partnerships to deliver the whole secure ecosystem. What is Verimatrix highlighting at the TV Connect show and why? We will be focusing on the optimisation of multi-network, multi-screen deployments for next-generation video service providers. Specifically, we will be highlighting: Verspective Intelligence Center – an innovative, cloud-based engine that helps next-generation video service providers capitalise on a broader range of global resources from their revenue security platforms to more optimally manage the system and identify potential threats. VCAS Ultra – introduced at IBC 2014, VCAS Ultra enables next-generation video service providers to take full advantage of software and IP technologies, while preparing for new premium service delivery for UHD/4K content. MultiRights – an award-winning solution that has addressed multi-DRM challenges for operators over the last several years. Our approach has been proven as a practical way to unify delivery systems and customer experiences around a common rights management framework. To learn more, please visit us at TV Connect in booth #90.

20/04/2015 10:27

Technology focus > Internet of Things

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

THE MOST

With the Internet of Things ultimately expected to be worth up to US$7 trillion, operators need to invest now to remain relevant, reports Adrian Pennington.

The

concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), or a truly interconnected world, where every device and system is smart and can communicate with other devices and systems without human intervention, has been in development for a number of years and is already present

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in some industries. Analyst group IDC has somewhat wildly forecast the IoT to be worth over US$7 trillion (e6.6 trillion) by 2020. The entertainment business is arguably the first sector to push an IoT digital ecosystem closer to consumers in the areas of wearable technology, smart homes and

smart cities. While the context today is narrow, the combination of these devices with information gleaned from sensors in cars, thermostats, lighting, or doorbell opens a myriad of possibilities. “For instance, with wearable technology we can finally understand who an audience

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20/04/2015 18:27

Technology focus > Internet of Things

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

is and use the combination of their presence, plus other environmental indicators that the devices are communicating, to give content recommendations,” says Charles Dawes, senior director, product marketing at TV technology provider Rovi. “Other simple examples are already possible, such as controlling your connected lights so the ambience of your living room matches the mood of the film you’re watching.” To capitalise on the IoT opportunity, the world needs there to be a base level of ubiquitous connectivity ensuring that devices are able to communicate no matter where they are. Assuming this infrastructure is in place, then the opportunity is one of building products and services on top “so that consumers can be provided with more personalised, targeted and value-added services than ever before,” says Dawes. For Dawes, telecom and cable service providers are among the players best placed to deliver the applications that the IoT could unleash. “Service providers have the opportunity to move outside of the areas they’ve been traditionally bound to. For instance, as smart metering and the connected home takes off, the service provider can build new services around it that integrate the existing voice, data and video solutions with new ways to grow their business,” he says.

Google competition While the opportunities are there, MSOs and other service providers will face stiff competition from internet and consumer

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Intelsat’s next-generation EPIC class of satellite (left).

The Internet of Things can encompass outof-home applications.

electronics giants in targeting the IoT market. First among these are the big internet players. Through its connected home division Next, Google has acquired Revolv (a hardware hub packed with radios for syncing various smart home devices with each other) and security camera company, Dropcam. These will be linked to the Android operating system by Google. Google’s rival Apple is making a similar play with its Apple TV, iWatch and iPhone devices, linked to IoT platform HomeKit. Even Facebook is getting in on the act. Its acquisition in January of voice-recognition start-up Wit.Ai is considered to be the social network’s first major foray into the IoT world. Consumer electronics giant Samsung meanwhile spent US$200 million in August last year on SmartThings, a Washington DC-based start-up which allows people to synchronise connected gadgets using a single smartphone app and hardware hub. While the internet giants have the resources to make the IoT their own, and Google et al are spending billions of dollars to acquire entry points into the home, cable operators and telcos, and to some extent consumer electronics companies, have the immeasurable advantage of already being there. They’ve amortised investment in

remote controls and set-top boxes and are now extending their reach with other devices, such as dongles and WiFi extenders, via multi-service residential gateways. What’s more, with their golden asset – their existing, trusted, billing relationships with customers – they are better placed than Apple or Samsung to deliver many of these additional services into the home. Nevertheless, capitalising on the opportunity will mean a change of mindset among service providers. “This is not a natural evolution of TV everywhere strategy,” says Guillaume de Saint Marc, senior director, chief technology and architecture office at Cisco. “They [MSOs] have to continue to invest in the cloud since a lot of the business intelligence for IoT will be housed there. Security of the home gateway is another significant issue and an elegant and very powerful way for them to capitalise on their already considerable investment in security for set-top boxes.” According to content security and TV technology provider Irdeto, operators are nevertheless also in a good position to play a leading role in the connected home because of their deep awareness of the subscriber base and demographic/market data to determine the ‘right’ or ‘killer’ IoT app for their market. “Operators also have experience with multiservice offerings delivered through gateways and complementary devices and an ongoing desire to increase subscriber loyalty and longevity through new and varied services,” says Greg McKesey, VP of technology, Irdeto. “The ‘screen,’ whether fixed big screen or mobile, will be a focal point for virtualising – and visualising – all kinds of consumer IoT systems. The question each operator has to ask themselves is: should they deploy and offer these services; form partnerships to allow third parties to use their subscriber base as a channel of distribution or simply allow third parties free reign over their subscribers?”

“[MSOs] have to continue to invest in the cloud since a lot of the business intelligence for IoT will be housed there.” Guilaume de Saint Marc, Cisco

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Technology focus > Internet of Things

Pay TV operators could even look to integrate some basic home automation functionality into their offerings, for example by making the ‘smart home’ know what to do when an on-demand movie is being played as opposed to live TV, suggests Irdeto. “Perhaps because the on-demand content is available for a fixed time, the user may want the house to be on complete ‘do not disturb’, for example with phones automatically forwarded to voice mail,” says McKesey. “For live TV, perhaps when a call comes in the show is paused, and once the call is complete, the show could automatically rewind before resuming.”

Cost value equation According to TV technology provider Arris, early security and home automation systems have struggled to gain a hold because the cost/value equation didn’t add up. “Consumers might like a service which enables them to tune home heating ahead of arrival but they are not prepared to pay US$30 a month for it,” says Charles Cheevers, CTO, customer premises equipment Arris. A residential gateway up until now has typically meant a device that provides households with voice, video and internet services, but new devices fitted with radios are being created to support IoT protocols from ZWave and ZigBee. This enables the service provider to synchronise with other devices in the home and to perform physical installation and maintenance on third-party connected devices with minimal capital expenditure. In theory this could cut the cost to the operator and enable it to pass the value onto the customer. “The trick is to make sure the MSO is always in the value chain,” says Cheevers. “If they don’t do it, then the likes of Google will go over the top and service providers won’t be able to add value.” Service providers including Comcast are already employing product teams of specialists in medical and assisted living solutions and experts in smartgrid and energy management to build its XFinity Home platform. “The bottom line is that operators’ subscribers are being approached by cable providers, ISPs, telcos, utility companies and others with IoT multi-service offerings,”

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Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

The IoT and content suppliers While the opportunity to offer a range of new IoT-related services – from home security to remote healthcare – are clear in the case of telcos and cable operators, there are also opportunities for broadcasters and content owners to capitalise on the Internet of Things. These range from crowd-sourced weather forecasts to building information from the IoT into talent show formats to judge the emotional response to a contestant. “Some content owners may synchronise the overall viewing experience with the home, potentially controlling your lighting system in sync with a movie, TV show or live event,” suggests says Greg McKesey, VP of technology, Irdeto. “There may be unique merchandising opportunities where content owners may sell branded IoT devices to enhance the watching experience – for example lighting for any kind of movie, vibrating seats for an action movie, a device that releases aromas for a kids movie, etc.” For example, lighting for any kind of movie, vibrating seats for an action movie, a device that releases aromas for kids content. A toy Dalek in the living room could be activated to move in familiar Dalek fashion by an audio trigger embedded in an episode of

Dr Who. This spookily realistic interaction was

says McKesey. “Operators need to invest in IoT to not just remain competitive; but to remain relevant. The core focus for monetisation for operators will be with incremental subscriptions and a move away from being a dumb pipe provider for the customer.” Technicolor’s Digital Life suite of apps (IZE), for example, is an open-source IoT platform that aggregates different services. Benoit Joly, SVP, marketing, smart home and solutions integration at the French technology company, says: “Each of these services is delivered by a ‘digital concierge’ – the Nurse, the Doorman, the Caretaker, etc. – as you know them in real life. So you know exactly which service you are subscribing to, and you can add services as you need [them]. You just pay for what you use, exactly like in real life. Everyone knows about this way to buy services, and everyone knows how to use a TV. All of this is extremely simple to understand, and hence to adopt.”

demonstrated by BBC Future Media in 2011 and suggests other possibilities where content could take on a literal third dimension. While merchandising opportunities like that are likely to grab attention, the wider opportunities around gathering and monetising ever more data about individual households have yet to be explored or understood in depth. TV technology provider

Dawes: the Internet of Things could help deliver applications of value to the advertising world.

Rovi observes that the opportunity to understand who is actually watching based on information from other IoT devices could also be of crucial value to the advertising world. “While privacy considerations should remain at the top of the agenda, getting the right advertising content around our favourite shows offers a huge business opportunity,” says Charles Dawes, product marketing senior director.

Revenue potential While there is value in providing a service which, for example, displays and controls a connected home’s internet devices on a single dashboard on the large living room screen, there is larger potential in markets such as energy management and health. In the US in particular, there is a trend towards monitoring patients at home rather than in the more expensive environment of a hospital. Wider even than this is ‘ageing at home’, a term for tending to the growing ageing populace outside a residential care environment. The idea is that connected devices, from wristbands to fridges, could assist in remote monitoring and diagnosing a resident’s health, even prompting them when to take medication. “An MSO could even develop an app today to tell you if someone had died at home,” says Cheevers. “They could do this by taking usage data

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20/04/2015 18:27

Technology focus > Internet of Things

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Nagra and Cisco among others have already demonstrated IoT applications.

from the broadband router, the number of connected devices and changes in traffic. Is the STB on? If so have channel switching habits changed? With this knowledge you could tell if somebody different was in the house, or if someone had died. I’d pay US$1 a month for a service that monitored my parents’ home in that way and alerted me

“As is ever the case, owning the network or the set-top box is no guarantee that consumers will buy new types of services, or actually buy these services from their incumbent broadband or TV provider,” cautions Simon Trudelle, senior product marketing director at Nagra. However, he says, the potential is there.

“You just pay for what you use, exactly like in real life. All of this is extremely simple to understand, and hence to adopt.” Benoit Joly, Technicolor

of any significant usage change. And there would be no capex for the service provider.” The economics will take time to build on but service providers and the technology companies that traditionally service them such as Rovi, Irdeto, Arris, Cisco, Technicolor and Nagra – to name a few – are working on relevant business cases. Some observers have predicted that IoT services could bring extra monthly ARPU in the range of US$10-$35 for up to 30% of a MSO’s subscriber base. Technologies and services that enable ‘ageing in place’ – independent living at home for an ageing population – for instance, when someone is sent home for monitoring after a hospital visit, could add significant sums to an MSO’s turnover, reckons Cheevers. None of this means that operators have an unencumbered opportunity to own the IoT space for the foreseeable future.

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p12-15 Internet of Things AprMay15v6AM.indd 15

“While ARPU may only add up to a fraction of the media and network access services revenues that incumbent operators currently enjoy, there is definite potential for accelerated growth at some point in the next 18 to 24 months.”

Interoperability For the IoT to become a significant revenue stream, services have to be plug-and-play-easy. Arris is working to push what it believes are the relevant open standards into its devices. These include specifications from the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) with Intel and Samsung as founder members, and the AllSeen Alliance, which uses an open-source implementation of Qualcomm’s AllJoyn framework to connect devices to one another. That Qualcomm is a competitor to Intel

is seen as one reason for the dual approach, although the OIC wants to broaden the scope of IoT from the connected home to include in-car and workplace settings. Technicolor, a member of the AllSeen Alliance (with Microsoft, Sony, Panasonic, LG and Cisco), contributes Qeo, an open source software language for connected objects and has designed IZE with Allseen in mind. Other attempts at macro platform provision include cloud-based networks Ayla Networks and Arrayent. Groups below these IoT frameworks include wireless protocol ZigBee, Smart Things (now Samsung), and Thread which includes Samsung, ARM and Google. Their aim is to promote a single networking standard for the connected home. Apple’s HomeKit probably falls somewhere in between. Proprietary technologies are likely to win market share in the absence of standards. “High-level standards may evolve; but this will take years to iron out and the market won’t sit around idly,” says McKesey. Cisco’s Sant Marc believes many of the necessary technologies are already available as standards. The challenge is to bring everything together. “We have a lot of perfectly mature standards already,” he says. “It’s not happening as an ecosystem but as a sum of independent, quite successful applications at the device level. How we get to the next stage is an order of magnitude more complex. It will need to connect everything together and yet be very simple and secure for the end user. It’s simple to say but the only way it’s going to happen this decade is by open source momentum and the wider development community.” l

15 20/04/2015 18:27

Technology focus > OTT

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Going over the top

Over-the-top and direct-to-customer offerings are becoming increasingly common among pay TV and channel operators alike. Andy McDonald looks at some of the most interesting recent developments in this space.

As the

television market continues to evolve, more and more service providers are turning to overthe-top (OTT) technology to deliver packages of both live and on-demand channels. In the UK, Sky first launched its IP-delivered Now TV offering in 2012 as a standalone service – a concept that appears to be gaining momentum elsewhere in the TV industry. In the US, pay TV operator DiSH recently launched its over-the-top delivered Sling TV offering, giving customers a US$20 (€18) per-month cloud TV service that consists of 16 channels. Sony rolled out its new cloud-based TV service, PlayStation Vue, in March with an offering of 85 channels, while Apple is hotly tipped to launch an online TV service later this year in partnership with broadcasters including ABC, CBS and Fox. New cloud-based TV services increasingly seem to make sense in a multi-device world, but changes in viewer activity are also leading pay TV providers to bundle up and deliver their traditional TV offerings in new ways.

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In Spain, Telefónica is a prime example, with the launch of various Movistar-branded online access options and the release of its full Movistar IPTV service as an application on Samsung smart TVs. Innovation does not end with service providers and pay TV operators. In a postNetflix world, channel operators and content makers are keen to get in on the act. HBO has been making headlines with the launch of its US standalone premium streaming service, HBO Now in April. And it is not the only premium US TV network experimenting with a direct-to-customer proposition.

Starz Play Arabia On April 2, US channel operator and content producer Starz launched Starz Play Arabia – a direct-to-consumer online SVOD service across 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Discussing the move, Starz chief strategy officer John Penney says

that while the firm has traditionally been a “North American and US-focused premium subscription television business,” it saw an opportunity to “deliver IP-distributed premium TV series and movie content to residents in the Middle East.” In the US Starz claims a combined 57 million subscribers for its flagship Starz and Encore linear channels. While Starz Play does exist in its home market, here Starz uses the online service as a TV everywhere offering – an authenticated online channel for its existing pay TV subscriber base. Penney says Starz decided to take a different approach in MENA because it had the desire to work in markets that have “not traditionally had broad penetration of pay TV” or that, in terms of demographic, are “seeing an increasing middle class.” The ability to licence content was also an important consideration, in order for Starz to establish Starz Play Arabia as a “full-bodied service.” Currently the offering includes some 3,000 hours of series and movies combined.

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20/04/2015 20:29

Technology focus > OTT

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Left, Roku plans more pay TV operator deals through its ‘Roku Powered’ scheme.

While this includes core Starz original programming like Black Sails, Power and Outlander, Penney says the “vast majority” is licensed rather than Starz-originated. “We spent a lot of time looking at markets around the world. What you want to see is a combination of a consumer demand, so that there are people who are interested in some content service – in this case premium TV series and movies – an evolving if not robust distribution structure – LTE wireless, 4G wireless, fixed broadband – and you also want to see the availability of rights – TV series rights and movies beyond Starz [content],” says Penney. Starz Play Arabia is live in markets including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the  UAE, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Although in many of these markets fixed broadband penetration and internet connection speeds are far behind the those found in developed western markets, Penney says the infrastructure is actually “better than one often thinks”. “The reason is that mobile has become a dominant transmission means for higher bandwidth services like video. So where you have 4G or LTE video, you immediately have a platform to deliver content services. Those could be audio services, video services, and that ends up covering large swathes of the population,” says Penney. He also points out that in countries like the UAE or Saudi Arabia “you have fairly strong fixed broadband penetration” with home connections expected to rise in the coming years. The accessibility of mobile video plays well into Starz’s multiplatform strategy in the region, with Starz Play Arabia available at launch on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, as well as PCs and Macs. Penney says that the firm has no plans to deliver a Starz-branded linear channel in the region today, but says “we do acknowledge that the opportunity can still be there” in the future. As for its web-powered, direct-to-customer approach, Penney says Starz has no plans to go down a similar route in the US. “We’d rather take the course of partnering with our current distributors – cable, satellite

and telco,” he says of Starz’s home market. Similarly Penney says it’s not the preference of Starz to look to go OTT in developed markets such as western Europe. “We actually feel that it’s more important for us to look at the world and find places where television hasn’t been brought to consumers in a convenient low-cost and hopefully engaging fashion,” says Penney. While he claims that Starz is “not in talks specifically” about launching Starz Play in new markets, Penney concedes that the firm does “like the dynamics” of countries that can be found in regions like Latin America or South East Asia. “Our focus is finding the right demographics and the right countries, with the right demand for US and local series and movies to develop a full product set for a market,” he says.

Telefónica’s Movistar In Spain, Telefónica has used various OTT methods to both broaden the reach and boost the user experience of its Movistar IPTV service. In summer 2013 it launched Movistar TV Go, its TV everywhere offering, primarily aimed at out-of-home and mobile viewing. In December 2014 Telefónica added Movistar Series – a Netflix-style service focused around TV series, which it again offers to existing Movistar customers. Then earlier this year, it launched a full version of its Movistar IPTV service through Samsung smart televisions. Discussing the Samsung implementation, Fernando Soto, commercial director for Movistar TV, says that the idea behind the launch was to provide a better customer

experience by dispensing with the set-top box and delivering direct to television. “The main point is simplicity at home,” says Soto, who claims that having fewer wires and only one remote control makes the TV experience easier for the end-user. He also says that using the core processing power of the TV set also makes sense, as smart TVs can now contain more memory and better hardware than set-top boxes. The Samsung deployment followed a sixmonth development process by a large team from both Samsung and Telefónica in South Korea and Spain, says Soto, who stresses that the Samsung integration marked more than a simple OTT app launch. “It is absolutely integrated on the system. For example, the number of features that we have on the Samsung smart TV is exactly the same as we have on our set-top boxes. The application is fully operated and some of the experience is exactly the same, but with much more power in the sense that these TV sets are more powerful,” says Soto. “The integration is so deep and is so complex that we cannot put this application in any device as an OTT app,” he adds, claiming that the involved process and the development expense means that Telefónica has no immediate plans to extend the service to other smart TV platforms. “It’s like having another set-top box in our customer base and as you may know, in general terms, IPTV companies don’t want to have very many set-top boxes, because the operation is much more complex,” says Soto. Though his aim over time is to “try to have also as many customers connected through their own devices,” Soto says that Movistar cannot be so radical as to try and phase out

Starz Play Arabia offers series and movies in 17 countries across MENA.

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p16-18,20 OTT DTVE AprMay15v3st.indd 17

17 20/04/2015 20:29

Technology focus > OTT

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Telefonica now offers its Movistar IPTV service through Samsung smart TVs.

low-priced OTT offering on a standalone basis. Asked whether Telefónica would ever go down this route, Soto admits “there is a deep divide about that in our organisation. So far we have nothing [deployed]; this is the main point. We are not sure there is a market in Spain for that.”

the STB entirely – even though it would save the firm money by not having to provide the set-top hardware. “We will never stop selling set-top boxes, it’s quite impossible,” he says. However, at the same time Movistar’s multiscreen offering Movistar TV Go is gaining traction. The app, which is available on Android, iOS and Windows mobile devices, is used, or has at least been activated by, around half of Movistar’s total TV customer base, says Soto. Customers often use the service on devices like iPads in the home, but Soto says that peaks in use are overwhelmingly “connected with football matches” with the “most typical use-case when a customer is not at home and there is a match on the TV.” Movistar Series is an attempt by the firm to offer a premium Netflix-style on-demand service to its existing customers and the service currently has around 100 series, including the likes of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul. Soto says that Movistar Series’ value proposition in terms of its selection of shows is to not just offer the first or last season, but to try and provide “everything, all the content together.” While Netflix has made clear its ambition to be a global company by the end of 2016, Soto believes Movistar is in a strong position for when the SVoD rival does change its ‘yetto-launch’ status in Spain. “Netflix is coming really late in the sense that today we have more than two million customers with settop boxes. We are offering an SVoD solution with good quality at a good price, and it’s bundled. We have the invoice capability, the billing capability, everything, and we have the content,” says Soto. Yet one thing that a company like Netflix does provide is the opportunity to access a

Now TV Unlike Telefónica, in the UK Sky has embraced the standalone OTT approach with Now TV. Having first launched in 2012, Casper Atkinson, product director for Now TV, explains that the service has evolved from its first version as a movies-only service where customers could buy a sports pass, to its current iteration of three separate packages of movies, sports and entertainment content. Now TV Movies today offers more than 1,000 film titles and up to 16 premieres a month for £9.99 (€13.80). Sports fans can get access to all seven of Sky’s linear sports channels through Now TV Sports, paying £6.99 for a day pass or £10.99 for a week pass. Through this viewers can watch live sports including Premier League and UEFA Champions League football, Formula 1 racing, cricket and rugby union. Now TV Entertainment, at £6.99 permonth, is the latest addition to the service. “About 18 months ago we launched our entertainment pack, so it’s rounding out

the proposition,” says Atkinson. “With entertainment we’re up to about 240 box sets, and that’s across 13 live channels – so the big-hitting Sky channels, Sky 1, Sky Atlantic, Sky Living, but also third-party channels as well. In amongst that, Game of Thrones does extremely well for us. We’ve got seasons one to four up at the moment, and we had the season five premiere.” Ahead of the launch of Now TV almost three years ago, Sky said that the service would sit alongside its current subscription pay TV service and be aimed at “the 13 million UK households who do not currently subscribe to pay TV.” So far this seems to be working. “The important thing is [that from] what we’re seeing it’s not cannibalising the core Sky base,” says Atkinson. “When we survey our base, 90% of our customers have said they’d never considered Sky at all. It’s a way of reaching those households yet to take pay TV. It’s giving customers the Sky content without the commitment of a contract. It’s just a new way of monetising our investment in content as we grow our revenues.” Though Sky won’t reveal user numbers for Now TV, Atkinson says that its customer base “has tripled in the last year or so”. Customer satisfaction also appears to be high. “Over the last year, the number of customers who are buying multiple passes from us has quadrupled. That, as an indicator, is I think pretty good,” he says. The launch of Now TV was a bold move by Sky, but the concept seems to be winning support elsewhere in the pay TV market, as seen with Sling TV in the US. Sky itself also

Sky’s Now TV service has seen its customer base triple in the last year.

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20/04/2015 20:29

Q&A: Hans-Jürgen Désor, Chief Executive Officer, iWedia Hans-Jürgen Désor, Chief Executive Officer at iWedia, talks about the benefits of Android TV set-tops for pay TV service providers Why should a pay TV operator choose Android TV as the technology platform for their service? The main reason is certainly a wish to rely on and benefit from an existing open eco-system: an Open Source operating system which is very robust and well maintained, a community of application developers, and a wide range of apps (more and more of them being developed or adapted for the main screen). In that new context, introducing a new service simply means deploying a new app which dramatically reduces the time-to-market and thus enhances the flexibility of the operator’s value proposition. How does Android TV differ from the previous Google TV platform? From Android Lollipop, the TV features gathered in Android TV are part of the Open Source distribution (which was not the case for the former Google TV). Moreover, all the necessary features to support OTT TV have been added (e.g., service list scanning, parental control management, etc.). What is still missing, and this is where iWedia bridges the gap, is the support for “legacy” broadcast and multicast TV as well as for Personal Video Recorder (PVR) features. Given that Android TV will be available on a range of retail devices and could be used by multiple pay TV providers, how far can operators differentiate the look and feel and functionality of services based on the platform? There is a lot of room for differentiation for a pay TV service provider within the Android TV framework. First of all, the native launcher can be customised by the operator to deliver its brand and dynamically expose the apps it wants to promote. Moreover the operator may develop its own live TV app (with its own look and feel) as a launcher which coexists with the native launcher and makes the device genuinely behave as a STB. To what extent should operators be concerned about opening the door to Google and enabling it to gain data about and ultimately make money from their subscribers? You actually put the finger on one of the main concerns for pay TV operators with respect to Android. And it seems that this concern will not be completely cleared by principle, but by dedicated arrangements with Google (e.g. revenue sharing mechanisms). Most of them are multi-service operators anyway, with strong links to Android and Google through their mobile devices.

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What about security? Can Android TV be now considered as a safe environment with respect to premium content? Security was the second main concern pay TV operators and content providers had with respect to Android. But the effort undertaken by both DRM and CAS providers to specify and implement security techniques (relying on a hardware anchorage) specifically suited to Android have convinced the stakeholders that it is now safe to distribute premium content on Android TV STBs. Why does it make sense for pay TV operators that adopt Android TV to continue to use a set-top box rather than simply deliver services to Android devices? Most pay TV operators already have their OTT services available for Android devices. Deploying a box running Android TV allows them to easily have these services available for the main screen as well. What is iWedia’s role in enabling operators to deploy Android TVbased platforms? As a software editor, iWedia may provide its ANDROID4TV product which is an extension of the Android TV framework enabling broadcast TV, multicast TV as well as PVR features. As a software engineering service provider, iWedia may additionally play the role of principal integrator of the STB software, gathering our ANDROID4TV with the software components coming from the SoC maker (including the Android TV distribution), the STB OEM, the security provider (CAS and DRM); we then perform the testing and validation of the box in the end-to-end system to eventually deliver the mass production software to be deployed. What is your track record so far and how do you see the future of Android TV? So far, we have been successfully associated with the Android STB deployments of Swisscom (Switzerland) and Bouygues Telecom (France). We see a lot of traction now from operators and service providers globally, including Europe, US and Asia. iWedia is a key driver to leverage this AndroidTV technology from broadband telco TV (OTT/ IPTV) to traditional broadcast operators (Terrestrial/Cable/Sat). We have been a strong promoter of Android in the TV field from the inception of Google TV. We are proud to have been an active player in eventually making it happen…

17/04/2015 15:57

Technology focus > OTT

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

The future of the set-top box With service providers starting to move to OTT delivery, what does this spell for the future of the set-top box? Will they remain an essential piece of kit for many years to come or is the STB becoming increasingly unnecessary? Kristan Bullett, global head of software architecture at OTT TV technology specialist Piksel, claims that while operators are already working on or updating their next-generation set-top boxes, “I don’t think we’ll see the settop box go away, because it’s a powerful part of the branding for these providers.” Bullett says that the term ‘cord-cutter’ is now widely used to describe viewers, mainly of a younger demographic, turning away from pay TV services, often in favour of OTT alternatives. But he claims this behaviour is primarily pushing young viewers towards apps rather than specific new categories of hardware – like new streaming sticks and boxes. “Yes, Now TV provides a box for that [streaming], and that’s another part of the market, but there’s a huge part of the market that’s not going to be moving towards that for a long time. The set-top box is going to remain and I think slowly we’ll then see [the number of] other people [that] use OTT only start to climb – I don’t think it’s going to rush massively,” says Bullett. Sachin Sathaye, vice-president, product strategy and marketing at cloud TV specialist ActiveVideo agrees that the set-top box is here to stay, but predicts a shift in both the power and the capabilities of these devices. “We believe that there will be a set-top box, or there will be a device that operators will have – it’s just that the set-top box will not be as powerful as today,” predicts Sathaye, claiming that important functions currently carried out by the STB will increasingly be delivered from the cloud. “Eventually the set-top box, which is essentially a very high-powered PC sitting in your home waiting for you to press a guide button, is just sitting idle as an investment either from a consumer or from the operator perspective,” says Sathaye. He predicts that in the future, operators could shift towards using multi-function gateway devices in the home – “one big device that allows them to deliver additional services, whether it’s home automation or home

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security” in addition to pay TV. “When it’s delivering that pay TV experience to the television set, which is the end-screen, we believe those will be much thinner clients than current versions. So there’ll be much lighter set-top boxes like HDMI dongles. Or there could be integrated within the television itself,” says Sathaye. Looking ahead, Luke Gaydon, vice-president of strategic initiatives, media at online video specialist Brightcove says: “It would be fair to say that the majority of the implementations of the Brightcove technology don’t involve a set-top box. So I do have a vested interest, if not in a move away from STBs, then certainly in other methods of delivery.” Gaydon admits that “there are a lot of reasons why media companies like set-top boxes.” Primarily, through their own set-top box deployments, operators get to control the network and dictate the specifications of the device. However, he claims that when it comes to deploying an OTT, as opposed to a managed IPTV service, it is a “lot easier” to do so on a web streaming device like a Roku, Apple TV, the Now TV box than it is on a traditional STB.

Sathaye: The set-top box will become smaller and thinner as functionality shifts to the cloud.

Iddo Shai, director of product marketing, media and OTT at video technology firm Kaltura believes that “eventually the set-top box as we know it today will look as bulky and out of date as TV sets that you see on Mad Men. It’s clear that this is where it’s going.” However, while set-tops may be changing – becoming smaller in size while at the same time being capable of handling streamed video in HD and even 4K formats – will they ever fully disappear? Shai is unsure: “I don’t think you will always need to have a device connected to your TV and I think eventually yes, in terms of size, it [the set-top box] will get closer to the sizes that we are seeing with the Chromecasts of the world. But we are definitely not there yet.”

seems committed to its OTT experiment. Speaking on Sky’s last earnings call, company CEO Jeremy Darroch said it would launch a “next generation” version of Sky’s Now TV box later this year and roll out a similar box in Italy, having already done so in Germany in December. Sky first launched its £9.99 Rokupowered Now TV box in the UK back in 2013 in a bid to make the service easily accessible on TV sets, and it is one of the many devices that currently supports the service. Asked whether pay TV operator launches of standalone OTT services could now be a wider industry trend, Atkinson says: “The opportunities are there. The big advantage of delivering content over the internet, over the cloud, is that it lowers the barrier to entry.” At Roku, vice-president of pay TV Andrew Ferrone agrees. Following the release of Sky’s Now TV box, Roku launched a programme called ‘Roku Powered’ last September, aimed at licensing the technology that powers its streaming platform to other pay TV service providers outside the US. “If I’m successful in my job you’ll see more and more of these partnerships being announced over time as we continue our conversations around the world,” says Ferrone. He claims that there are deals to be done with pay TV providers, even if they do not intend to launch standalone OTT services. “The Time Warner pay TV service is available as an app on Roku. What that means is access to 300 linear channels of TV [and] over 5,000 VoD titles. It quickly, after its launch, became a top 10 app on Roku and to access that app you need to be a Time Warner Cable subscriber, so it’s very much a complimentary way of accessing your existing cable TV subscription with all the benefits of Roku,” says Ferrone. For Ferrone, there is a clear move towards IP delivery. He says that in the future “we believe that all content will be streamed” and claims “we also believe how an operator chooses to package and offer their content over streaming – whether it’s geographically limited, available broadly to anyone with an internet access with any given territory – largely depends on their specific strategy.” Though traditional linear TV is not at risk of disappearing overnight, the internet is already having a profound effect on the broadcast industry. Companies that are adapting now to new viewing patterns and embracing online delivery options look well placed to prosper in the not-so-distant, internet-first future. l

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20/04/2015 20:29

Q&A: Tiaan Schutte, President EMEA, Alticast Tiaan Schutte, President for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Alticast, talks about the impact of cloud technology on pay TV. Virtualization and migration to the cloud have had major impact on other industries. How do you think these technologies will change the pay TV industry?   Virtualization will enable core pay TV delivery functions such as business operations and  media handling  to be moved into a cloud infrastructure. The separation of the content distribution from the network removes the requirement for dedicated infrastructure by the Pay TV operator. It also allows content preparation functions and delivery platforms that are currently repeated in various pay TV operations to be consolidated into a single cloud function. New content distribution models, where the content is transcoded and DRM packaged prior to wholesale distribution, may emerge. Competition will increase as cloud based infrastructures with OTT delivery enable new market entrants, such as Netflix and cable companies will no longer be tied to a geographic footprint allowing them to compete with each other. What are the advantages to pay TV operators and content providers in moving to the cloud? Moving to the Cloud will equip pay TV operators to rise to the increased consumer demand for high quality video on all devices. Costs optimization will be delivered through the migration from dedicated hardware platforms to scalable software instances in the Cloud. For example, pay TV operators can virtualize the STB to reduce both the BoM STB and also lower the TCO through reduced overhead in software release cycles, fault detection and resolution. How will the adoption of cloud technologies by the pay TV industry benefit consumers? Consumers will benefit from more innovative, appealing and convenient services being supplied in a more cost effective way. Cloud PVR, catchup, startover TV – are all features made possible through cloud storage and intelligent software solutions for indexing, archiving and serving the content to any device. Compare this with the old DVR STB model in which a consumer had to plan ahead of schedule the content they wanted to watch and was restricted to watching it back on a single device. With the wealth of analytics being available through cloud delivery, we will see more personalized solutions being delivered to consumers with great improvements in the quality of the services. 

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What products and services is Alticast offering in this space?  Alticast’s  AltiPlex Cloud Services Platform (CSP)  provides an array of solutions: back office integration, metadata delivery, user and device management, as well as Cloud DVR and Cloud UI, where the UI is executed in the Cloud as opposed to on the STB or other device. This radically  changes the UI delivery model as interfaces can be defined on a per user per device basis, and the  delivery and test cycle can be shortened dramatically. This is win-win for both operators and consumers as new innovative features can be introduced quickly and at lower cost without any impact on quality.  In addition, we offer a HDMI stick, which can be used in conjunction with the AltiPlex Cloud Services Platform (CSP) to enable content owners to directly deliver their services using IP to end-consumers at attractive price points.   How reliable is the cloud? What are the risks of moving components of a core service to the cloud, and is moving to a cloud-based architecture going to put a heavy load on networks as more concurrent users are added? Multiple industries have laid the groundwork solving issues like geographic redundancy and fail over for seamless quality of service. In the pay TV industry, reservations around the reliability of the last-mile networks can be allayed by guaranteeing core functions such as security and UI, through caching in the device to enable a continuation of service, [in the worst case of a network outage]. Clearly moving to a cloud-based architecture will cause increased network traffic as well as server usage. However, solutions need to be designed with this in mind, as with the Alticast Plex Cloud Service Platform (CSP) which is highly scalable and consumes low bandwidth even when delivering highly complex UIs.   How do you see the market evolving in the future and what other products and services do you see emerging from the adoption of a cloud based architecture?  IoT services around the smart home will benefit greatly from the cloud and the TV plays a critical role in this – it could be a control device for IoT infrastructure and at the same time could be a ‘thing’ itself to be controlled. There are many issues to consider around the security and usability of collected IoT data: Pay TV operators with a secure network and cloud platform have a great opportunity to be the central hub in IoT infrastructures in the home.

17/04/2015 16:28

Technology focus > Quality assurance and data analytics

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Good behaviour

Applying user behaviour analytics to ensure quality of delivery and shape service offerings has been a hot topic in the quality assurance world for some time. But can big data be too much data? Stuart Thomson reports.

Quality

assurance has until relatively recently been a second-ranked priority for many service providers, who have relied on customer complaints to deal with problems as they occur or, in the case of OTT service providers, have delivered best effort services without a guarantee of quality. However, the use of IP delivery now means that service providers have the opportunity to delve in much greater depth into patterns of user behaviour and the responses of users to different experiences on different platforms. The adoption of OTT or semi-managed delivery platforms by service providers means that there is an ever greater array of variable factors that could determine

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how well video is delivered over different networks to different platforms.

Client monitoring Quality assurance specialist Agama has been a strong supporter of the client monitoring approach to quality assurance. According to CEO Mikael Dahlgren, client device monitoring emerged as particularly important for OTT providers that relied on multiple CDNs to deliver their content to end users. “The market has begun to understand how to create value from data but not for the whole chain,” says Dahlgren. “The quality of the data is one thing but drawing the right

conclusions is another.” For Dahlgren, the use of data to proactively prevent problems emerging, rather than the reactive use of data to analyse behaviour after the fact, promises the greatest benefit to service providers. “Proactive work holds out the larger possibility of real gains. If you can reduce trouble you will get more satisfied customers. If you can eliminate the problem before the customer calls in, it is better,” he says. Dahlgren says that correlating user behaviour with quality metrics is a useful approach, giving operators data that can be used at senior management level to take informed decisions. More and more operators, he says, are giving executives at senior level direct responsibility for customer relations management, bringing quality to

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20/04/2015 20:12

Technology focus > Quality assurance and data analytics

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Agama has been one of the companies at the forefront of client monitoring.

the fore. This approach, suggests Dahlgren, allows operators to make incremental but significant improvements in quality over time and enables them, for example, to manage changes and new software releases better. “If you roll out a configuration change on the network our customers can see in minutes how it affects the whole population of clients.” This, he says, enables them to take steps to “lower the amount of customer frustration straight away”. Having data available will not help unless all parts of the organisation are pulling in the same direction however. “At the top level it is important to have a parameter that both technical departments and top managment can agree on,” says Dahlgren. He suggest that organisations benefit from starting out looking at top-level data before drilling down into areas such as analysing the impact of their specific distribution infrastructure choices. For Dahlgren, the ‘reactive’ side of data use – responding to customer calls and complaints – is a challenging area. It is crucial for front-line support staff to make the right decisions straight away for the service provider to further its goals. Too many frustrated customers will at the very least have a negative impact on the organsiation’s ability to upsell them to new products. “Actionable insights are key but those are different for different parts of the organisation,” he says. “The first line support staff have to be quick and efficient in understanding what the problem is. At management level they need to have a broader understanding of whether they need to swap something out or expand network capacity in some area or other. The quality solutions must be able to give each type of user the right type of information.” Agama, he says, tries to “understand this and deliver pre-packaged solutions for different user groups”. While the use of quality assurance technology to work out, for example, whether problems are confined to a specific geographic area or linked to a fault in a specific server is well established, Dahlgren says that deeper analysis of user behaviour is now attracting interest. “What is new now is that discussions

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are going into various things such as when customers leave a service and how much of that is related to quality issues or to other causes. One way of doing this is to ask the customers themselves, but customers may blame quality when in fact they want to leave for other reasons, so it is good to test this,” he says. For Dahlgren, the use of data analytics to inform decision-making still varies hugely between service providers, but interest is being driven by the OTT operators in particular: “There is a wide spread in the market. Some do almost no mapping of data against behaviour and others do a lot. The large new OTT players like Netflix have a deep interest in this and have made big gains in quality. That is pushing other operators to take action to stay at the same level.”

service. This data gives the service providers targets and benchmarks of quality to work to – how much bandwidth they need, what ISPs, CDNs to work with, what codecs – before they even launch the service.” Franklyn says that Conviva’s global reach means that it has been able to note significant differences, for example in tolerance of poor quality video, between different markets. This trend is feeding into changes in who within an organisation uses the available data, with a shift evident from technical operations staff towards people who are dealing with product development and content strategy executives. At the customer service level, there is also a move towards a more proactive approach, as identified by Agama’s Dahlgren. While customer relations staff are still using data

“If you stream video to phones it goes across multiple CDNs to the phone network or roaming network and then to thousands of types of phones.” Stuart Newton, Ineoquest

Global data Ian Franklyn, managing director, EMEA at quality assurance and data specialist Conviva, says that there is growing interest in clientlevel monitoring, despite earlier scepticism about its value. “I think it used to be the case that you would have to convince service providers of the benefits of user-centric real-time monitoring, but service providers recognise they need to deliver a high quality of service. Their job is to make sure customers are happy and they can use data to predict whether customers will be happy and form a strategy to prevent them going elsewhere,” he says. Operators are also showing a lot of interest in using data gathered from other implementations to plan ahead of their own service launches, he says. “We have global data, and customers that are thinking about launching a service in a particular territory or launching a new service are interested in what the expectations of quality are and how to satisfy them. [Quality expectations] do vary from country to country and service to

to react to problems called in by customers themselves, he says that there is growng trend towards teams “looking at trends” and using analysis to pre-empt calls by, for example, sending out emails offering to compensate customers for problems they have suffered even before those problems are reported. In addition to providing real-time dashboards, Conviva is increasingly therefore being called on to deliver reports identifying trends. “We have seen a huge surge in demand for this level of data analysis and consultancy – this is not for technical people who are used to dealing with data but for product people who are familiar with reports and conclusions,” says Franklyn. As well as allowing service providers to tailor video quality to the needs of the market, user data can also help them choose which CDNs to use and gives them better control over vendor agreements. In addition to real-time dashboards and reports, Conviva can also supply data via APIs, allowing big service providers with large data warehouses to aggregate Convivasupplied data with other data. When all the data from multiple sources is aggregated,

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Technology focus > Quality assurance and data analytics

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

S3’s Warning Centre: the company says that user data is not sufficient on its own.

it can then be poured over and analysed by business intelligence teams. The company can, says Franklyn, provide a monitoring store that can be customised for different user groups. “If you are in the delivery department and you want to see the performance of CDNs or see issues related to DRM then you can access the bits relevant to you,” he says. The key metrics are ultimately those related to user engagement and satisfaction. “We use engagement metrics that we can tie to quality metrics to show links between the two, such as tolerance of low-resolution delivery of live content versus long-form content,” says Franklyn. Franklyn says that the barriers to entry to client monitoring are in fact relatively low, with Conviva providing a cloud-based system that requires only “a bit of code in the player” at the client side. “Increasingly service providers recognise that every single customer is worth a certain amount of money to them. That is why they invest in premium content and it stands to reason that they want to make sure viewers are happy with the content,” he says. “We are seeing an increase in investment in monitoring and maintaining Quality of Service. If you don’t do it you are wasting the money you have invested in content in the first place. Can you afford to ignore the experience of even one of your customers, or do you reach out and proactively try to keep them as a customer. Launching a service, marketing it and winning back customers from competitors are all signficant costs, and some service providers really get that.” Franklyn says Conviva is also innovating in the way it delivers its platform to customers, by for example launching a software development kit that allows them to adapt more quickly to a constantly changing environment. The results can in turn be fed back into the core product. “Our SDK project involves providing source code and documentation to customers to allow them to build the libraries [necessary to support new devices] themselves. You might have [the introduction of] a particular flavour of player and DRM that previously created a bottleneck before we could support it,” he says. “Now we say ‘here is the code – go build your own libraries’. It is a revolutionary approach that allows customers to know how to support

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devices and get consistent data. But it means we also get more data across more devices which can feed into our group data tool.” Franklyn says that data gathered across the 1.5 billion devices globally that are supported by Conviva can be aggregated and anonymised to benefit the company’s customers collectively. “The more customers we have with the more devices, the more data we have,” he says.

Big problem Not all industry participants are convinced that user-generated data will have a significant impact, at least in the near future. For Simen Frostad, CEO of quality assurance specialist Bridge Technologies, the big problem with end user device monitoring is “understanding what is significant and what is not”. “If you have huge amounts of data...but you don’t know to correlate and process that data, it is useless,” says Frostad. User behaviour is so varied and unpredictable that there is a huge challenge in filtering out ‘false positives’ such as those caused by people fast-forwarding content at the same point in programmes. “For the first time, with multiscreen we can get some simple data from devices, and by correlating data

from different types of phone and OS, and also location, you can get some interesting insights. But it still has to be done with great care,” says Frostad. To get meaningful user data means getting data back possibly from millions of devices in the field. If households have multiple playback devices, not only is there a lot of data to correlate but getting it back to the headend can itself put a strain on the network, says Frostad. He says that operators have to “only focus on the data that could be significant”. Frostad also says that it is difficult to work out a commercial model that makes sense around user behaviour monitoring both for the system vendor and for the operator. He also says there is an issue around the readiness of operators to cope with massive amounts of user data. “Just knowing certain things is not good enough if it just raises questions rather than answers them. If you have a million users on multiscreen devices, then individual user behaviour means nothing – you need group data. It is still challenging,” he says. Users respond differently to buffering and other quality parameters in different households, and it is very difficult to draw clear conclusions, suggests Frostad. “There are so many devices in the delivery chain that monitoring everything can’t be done,” he says.

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20/04/2015 20:12

Q&A: Ian Franklyn, Managing director, EMEA, Conviva Conviva’s Ian Franklyn talks about the use of user behaviour data to improve video services and inform business decisions by operators. How can service providers make use of user behavour data to deliver services that satisfy the maximum number of their customers? Service Providers are competing for an audience that has increasingly high expectations. Conviva data indicates that 1% of interruptions results in 14 minutes less engagement on long form content. A recent survey showed that 75% of consumers abandon a sub-par experience in less than four minutes and that 49% of viewers will abandon a service after one instance of a video failing to meet expectations. Conversely, viewers presented with a superior experience watch 66% more. Service providers can make use of user data to establish KPIs driven by a real-time read on expectations. Meeting those KPIs drives a process that optimises the viewer experience, and will deliver optimised engagement. Setting KPIs, then adjusting strategies to achieve them, has to be repeated on a regular basis – as quickly as service providers update their offering, the ecosystem evolves, as new devices release, and more bandwidth becomes available. We call this virtuous feedback loop an Iterative Publishing Process. The steps within that include Monitor – tracking everything to establish patterns, opportunities and challenges; Benchmark – use industry data to establish how one’s service compares to that of industry peers; and Optimise – adjust one’s execution to ensure the service maintains and increases its competitive position.

drop in viewer engagement caused by excessive interruptions could be directly attributed to congestion on a delivery path. With the ability to switch delivery paths, Service Providers could avoid congestion, lower interruptions and witness a reduction in engagement loss as a result. Similarly, applying the right picture resolution to deliver a high-quality picture that streams smoothly, and avoiding resolution volatility (where a local ABR algorithm swings wildly between bit-rates in an attempt to deliver) can improve the viewing experience, and maximise audience engagement. Many elements define the user experience so measuring dimensionality over time is the only way to identify consumer expectations and consistently meet them.

What user behaviour metrics are proving of most use to help service providers make sense of the wealth of data available? There are two keys to behaviour metrics: context and dimensionality. Monitoring one’s own results is a necessary but insufficient step: one always needs to know how well the strategy is executed, and how well it is being received. However, to gain full insight into progress against what is possible, one needs context – to understand how results stack up against peers. Our Industry Benchmark reports empower customers to find the context that not only reflects the results that have been achieved, but also to identify areas that need more investment. The OTT ecosystem is now so complex that dimensionality is crucial. It’s not sufficient to set an encoding profile for ‘iPhone’ – to meet the expectations of viewers across all the models of iPhone, on all the networks, service providers need to be able to zero in at a much more granular level. Beyond that, they are seeking to understand where to focus their efforts: our Media Encoding Report, helps to clearly define the encoding profiles that are necessary to deliver a satisfactory experience across all the different experience permutations viewers bring to bear.   How useful to video service providers is measuring user behaviour versus measuring technical video playback quality? There is a direct correlation between core quality metrics – like picture resolution (bit-rate) and interruptions (buffering) – and viewer engagement, so it is critical to measure both. For example, a sudden

How can that data best be packaged and presented to help video service providers make the most use of it? Different groups have distinct needs, which means there are a number of packaging considerations. Live monitoring with real time alerts through a GUI is critical for operations teams responsible for service delivery and customer service teams responsible for real time customer response. By contrast, analyst teams may prefer to receive data in streams from an API, or even daily session logs, so that this ‘raw’ data can be integrated directly into a broader scheme. And we find that many stakeholder groups prefer to see reports delivered as fairly sophisticated spreadsheets, designed to be searched, sorted and analysed.   Are there any globally applicable lessons that can be learnt about the way consumers behave in relation to online video? The market, audience expectations, and network performance are all in a state of constant change, so service providers that adapt in an appropriate and timely manner gain competitive advantage. The lessons are: constantly monitor market and viewer behaviour. The only constant that can be relied upon is change. Constantly benchmark your service to make sure KPIs are met. The best results come from investing in the areas that will make the most business impact. Constantly adapt to optimise the service to meet and exceed those KPIs. Automation is becoming increasingly vital, as the complexity of delivering to expectations has exceeded the boundaries of what can be executed manually.

pXX Conviva Q&A DTVE AprMay15v2st.indd 1

How is data being used to make commercial decisions, for example about the kind of devices to support or content rights to acquire? Constantly. This kind of data is at the core of the most effective strategic plans. Service providers constantly strive for ‘Optimal Publishing’: the ability to balance viewer demand and expectation with cost and complexity. By analysing engagement across device, content, location, time, CDN and ISP, service providers can identify where investment should be made to optimise viewer engagement, and where savings can be made on items that have no or very little impact on engagement.

20/04/2015 10:26

Technology focus > Quality assurance and data analytics

Frostad says that quality assurance in the multiscreen world still suffers from the chicken-and-egg dilemma of a lack of will to prioritise quality for service that are still for the most part free. But paid-for models are unlikely to evolve without quality assurance in place. For pure OTT providers such as Netflix, the story is different as they rely on OTT multiscreen delivery as their principal business activity. Netflix has itself invested heavily in its own quality assurance solutions. But free-to-air broadcasters and others that

One problem is that data gathered from end devices may provide an incomplete picture, he says, simply because it relies on monitoring from within the device rather than what the customer is actually seeing. The second issue is that service providers may not want to wait until customers are using the functionality they deploy before they test that functionality. “With an innovative app, you can’t afford for people to start Tweeting that it doesn’t work,” he says. Operators ultimately need to test delivery in the real world rather than in the lab, but not to rely on end users, he says.

“The market has begun to understand how to create value from data but not for the whole chain.” Mikael Dahlgren, Agama

may have limited resources are not yet in a position to make a signifiant investment in end-point monitoring technology, says Frostad. Frostad also suggests there is still a lack of strategic direction within organisations when it comes to quality. While senior management are interested in one or two Quality of Experience metrics that can show relationships between, for example, fluctuations in quality and the length of time customers stay with the service or sign up for new contracts, approaches vary between organisations. More traditional cable operators, for example, often stick to the view that waiting for customers to call before sending out technicians is the best approach to quality. “The market is still quite young. Some operators have invested a lot and spend a lot of time in trying to eliminate problems and have had good success. In the early days IPTV operators found it difficult to achieve a high quality of service, but now they often have higher quality than cable operators,” he says. Also somewhat sceptical about the value of user behaviour data is John Maguire, chief strategy officer at quality assurance specialist S3 Group. “We don’t think it is sufficient,” he says. However, says Maguire, the data is there and should not be ignored. “It is available data. You would be mad not to gather it because it gives good insight into customer behaviour and quality,” he says.

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Another problem identified by Maguire related to end user monitoring is that it requires “users to do interesting things” that fully test the functionality the operator wants to deploy. More generally, says Maguire, operators are still held back to some extent by silos within organisations and by management issues as much as by technology. Using data and QoS monitoring effectively requires organisation and resources. Maguire cites the example of an OTT operator that selects a particular problem to solve at a time rather than trying to solve all problems identified by the software in one go. “They gather a book of results at the end of each week and send it out to collate data and build a picture of what to improve each week,” he says. “It is not very scientific. For example, how do you know you are tackling your biggest problem? If it is really big someone will shout about it.”

Mobile video For IneoQuest’s VP of corporate strategy, Stuart Newton, much activity currently in the quality assurance space is being driven for example by the likely growing use of mobile networks to view video. At the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the company highlighted its partnership with deep packet inspection specialist Qosmos integrating

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

deep packet inspection with its probes to do advanced analytics in the mobile core network. The company also demonstrated user behaviour analytics for iOS and Android devices. “People are realising it is harder to do multiscreen video than they thought,” he says. “If you stream video to phones it goes across multiple CDNs to the phone network or roaming network and then to thousands of types of phones. If you compare that to TVs with a controlled edge network, it is a completely different world.” In this environment, operators are typically looking for basic quality assurance before they take the plunge into the bottomless depths of user behaviour analysis. Similar conditions apply, he says, in the fixed world. “Delivering to multiscreens is just really complex,” he says. Newton says that end user analytics ultimately has to be combined with network monitoring via probes. “If you look at the client side and correlate that with the network you can see you have a packaging issue at the headend, for example,” he says. The combination of technologies can give video providers “visibility and power” to manage their relationship with customers in real time. Newton says the addition to client monitoring to more traditional quality assurance techniques has delivered “a huge amount of data” including behavioural data that can, managed properly, be used to provide tools for “proactive channel management”. “We look at it from two aspects – the customer journey as a whole and adding KPIs on top of that, and the journey of a single asset,” he says. The wider use of data to inform business decisions and create revenue-earning services is still at an early stage. “Our objective with this two years ago was real-time analysis for the converged video landscape. You have a lot of convergence going on at the moment in video delivery, but there are still lots of different silos and battles within organisations,” says Newton. Nevertheless, he says, operators have an ambition to go beyond creating “a holistic view for a baseline service assurance” to “demographic mapping for targeting”, for example of advertising. While user behaviour data can tell operators which ads were watched and when, the ultimate goal is to create a paltform to enable real-time bidding for ad slots. l

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20/04/2015 20:12

2015 9 -11 June 2015



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pIBC ANGACOM DTVE FebMar15.indd 1

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ANGA Services GmbH Nibelungenweg 2 · 50996 Köln / Germany Tel. +49 (0)221 / 99 80 81-0 · [email protected]

23/02/2015 17:56

TV Connect 2015 > Preview

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

TV Connect 2015: the preview With the TV Connect show due to kick off at London Excel exhibition centre on April 28, DTVE highlights some of the innovations that will be on display. Globecast

IneoQuest

Inview

STAND 40

STAND 130

STAND 158

WHAT’S NEW? OTT services offering

WHAT’S NEW? Advanced analytics platform; operational analytics platform; multiscreen and OTT solutions; cloud-based video service assurance

WHAT’S NEW? Liberator

WHAT DOES IT DO? Globecast will be highlighting its OTT services and a range of monetisation tools as a first time exhibitor at the show. Globecast will be illustrating how its OTT solutions are provided as both standalone services or as an option within its media management and distribution offering. Globecast has used its market and broadcast expertise to develop three key OTT services to ensure high-quality deployment, cost-effectively, the company says. These are: content preparation, content management and content delivery for linear channels; on demand content (catch up TV for example); and live events. The first, OTT Live, is for the simulcast delivery of linear channels while OTT VoD makes content catalogues available for streaming to any connected screen. OTT Event is a packaged occasional live streaming service for content owners. Globecast has also developed a range of monetisation tools including payment, subscriber and advertising management and complete analytic options. The company provides either end-to-end or modular solutions, including players and CDN services. CONTACT www.globecast.com

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WHAT DO THEY DO? The advanced analytics platform harvests behavioural and operational data across adaptive streaming networks allowing comprehensive analysis of the video assets, devices, protocols, and end user behaviour. The operational analytics platform provides four-dimensional analysis and reporting on years of video quality and performance data, giving providers insight into performance over time by programme, time, location and error, according to IneoQuest. The company describes its multiscreen and OTT video solutions as endto-end video analytics and service assurance solutions that provide the real-time data and business intelligence that providers need to gain visibility into their services throughout the entire network. IneoQuest’s cloud-based video service assurance provides multilocation validation of adaptive video asset availability and quality after a third party or operator CDN. IneoQuest says it will also show QoE & QoS monitoring solutions for linear broadcast TV, HEVC-encoded video and compliance validation with local language capability. CONTACT www.ineoquest.com

WHAT DOES IT DO? Inview’s Liberator software platform gives operators and broadcasters the tools they need to rapidly launch broadcast, OTT or hybrid services in one seamless, custom branded user interface, according to the company. It includes a feature rich EPG and value added services such as VoD, catch-up TV and nPVR services, advertising, content discovery, recommendations and more. Inview’s solution can be used to upgrade existing deployed set-top boxes with new software and services.  Inview has upgraded over nine million products with a UI that it says can enhance the user experience, provides revenue generating services, promotes the customer’s brand and creates a unified look and feel across all platforms.

Kaltura will showcase its new HTML5 web app for Amazon Fire TV. The app allows Kaltura customers to publish video content from within Kaltura directly to Amazon Fire TV, improving the distribution process and streamlining the multiscreen experience, according to the company. Amazon recently released the Web App Starter Kit for Fire TV, which is intended to help web developers get up to speed quickly by creating a simple media-oriented app. Building on this model, Kaltura’s app brings the Kaltura HTLM5 player to the big screen, enabling publishers to create turnkey apps for the Fire TV platform, the company says. In addition to Amazon Fire TV, Kaltura’s Player Toolkit supports Chromecast, native mobile applications as well as desktop and web browsers. The player also runs natively within Twitter feeds and Facebook news feeds. CONTACT www.kaltura.com

Metrological STAND 30

CONTACT www.inview.tv

Kaltura STAND 77 WHAT’S NEW? Amazon Fire TV implementation WHAT DOES IT DO?

WHAT’S NEW? App Store; UX, App Manager and Dashboard WHAT DO THEY DO? Metrological will showcase its device and software agnostic

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20/04/2015 20:01

Q&A: Julie Austin, CEO, Inview Julie Austin, CEO of Inview, talks about the challenges and requirements for delivering a digital switchover solution in Nigeria What are the challenges facing Nigeria as it prepares for digital switchover? The foremost challenge for everyone involved in launching DSO in Nigeria is the sheer scale of the undertaking in such a large country with its vibrant and diverse culture. Nigeria is the seventh most populous country in the world, has a population of 170 million, 40 million households and over 20 million TV homes. As the largest economy in Africa, it is aware of the need to set the bar high in the way it smoothly migrates the country from analogue to digital and successfully implements its switchover strategy. It is a challenge that we at Inview know only too well from our involvement since the early days of digital terrestrial deployment in the UK 15 years ago. We held a pivotal role in the UK and, over recent years, have provided interactive and OTT services to low cost digital set top boxes in a wide range of territories. When NBC announced the partnership with Inview last month, they made it clear that one of the key factors in selecting Inview was our operational expertise, which they recognise will be so invaluable in making DSO successful in Nigeria. What are Nigeria’s main requirements for set-top boxes to enable switchover and how challenging will it be to meet these requirements? The fundamental requirement is that the set top box is a reliable product from a quality manufacturer that is competitively priced.  It must also enable a secure encryption system (to reduce piracy) and deliver a great user experience. The NBC are wisely specifying a common set top box platform that will be used to deliver this user experience and promote the best of Nigerian and international content. For Inview specifically, we are delighted that NBC were impressed sufficiently to select our intuitive user interface, our compelling Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) and adopt our simple to use services. From an economic viewpoint, the ability of our software to facilitate the successful monetizing of services via the set top box in the future will also enable a substantial return on investment over each set top box’s lifetime. What level of advanced functionality is it possible to deliver to massmarket set-tops in the context of markets such as Nigeria where many consumers’ choices will be restrained by cost? Even in low cost set top boxes, Inview’s client software enables a high level of functionality. In addition to linear channels, this will include the ability to view a wide range of linear interactive services including advertising, push video on demand and a range of broadcasting applications such as news, public service information and audience measurement services. This is an area with which Inview has significant expertise, having already served the UK over the past 15 years and more recently on a global basis. All the set top boxes will be future proofed and upgradeable in the field to add connected services when the Nigerian infrastructure can support them.

pXX Inview Q&A DTVE AprMay15.indd 1

What mechanisms are available for interactive services in Nigeria and how much use is likely to be made of these? From the start, we realised (when working with NBC and all the partners involved) that there was a desire to facilitate a very smooth switchover to digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasting in the briefest possible time. We were impressed by the vision, organisation, passion and drive to create what will be the biggest TV platform in the African continent. Central to this has been NBC’s commitment to deliver a wide range of new digital services for the viewers in Nigeria. Inview brings a wealth of experience and know-how to this process and has a great track record in providing advertising, push VOD, interactive news services and audience measurement that will benefit the viewer and the Nigerian market. These services are provided as an integral part of the viewing experience ensuring maximum usability for the viewer. To what extent do you think lessons from the Nigerian switchover process could be applicable to other African markets? Inview have already invested heavily, especially over the past few years, in understanding how other countries in Africa are approaching DSO. It is clear from our own market studies that there is an opportunity for key countries in Africa facing the same challenges that Nigeria is addressing to replicate the business model. There is plenty of scope to build upon what Nigeria is doing with the added bonus of economies of scale if these countries in particular choose to mirror NBC’s approach. A partner ecosystem around NBC’s clearly defined set top box technology could be easily deployed and it may make sense for other countries to replicate what Nigeria is doing if they wish to keep set top box prices down and deploy quickly. What technology developments is Inview Technology currently working on and what are your main priorities for the year ahead? We are continuously seeking to offer the best solutions to broadcasters and operators for digital switchover worldwide, with Nigeria a clear example of this activity. At the same time, Inview is attracting a growing interest from operators keen to learn more about what we can offer to support their legacy set top boxes that are already deployed in the field. Inview’s software enables operators to unify and re-brand even very low end set top boxes and add new revenue generating services, thereby extending the life of the set top boxes and deferring the capital cost of replacement. In addition, there is also a growing demand for our software from operators who want to quickly deploy solutions and services on new hybrid set top boxes and HDMI dongles, fully utilising our capabilities to offer a broad range of connected services on both set top boxes and second screens. Inview’s priority for this year is to deliver a first class service to its existing customers and to establish itself globally as the ‘go to’ company for DSO markets and legacy upgrades.

16/04/2015 17:26

TV Connect 2015 > Preview

Application Platform, including its App Store, UX, App Manager and Dashboard, which allow operators to configure, operate and manage their own App Store across devices in real-time with access to all relevant business intelligence data. Demonstrations will feature Social Media Integration and Instant Mobile Pairing, which enables viewers to link TV viewing to mobile devices by scanning a unique QR code. This authenticates viewers to connect through social media to enable: interactive voting, real time buying, using a mobile phone as a TV remote or game control, multiplayer gaming, or picture and video sharing. Metrological will also demo Contextual App Experiences, merging live TV and OTT content, enabling operators to present a unified app experience that merges all content in one screen. For example, while watching sports, contextual apps can show related content like the latest scores integrated in the live TV experience. Red button functionality can become an app offering playing or voting along with a live broadcasting show enriching the viewer’s experience. Other demos include its Real time App Dashboard, which it says provides realtime insights on operations and app usage that operators can use to refine app content strategies, and its App Manager, which Metrological says enables operators to manage, in real time, the App Store content and the user interface (UX) in an easy way. CONTACT www.metrological.com

Viaccess-Orca STAND 87

30 p28,30 TV Connect Preview DTVE AprMay15v4st.indd 30

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

WHAT’S NEW? Voyage Console; Voyage applications for cross-screen engagement, Connected Sentinel Player; Eye on Piracy WHAT DO THEY DO? Voyage Console  is a new backend management console for TV Everywhere, enabling service providers to manage multiple users, device types (e.g., smartphone, Android tablet, iPad, PC, TV with STB), and content rights and offers (e.g., VOD, SVOD, live TV, nPVR, movie cards) through a single unified system that supports all delivery networks, according to Viaccess-Orca. The console includes advanced search and filtering capabilities that enable operators to track issues and perform bulk actions. For example, if content preparation of media files starts failing, the console can be used to filter through the content library and locate assets whose preparation has failed. After identifying such files, the console simultaneously retries the content preparation, allowing a resolution. Through the console, operators’ marketing teams can send inbox and online messages to the devices of a group of end users in order to engage with them in a more targeted way. For example, all accounts registered to an SVoD service, with a tablet registered to the service, can be sent a message about a new series that has been added to the service library. Voyage applications for cross-screen engagement are front-end applications, powered by ViaccessOrca and Zenterio, on a variety of devices. The apps offer a

personalised viewing experience for every screen, according to Viaccess-Orca. Leveraging Voyage converged service platform, Voyage apps enable synchronisation between devices, extending the personal experience from a mobile device to the TV. Through the apps end users can interact with content, switching between a second-screen device to the TV screen, in addition to viewing advertisements on second screens. Viaccess-Orca will also showcase how Voyage is being used in the by customers. Voyage has been deployed by a variety of service providers, including Telekom Romania, Orange Spain, and Boxer TV in Sweden. On the security front, Viaccess-Orca will demonstrate how Israeli satellite provider Yes, Turkish operator D-Smart, and Norwegian operator TV2 are using its Connected Sentinel Player for TV Everywhere apps. The downloadable, secure player protects VoD and live TV content on Android and iOS devices. Connected Sentinel Player supports Microsoft PlayReady as well as ViaccessOrca’s proprietary DRM, approved by all major Hollywood studios, integrated with media playback technology by VisualOn’s OnStream MediaPlayer+. Finally, Eye on Piracy
Viaccess-Orca’s anti-piracy solution helps content service providers protect their TV services against new forms of piracy, such as web streaming and peer-to-peer content redistribution. Recently deployed by content service providers in Europe and the Middle East, Eye on Piracy includes a suite of services targeting TV content on illegal sites and the illegal redistribution of live events, such as major sports matches, providing smart analysis of pirated content and helping service providers and content owners in the fight against piracy, according to the company.

CONTACT www.viacess-orca.com

Zenterio STAND 107

Interactive The futureTV of Monetisation: TV advertising The Big Picture Produced by

In association with

WHAT’S NEW? VAS offering WHAT DOES IT DO? TV technology company Zenterio provides an independent operating system for Interactive TV service providers. According to the Sweden-based company, it is the first platform that separates software from hardware, giving TV operators the ability to seamlessly combine live and on-demand content together with a broad range of interactive services. By using the Zenterio operating system, TV operators can offer their customers new applications and features faster and easier and strengthen their customer loyalty, according to Zenterio. In addition to its operating system, Zenterio has developed a VAS (value added service) offering, which aims at creating additional revenue for pay TV operators by leveraging the wealth of user information that they have at their disposal, according to Zenterio. At TV Connect Zenterio will, among other things, showcase its new VAS offering. It will also present the newly released report The Future of TV Advertising, published in conjunction with DTVE, which is a survey among 200 TV industry players on advanced advertising. Zenterio will also be able to show and talk about client implementations.   CONTACT www.zenterio.com

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20/04/2015 20:01

Q&A: Tor Helge Kristiansen, EVP, Principal Architect, Conax Tor Helge Kristiansen, EVP, Principal Architect at Conax talks about the security challenges of delivering video to multiple screens. What challenges does distribution to multiple devices bring to securing pay TV services? Distribution to multiple devices involves a high degree of fragmentation in technologies, both with regards to adaptive streaming protocols and to an even higher degree DRMs. Historically, an operator would have to use a combination of streaming protocols, including HLS and Smooth Streaming, to reach all relevant devices. This is now moving in the right direction with the emergence of MPEG-DASH which promises to become a unified standard for adaptive streaming, backed by most of the big players in the industry. In the DRM space however, it seems we are moving in the opposite direction towards fragmentation. Device manufacturers are increasingly embedding their own DRM solution into the clients, and creating obstacles for use of other DRMs on these devices. We see for instance that Microsoft is embedding PlayReady into all Windows-based devices and the Internet Explorer, while Google is doing the same by embedding Widevine into the Android OS and the Chrome browser. Of course Apple is doing the same with their iOS devices. The pre-embedded DRM clients comes at no extra cost for the operator, and represent a golden opportunity for the operator to launch OTT services without high investment in DRM clients. We also see examples of device manufacturers creating obstacles for use of 3rd party DRM on their platform, favoring use of their own DRM. The best known example is the discontinuation of the NPAPI in the Chrome browser that effectively blocks use of Silverlight. All of these trends are pushing the operator into use of multiple DRMs in order to reach all relevant devices.   What infrastructure do operators need to put in place to address multiple DRMs? How can the complexity best be managed? In Conax we believe that the best approach for an operator is to embrace the pre-embedded DRMs in the clients and build a solution around a multi-DRM security back-end. A multi-DRM back-end handling the complexity of using different DRMs for different devices, while providing a single management API towards the operator’s business system, enables the operator to securely deliver OTT services cost-efficiently. Such a back-end should be capable of handling all relevant DRMs, as well as content preparation for adaptive streaming protocols. This enables the operator to focus on the optimal customer experience and leave the complexity of security to specialist providers. Conax has worked hard on these problems for some time now, and recently launched our Conax Contego multi-DRM platform at the NAB show in Las Vegas.   Can the same level of security be provided across multiple devices, and across closed pay TV networks and internet-based services? Building good security solutions for open devices, such as tablets and smartphones, is a completely different game than building security for purpose-built devices such as set-top boxes and smart TVs. Purpose-

pXX Conax Q&A DTVE AprMay15v2st.indd 1

built devices typically have security features in the SoC, in the best cases including a dedicated Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) that enables protection of sensitive data and processing through hardware. In open devices however, there is normally only a pure software environment available to build security around. To protect sensitive data and processing in such an environment involves various mechanisms including obfuscation, key smearing techniques and encrypted computation. While it is possible to build quite secure solutions for open software environments, it can never reach the high security levels that is achievable through the combination of software and hardware.   What security requirements are there for UHD to multiple screens? UHD brings the potential of even higher value content, and Hollywood studios have issued a set of security recommendations through MovieLabs. The most important is the use of hardware security mechanisms in the client, in particular Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and requirements for Hardware Root of Trust (HRoT). In addition, there is a requirement for the ability to add Forensic Watermarking to UHD content. These recommendations represent a significant strengthening of security mechanisms for UHD compared to HD. The requirements for TEE and HRoT will make it very complex to support UHD on most open devices. But it remains to be seen if Hollywood will actually put pressure behind these recommendations. In any case, it is a clear message that content protection is still to be taken very seriously.   To what extent do operators need to achieve a certain scale to manage multiscreen security cost-effectively? Using a good, scalable multi-DRM security back-end, optionally combined with pre-integrated OTT solutions, will enable operators to deploy cost-efficient solutions at any scale. Conax’s multi-DRM Contego back-end enables operators to introduce advanced multiscreen services quickly and cost-effectively. Hence, they can quickly start an OTT service, and grow their solution gradually over time with additional features.   Is the world of multiple DRMs here to stay or do you expect the video delivery ecosystem to be simplified over time? The trend is definitely towards multi-DRM in OTT, and it will likely be with us for some time. There are initiatives that will make it less complex to build complete solutions utilising multiple DRMs. The most prominent are MPEG-DASH and HTML5. MPEG-DASH has support for Common Encryption that enables embedding of multiple DRMs into the same content stream, effectively reducing the number of streams that needs to be prepared to reach multiple devices. Also HTML5, with support for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), will simplify development of browser-based solutions independent of the DRM being used in each browser. So there is definitely some light at the end of the tunnel.

17/04/2015 14:11

ANGA COM 2015 > Preview

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

ANGA COM 2015: the preview German broadband trade fair ANGA COM gears up for its 2015 show in Cologne this June.

ANGA

COM is preparing for its return to Cologne’s Messe exhibition centre in June, with the 2015 edition of the show set to feature 24 expert panels and more than 400 exhibitors from 30 countries. The event, which is organised by a subsidiary of the Association of German Cable Operators (ANGA) and supported by the satellite and cable division of business lobby group ZVEI, will open this year with a speech by Hannelore Kraft, Prime Minister of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia.  This will be followed by an opening discussion that for the first time will be split into two parts, with participants representing both the network operators and the media sector. The first part of the panel discussion will feature: Liberty Global president and CEO Mike Fries; Kabel Deutschland CEO and Vodafone Deutschland managing director Manuel Cubero; ZDF chairman Thomas Bellut; and Discovery Networks CEEMEA president and managing director, Kasia Kieli. The second part will include discussion from: RTL Deutschland managing board member, Marc Schröder; Unitymedia CEO Lutz Schüler; Astra Deutschland managing director, Wolfgang Elsäßer; and ProSiebenSat.1 Media’s chief legal, distribution and regulatory affairs officer, Conrad Albert. Day one of the three-day event will also feature the English-language International Broadband Summit track. This will include contributions from: Michel Azibert, CCO and deputy CEO, Eutelsat; Colin Buechner, chief network officer, Liberty Global; Wilhelm Dresselhaus, CEO, AlcatelLucent Deutschland; Bruce McClelland, president, network and cloud and global services, Arris Group; Yves Padrines, VP and general manager cable, media and video EMEAR, Cisco; and Dirk Woessner, president consumer business, Rogers Communications, Canada. The rest of the congress programme will be divided into strategy and technology

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panels. Among the highlights of the strategy programme is a panel looking at the competition between video-on-demand and pay TV, featuring speakers from Amazon Instant Video, M7, ProSiebenSat.1, Sky, and Tele Columbus. Other strategy panels will focus on topics such as media law and net neutrality in Germany and the US, best practise for IPTV and net PVR deployments and device networking and energy management. The latter is part of a special connected home segment, organised in collaboration with  BITKOM,  the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media. The technology panels during the show will include sessions on DOCSIS 3.1, innovative solutions for optimising fibre networks, DVB-T2 with HEVC for terrestrial television, and a panel on the technical implications and opportunities of RDK. There will also be a panel looking into multiscreen quality of service and content protection, a session on TV cloud services and a panel on the growth of WiFi connectivity and bandwidth demand, looking at technologies such as CCAP and LTE. “The DNA of ANGA COM is and will

remain the close combination of broadband and audiovisual media – practical, international and strictly dedicated to business,” says Peter Charissé, MD of ANGA COM. “This year, we especially would like to thank our diverse cooperation partners bringing together all relevant market participants of both industry sectors.” As at last year’s event, ANGA COM 2015 will feature a forum called  Speakers‘ Corner that will run in addition to the regular congress panels. This is will consist of 36 presentations and is designed to be a “practical forum” where speakers can discuss various products, projects and solutions. The Speakers’ Corner will be located in the exhibition hall and can be attended by all exhibition visitors and congress attendees. ANGA COM is organised in association with 12 industry associations from the broadband and media sector and the local media congress Medienforum NRW. Sponsoring partners of the event are AlcatelLucent, Astra Deutschland, AVM, Nagra, QVC, Sky Deutschland and Unitymedia KabelBW. l ANGA COM 2015 will take place at the Köln Messe in Cologne, Germany from June 9-11.

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20/04/2015 19:54

Technology > in focus

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Technology in focus Infrastructure, equipment and product news for digital media distribution

BBC to increasingly look to web delivery, says CTO

In Brief

The BBC will increasingly use the web to deliver programmes and services to viewers in the future, according to chief technology officer, BBC Engineering, Matthew Postgate. Outlining his vision for the future, Postgate said that BBC Engineering’s priorities are to “make sure we’re flexible, efficient and can take advantage of all the digital developments happening in broadcasting.” He claimed that the web and new technology is “changing broadcasting fast”, with people already able to film broadcast-quality content using just a smartphone. Postgate said this is not only changing how people watch and listen to programmes, but how the BBC will make them. “We will increasingly use the internet to deliver programmes and services to you in the future – whether that’s to the big screen in the living room or the smartphones and tablets scattered over

DISH taps Rovi voice

Postgate: flexibility and efficiency are the BBC’s priorities.

the house,” said Postgate in a BBC blog post. “This opens the door to entirely new forms of content that are much more data-intensive than audio or video – things like Ultra-HD or virtual reality for example. I’m not saying these technologies will take off overnight, or that they’ll take off at all for that matter, and traditional broadcast technology will continue to be critically important for many years.” Postgate said that the £1.1 billion (e1.5 billion) in savings that the BBC has delivered across the corporation since 2007 was in large part due to innovation, and that BBC Engineering is in the

process of transforming the way it procures and manages its biggest technology contracts.  “We are moving away from one monolithic, long term contract with a single supplier, to multiple shorter-term contracts with a number of specialist companies. We are saving £90m over the next two years and we expect to deliver similar savings once we’ve completed the transition,” said Postgate. “Because of this tremendous pace of change, our foundations need to become more flexible than we’ve ever needed them to be in the past. It’s no use laying the groundwork for a factory when in three years’ time we find we need an apartment block.” BBC Engineering, formerly known as BBC Technology, is the division that keeps the BBC’s services on-air and covers everything from transmission for TV and radio to cameras, mixing desks, email and business systems.

Kudelski and Google strike patent deal Kudelski Group and Google have struck a patent cross-licensing agreement that the pair say will provide both companies with a patent licence for their respective businesses, subject to certain limitations. Google will make a one-time payment to The Kudelski Group as part of the deal. “The Kudelski Group is focused on developing and licensing technology and intellectual property to the video mar-

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ket and we are pleased to license our patent portfolio to Google while also gaining access to Google patents. Operating companies benefit when they respect each other’s intellectual property rights and cross license their patents in a reasonable and collaborative manner.  This agreement further validates the significant investment both companies have made and will continue to make in innovation to the benefit of consumers

worldwide,” said Joe Chernesky, SVP of intellectual property and innovation at Kudelski.  “We are pleased to enter into this agreement, which will allow us to continue to focus on building great products,” said Allen Lo, Google’s deputy general counsel, patents. “Google has a portfolio of [over] 55,000 patents and applications worldwide and is actively cross-licensing its patents in support of [its] product ecosystem.”

US pay TV provider DiSH has partnered with Rovi to add the latter’s Conversation Services’ spoken-voice interface to a portfolio of it products. DiSH will add the voice technology into its DiSH Explorer second-screen app for iPad, Hopper Voice remote, and its DiSH Anywhere mobile app, allowing subscribers to use voice search to find live, recorded or on-demand TV shows and movies.

Ooyala adds support Video publishing specialist Ooyala says it is making it simple to syndicate video to Amazon’s Fire TV devices. By using Amazon’s HTML5based Web App Starter Kit to create an Amazon Fire TV app, Ooyala customers can create a syndication feed that groups live or video-on-demand assets into desired categories, such as movies, sports or documentaries, for the viewer. PGA Tour golf is among the first to syndicate to Amazon Fire TV via Ooyala’s video platform.

TF1 taps SintecMedia French broadcaster TF1 has tapped SintecMedia’s OnRights rights management software for content and licensing across linear and non-linear TV platforms. SintecMedia will track and manage rights and inventory for TF1 across its multi-platform business and catalogue of content.

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Technology > in focus

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

In Brief

V-Nova promises ‘video at audio bit-rates’

Al Jazeera and Skyline

Video technology start-up V-Nova, which has been operating in stealth mode for the last five years, has unveiled a new compression technology that it claims will revolutionise video distribution by permitting the delivery of UHD quality at current HD bitrates, HD at SD bitrates, and SD video at audio bitrates. V-Nova says its Perseus technology can provide compression in the order of a factor of two or three over existing MPEG technologies, including HEVC, H.264 and – for contribution applications – JPEG2000. The technology has been developed and tested over the past five years within an Open Innovation consortium of over 20 companies and organisations, including Broadcom, the European Broadcasting Union, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), Intel and Sky. “This is a new way to compress video. The benefits are clear, it shifts the entire bitrate-quality curve…and it means we can offer UHD quality at HD bitrates,” said Eric Achtmann, executive chairman of the London-based outfit. Achtmann said the technology would enable the deployment of mass-market video services in emerging markets by enabling the distribution of video over 4G,

Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera has partnered with Skyline Communications in a network management deal that will see it use Skyline’s DataMiner platform. Al Jazeera will use DataMiner as the network management and OSS platform for its new global media cloud network, allowing it to transport media and data across more than 80 offices worldwide.

FTTH and DOCSIS gains The global broadband consumer premises market was worth US$10.5 billion (€9.9 billion) last year, up 9% on the 2013 figure, according to Infonetics Research. According to IHSowned Infonetics Research’s PON, FTTH, Cable, DSL and Wireless Broadband CPE report, the figures were boosted by growth in the FTTH segment, up 18%, with DOCSIS 3.0 equipment sales growing by 3%. The group said that growth had been seen from GPON and DOCSIS 3.0 sales in North America, GPON sales in China, Europe and Latin America, and VDSL sales in Europe. There was some sign of growth tailing off towards the end of the year, with fourth-quarter revenue from broadband CPE coming in at US$2.7 billion, flat quarter-on-quarter. Infonetics Research predicts that DSL will take a smaller share of sales as telcos migrate to FTTH or, in some cases, forego fixed infrastructure altogether in favour of LTE. Top broadband CPE vendors in terms of market share were Huawei with 17%, ZTE and Arris with 11% each, Alcatel-Lucent with 7% and Technicolor with 7%.

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Achtmann (left) and Meardi outlined Perseus’s benefits at a launch event in March. 3G or even 2G networks, with standard definition video distributed at sub-audio bitrates. “For the one third of the world that still has insufficient bandwidth for video…[this] means that if you can receive a call you have the ability to receive video,” he said. V-Nova claims to use standard off-the-shelf hardware and says its technology can be overlaid on MPEG, meaning that existing video distribution players can use it to provide services. Guido Meardi, CEO and founder of V-Nova said that V-Nova had stepped outside the framework of MPEG compression to use hierarchical compression techniques and “massive parallelism”. V-Nova has high-profile backers and the company has been working with Sky Italia on using its technology, initially for contribution applications. Sky Italia’s head of engineeing and innovation Massimo Bertolotti was on hand at the V-Nova launch event to provide details of what the company has been working on. “Contribution was the perfect ecosystem where a new technology can be tested,”

he said. Sky previously used JPEG2000 for contribution but is switching to Perseus, with a target date of June for the transition. V-Nova demonstrated contribution output at 300Mbps at the event, compared with 1Gbps for JPEG2000, based on a live uncompressed 12Gbps feed. It also showed the same live feed in UHD at 8Mbps compared with a 21-27Mbps HEVC feed. Another demo showed UHD recorded content at 8Mbps, compared with a HEVC feed at 21Mbps. V-Nova believes that the stepchange in compression it offers will be compelling to broadcasters and video service providers. “We have seen lots of incremental changes in codecs,” said Achtmann. “The fundamentals have not really changed. Where the incremental benefits are 10-20%, the business case [for change] is hard to justify. When you show a five times improvement, this is no longer incremental change but a paradigm shift.”

Akamai buys cloud TV specialist Octoshape Akamai has bought cloud OTT and IPTV service provider Octoshape, in a move that gives Akamai access to streaming video optimisation technology. Octoshape’s services are designed to optimise the quality of video streams for over-thetop (OTT) content and to enable internet protocol television (IPTV) solutions. “With the addition of Octoshape, Akamai intends to provide

customers with the most comprehensive suite of video delivery and optimisation technologies,” said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton. “We believe this acquisition will bolster our strategy to further the deployment of Akamai software into devices, carrier networks, enterprises, and homes, and to fulfil the promise of an internet that is fast, reliable and secure on any device, anywhere. As more video gets consumed over the

internet, and on devices that can display higher-quality resolution, it is important for us to develop new ways to acquire, transform and distribute the highest-quality media for broadcast-size audiences. We are working to continue to extend our platform to accommodate video throughput increases that come from the adoption of 4K, and to support a potential 100-1000X increase in network traffic in the future.”

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20/04/2015 18:58

Technology > in focus

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

Amazon to support HDR video this year

In Brief

Amazon is set to add High Dyamic Range (HDR) support to its Prime Instant Video service in the UK, Germany and US later this year. Announcing the move, the e-retail giant said that Amazon Originals will be the first content to arrive in HDR video quality. Amazon added that it is working with Hollywood studios, technology innovators and global consumer electronics companies to bring Prime members and customers “an unmatched HDR experience in 2015.” “4K Ultra HD picture resolution was just the beginning – we’re excited that Prime members will soon be able to view movies and TV shows including Amazon Originals in HDR quality,” said Michael Paull, vice-president of digital video at Amazon. “HDR is the natural next step in our commitment to premium entertainment, and we can’t wait for customers to have even more choice in how they watch their

Bonnier taps Ericsson

Amazon’s Fire Stick is now avaialble in the UK & Germany.

favourite titles on Amazon Prime Instant Video.” Amazon first introduced Ultra HD support for movies and TV shows on Amazon Prime Instant Video less than six months ago and is growing its catalogue of 4K picture resolution titles. HDR technology is designed to bring greater contrast to the screen, making colours appear richer, brighter and more lifelike. Separately, Amazon has launched its Fire TV Stick streaming device in the UK and Germany, seven months after it introduced the larger Fire TV set-top box in these markets. The HDMI TV streaming device began shipping in both countries on April 15. The device is priced at £35 in the UK and €39 in Ger-

many, but for two days Amazon Prime customers were able to order a Fire TV Stick for just £19 in the UK or €19 in Germany. Services available on the device in the UK include Prime Instant Video, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Sky News, Curzon Home Cinema and STV Player, with Amazon claiming that the number of video services and games available on Amazon Fire TV in Europe has doubled in the past seven months. In Germany services available include ARD Mediatek, ZDF Mediathek, Netflix, Spotify and Prime Instant Video. The e-retail giant started to ship the Fire TV Stick to customers in the US in November, claiming it to be the “fastest-selling Amazon device ever.” The device competes against rivals like Google’s Chromecast and Roku’s Streaming Stick.

Arris and Charter buy ActiveVideo for US$135m Arris and Charter Communications have established a joint venture to buy cloud TV specialist ActiveVideo for roughly US$135 million. Arris will own 65% of the joint venture company and will be the sales channel for ActiveVideo’s CloudTV software platform, with Charter holding the other 35%. ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform is designed to let service providers, content aggregators and consumer electronics manufacturers quickly deploy new services by virtualising consumer premises equipment functions in the cloud. CloudTV can be used to deliver user interfaces, online content and interactive advertising to settop boxes and connected devices

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and already powers Charter’s new cloud-based Spectrum Guide. ActiveVideo’s other partners include Cablevision, Liberty Global, Deutsche Telekom, Time Warner Cable, J:COM and Roku. “This joint venture signifies Arris’ continued investment in advanced software solutions that will create value across the entire video ecosystem,” said Bob Stanzione, Arris chairman and CEO. “Arris and Charter are paving the way for an all IP network migration and enabling the software-defined TV experience that will deliver the unified, next-gen content experiences that today’s consumers demand.” “ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform is one of the enabling tech-

nologies behind Spectrum Guide. We have worked very closely with ActiveVideo on the development of this technology, and now, as a 35% shareholder, are uniquely positioned to support the continued innovation and marketplace adoption of ActiveVideo’s solutions,” said Tom Rutledge, president and CEO of Charter Communications. “Today’s announcement extends Charter’s long-standing relationship with Arris, which continues to be a key provider of both infrastructure and consumer premises equipment.” The ActiveVideo deal is expected to close in the second quarter of this year, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval.

Bonnier Broadcasting has tapped Ericsson to provide the online platform for its C More over-the-top service. The Nordic SVoD service, which will include live TV delivered over the web, is due to launch later this year online and on iOS and Android devices. The service will include a mix of sports, local and international drama series, sitcoms and Swedish and international films. Ericsson will provide content management and preparation, digital rights management, subscriber management and billing and ad insertion for multiple devices and platforms.

24i raises US$2 million Technology provider 24i has raised US$2 million in funding, which it will use to expand its TV everywhere and OTT technology to new partners. Newion Investments invested in i24, with cash also coming from Dutch government guarantees on loans for innovation. i24, which has worked on multiplatform TV apps in Europe for Fox Sports, Videoland, RTL, Pathé and HBO, is interested in expanding in the US, having recently opened a Los Angeles office.

Saffron and Verimatrix Video platform provider Saffron Digital has partnered with content security specialist Verimatrix to offer “advanced revenue security and monetisation tools” to broadcasters and operators. The new partnership will enhance Saffron Digital’s premium OTT platform, MainStage, by combining it with Verimatrix’s revenue security solution, VCAS for Internet TV.

35 20/04/2015 18:58

Technology > in focus

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

In Brief

HDMI Forum adds HDR support

PeerTV integrates DVB-T2

The HDMI Forum has unveiled the latest version of the HDMI specification, enabling the transmission of High Dynamic Range (HDR) formats. HDMI 2.0a will be available to current HDMI 2.0 users via the DMI Adopter Extranet. HDR is designed to enable better picture quality by enabling greater detail in both the dark and bright parts of an image, enabling greater luminosity and richness in contrast. Samsung announced at this year’s CES that it planned to launch TVs that could handle HDR early this year.

OTT technology provider PeerTV has integrated DVB-T2 connectivity to its standard set-top box, following its recent addition of voice control to its HEVC-compatible boxes. PeerTV said its DVB-T2 products are currently being tested by a number of potential customers interested in enabling their users to enjoy both OTT and terrestrial services from the same device.

NOS launches Iris app Portuguese cable and pay TV operator NOS has revamped its Iris advanced TV user interface and launched an application allowing users to take control of their TV service via tablets, currently available on Android and iOS devices. The new interface includes a recommendation engine that presents content to users based on previous consumption, while the tablet application enables them to browse the TV schedule and control the TV and access additional content. The app is only available via Android and iOS tablets.

QuickPlay investment Multiscreen and OTT video specialist QuickPlay has secured a C$57 million (e43 million) investment from private equity owner Madison Dearborn Partners, financing partner Orix Ventures and Difference Capital Financial. The round means that QuickPlay has benefited from over C$150 million in investment capital to date. The company recently acquired LTE Broadcast specialist Roundbox to enable it to tap into delivery of video over mobile networks via the eMBMS multicast technology.

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“We recognised that HDR would be a critical feature as the industry evolves. Our support for HDR enables our 800+ HDMI 2.0 Adopters to develop market-leading products that include HDR and will maintain interoperability across the entire HDMI ecosystem. Along with the publication of the CEA extensions, the HDMI Forum continues to update the HDMI Specification and remain closely aligned with leading CE standards organizations,” said Robert Blanchard, president of the HDMI Forum.

Thomson launches 4K encoder

Technology company Thomson Video Networks has launched a new encoding platform, the ViBE 4K, which it says is designed for real-time 4K HEVC 10-bit encoding. Built on the company’s ViBE EM4000 premium encoder chassis, the ViBE 4K enables live compression of UHD sources at up to 60 frames per second and in 10bit colour, according to Thomson. Housed in a 1RU chassis, the ViBE 4K features multiple GbE interfaces and 3G-SDI interfaces that receive live UHD feeds for encoding. Configurable from a standard web browser, the ViBE 4K encodes both audio and UHD video in real time and delivers an MPEG transport stream signal for broadcast over IP, according to Thomson. UHD video is encoded in HEVC 4:2:0 at a maximum of 60fps in 10-bit. “Although live UHD broadcasting is not yet in the mainstream, the market is evolving rapidly as consumers demand ever-higher resolutions and image quality. One big driver is the emergence of affordable UHD TV displays;

in fact, we expect all screens larger than 50-inches will be UHD by 2018,” said Eric Gallier, vice president of marketing, Thomson Video Networks. “We designed the ViBE 4K for forward-thinking broadcasters that are already expanding their infrastructures to provide a premium viewing experience to their customers. The ViBE 4K’s state-of-the-art HEVC compression delivers frame rates and precision at bit rates comparable with satellite, cable, terrestrial, and fibre delivery networks. As a result, our customers are able to deliver a truly immersive live UHD experience.” Separately, Thomson Video Networks has launched MediaFlex Suite, a platform to enable digital TV operators to process content from many sources for delivery on a variety of platforms, including satellite, terrestrial, cable, IPTV, and OTT. Capabilities include monitoring, configuring, and dynamically changing their channel lineups for both broadcast and multi-screen services.

Humax to add Freeview Play set-top box Set-top box supplier Humax has said it will be the first manufacturer to deliver the new Freeview Play connected TV service later this year. The Humax Freeview Play boxes will support HD content and feature built-in WiFi for wireless broadband connectivity to access Freeview Play’s range of catch-up services, which includes BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5.  Three built-in tuners will provide advanced recording functionality alongside the catch-up and on-demand services, according to Humax, with the option of 500GB and 1TB built-in hard drives for up to 300 hours and 600 hours of storage space, respectively. Further details on the price, features and specifications of the Humax Freeview Play boxes will be made available in the coming months. Freeview unveiled Freeview Play, its new connected TV platform, in March. It said that the service would be available in a range of new TVs and set-top boxes, while individual manufacturers will be responsible for any deals to bring additional catch-up and online services such as Netflix to the platform. Panasonic has already announced that it will incorporate Freeview Play in its new 2015 line of smart TVs. Freeview has also said that Vestel will launch a range of Freeview Play products. Ilse Howling, managing director, connected TV at Digital UK, said: “Humax is an exciting addition to the line-up of leading manufacturers supporting the launch of Freeview Play. Its new range of settops will offer the perfect way for viewers to bring all of the benefits of connected TV to their existing set, free from subscription.”

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20/04/2015 18:58

Technology > in focus

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

DTG adds Freeview Play support with D-Book 8

In Brief

UK TV technical standards body the DTG has introduced support for the forthcoming Freeview Play connected TV service in the latest edition of the D-Book, the official document for digital-terrestrial TV technology guidelines in the UK. D-Book 8 includes a set of technology foundations for the new service, according to the DTG. Freeview Play is to be based on a technical specification that combines Freeview HD with the pan-European HbbTV standard for hybrid broadband-broadcast services. Elements include a consolidated cross-platform, enhanced metadata stream, rules and guidelines on the UI and presentation of content and players, navigation principles including one-click access to live TV and the prominent display of core content across both linear and non-linear environments and simple onscreen branding. According to Digital UK’s guidelines, it should also provide opportunities for Freeview broadcasters to launch

UPC chooses CoralTree

LindsayDavies: a milestone for DTT in the UK.

on-demand services alongside those provided by public service broadcasters. The technology platform for the first profile of the platform is based on a common HTML5 application environment, a broadcast profile based on D-Book 7, including MHEG, the incorporation of DVB-DASH adaptive bit-rate streaming, an aggregated source of metadata providing forwards and backwards EPG with links to player content and a search API across both ondemand and broadcast content. The second profile is based on D-Book 8, includes HbbTV 2.0, Microsoft PlayReady DRM and other functionality. “The D-Book 8 is a milestone for digital terrestrial TV in the UK,

laying the groundwork for a new generation of connected TVs and set-top boxes,” said DTG chief executive Richard Lindsay-Davies. D-Book 8 also includes measures to protect user settings when scanning for channel and service changes and adds support for the evolution of digital terrestrial TV alongside many other minor updates, according to the DTG. Smart retuning in products compliant with D-Book 8 ensures that products will retain favourite channel lists, region selection and recording schedules when they carry out a retune. D-Book 8 also includes support for over the air signalling of software updates via broadband so manufacturers can instruct set-tops and TVs to get connected for large update files, or tell users to connect their products. There is also a requirement for manufacturers to provide a standard method for displaying signal strength and quality, so that customer services can respond more effectively to reliable data.

Beamly tops 10 million subscribers Beamly has seen an 11-fold increase in growth since launch.

Social TV service Beamly has passed the 10 million subscriber mark, one year after it was rebranded from Zeebox. Announcing the milestone, Beamly said that it has seen an eleven-fold lift in growth to 10.4m unique users since its relaunch in April 2014. At the same time, Beamly has

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launched a new set of ‘Frictionless Fun’ features, designed to offer a ‘one-click’ experience for users to engage with polls, quizzes and animated stickers, with sharing enabled across social networks. “More than 90% of people on Twitter don’t tweet. Frictionless Fun is the result of intense testing with millennial and other TV fan segments to amplify the level of audience participation around the clock,” said Beamly CEO Jason Forbes. “For one primetime-show experience we saw over two million

votes in less than 48 hours. This also gives TV networks another set of capabilities that can be embedded in minutes on their site to drive audiences, engagement and monetisation.” Beamly was created last year in an effort to establish Zeebox as a destination for news and gossip about TV shows and a place for people to chat about programmes with other passionate fans and celebrities – “instead of just a TV guide.” At the time Beamly said it aimed to “capture the zeitgeist” of its core target audience of 16 to 24 year-old millennials and to break away from its “geeky male audience”.

Business support systems specialist CoralTree is providing customer relationship and inventory management systems for Liberty Global’s satellite arm UPC DTH, supporting its operations across Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. UPC DTH partnered with CoralTree to implement its CRM, product catalogue, and inventory management solutions to simplify customer sales order processing, reduce agent training time, and enhance the management and control of warehouse and logistics operations, according to CoralTree. With a subscriber base of more than 780,000, UPC DTH offers up to 100 channels of programming, including HD and premium channel content. “Our customers are at the heart of our business. We identified that improvements to our CRM and inventory management capability could further our goal to deliver outstanding customer experience,” said Tunde Hubina, vice-president of customer care, customer experience and billing and collection at UPC DTH.

StarTimes taps Conax, ALi Digital TV service provider StarTimes has adopted a range of Conax certified set-top boxes based on ALi chipset solutions to further expand in Africa. ALi Corporation is a set-top box chipset solution provider, while StarTimes now has branches in 26 African countries, operations in 14 countries and almost five million subscribers across Africa. In addition to being a network operator, StarTimes is also a digital TV system integrator, technology provider and media content producer.

37 20/04/2015 18:58

People > Places

Digital TV Europe April/May 2015

On the move Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN) has appointed Jose Tolosa as COO. Tolosa replaces Pierluigi Gazzolo who shifted from COO to head of Latin America at VIMN last year. Tolosa will report to VIMN’s President and CEO, Bob Bakish. VIMN has also appointed Ilya HellertRozanov as head of comedy and entertainment channels in Russia, Ukraine, the CIS and Baltic States. Based in Moscow. Hellert-Rozanov previously worked as head of Russian TV channel Telecoms TV and as chief editor of 24 Techno. Spanishlanguage MCN 2btube has named former Fox Europe and Africa president Jesus Perezagua (pictured), Zee Entertainment Enterprises managing director Punit Goenka and A+E Networks international vice-president Sean Cohan as board members. Perezagua is currently based in Tokyo, advising Fox International Channels Asia. Liberty Global-owned cable operator UPC Poland has promoted Konrad Skórczy´ nski to director of customer services. Skórczy´ nski, who was previously senior manager of the technical support department for the operator, will be responsible for UPC Poland’s customer service strategy, including identifying customers’ needs and creating and implementing solutions as well as working closely with other departments in the company to optimise customer service. Skórczynski will work with Jakub Kłoczewiak, recently named as VP for customer care and the

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customer experience for Liberty Global throughout central and eastern Europe, who is also ultimately responsible for UPC Poland’s customer services. A+E Networks has hired BBC Worldwide’s Amanda Hill to become its chief creative officer, international. She will be responsible for overseeing A+E’s programming, marketing and communications teams across its global portfolio, which includes the A&E channel, History and FYI. She will report to executive VP, international Sean Cohan. Her hire comes after A+E added former RHI Entertainment exec Joel Denton to oversee its international sales business. TV technology provider Zenterio has named Jörgen Nilsson as its new CEO as it prepares for a IPO. Nilsson has worked at companies including Ericsson, Hewlett Packard and Acision. More recently, he held several non-executive advisory roles for technology companies. He replaces Robin Rutili, who will continue in the company as chief business development officer. Satellite operator SES has named Christophe de Hauwer as chief development officer and a member of its board. He will also join SES’s executive committee, effective August 1. De Hauwer succeeds Gerson Souto, the company’s current CDO, who has decided to step down from his position for personal reasons and relocate to Brazil, his home country. De Hauwer has served with SES for over 10 years, most

recently as senior vice-president, fleet development and yield management. Former Disney-ABC Television president Anne Sweeney has joined the board of streaming service Netflix. Sweeney was in charge of The Walt Disney Company’s television operations when it scored a major original production deal with Netflix in October 2013, and now joins the SVoD platform’s board. Sweeney exited Disney in January after 11 years running its cable, broadcaster and international channels. Swedish free and pay TV commercial broadcaster TV4 Group has named Anton Glanzelius as the new channel manager for on-demand service TV4 Play. Glanzelius has worked alongside TV4 channel director Mathias Berg on developing an ad-funded digital video offering for TV4 since last autumn. Scripps Networks Interactive has recruited former Disney and Sony exec Ross Hair to run its affiliate sales and ad sales across its UK and Europe operations. Hair becomes senior VP, commercial, for Scripps Networks UK & EMEA, working across the company’s portfolio of pay TV channels. SNI has also brought in Filippo Ubaldini as its country manager for Italy. Both report to Phillip Luff, SNI’s new managing director, Scripps Networks UK & EMEA. Luff replaced Jon Sichel, who returns to the US to take a newlycreated commercial role. Hair has

been consulting since setting up ESPN’s EMEA operations. Ubaldini is the founder of Filmedia, the Italian channels consultancy. Russia’s Gazprom Media has appointed Aleksander Vronsky as the new CEO of its satellite pay TV unit, NTV+, replacing Stanislav Rodionov, who has left the company. Vronsky was the vice-president of technology for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Another former Sochi 2014 official, former media relations director Mikhail Demin, has been named as deputy CEO. OTT video-on-demand provider Wuaki.tv has hired former Apple iTunes executive Sébastien Janin to head international business development. Janin has worked for iTunes, where he was responsible for managing the rollout of the iTunes film service in Europe and Latin America, for the last eight years. Brian Sullivan (pictured) is to step down as CEO of Sky’s German arm on June 24 to return to the US. Sky Deutschland’s supervisory board has named Carsten Schmidt, currently the pay TV operator’s chief officer for sports, advertising sales and the internet, as his successor. Schmidt will work alongside Sullivan ahead of taking over fully when the latter departs. Schmidt has been a member of the Sky Deutschland management board since 2006, having joined the company in 1999. Please email contributions to: [email protected]

Visit us at www.digitaltveurope.net

20/04/2015 19:04

IBC2015 RAI Amsterdam Conference 10 - 14 September 2015 Exhibition 11 - 15 September 2015 IBC Content Everywhere Europe Amsterdam 11 - 15 September 2015 MENA Dubai TBC

Round the clock, live, linear web channel available 365 days a year IBC VOD is a library of exclusive content from IBC and IBC Content Everywhere events that take place year round, around the globe. These videos are industry insights from those creating, managing and delivering content, by the industry for the industry. IBC VOD allows you to select videos and content from: • IBC2014 Conference Keynotes from Professor Brian Cox OBE, Neelie Kroes, Former Vice President, European Commission and many more • IBC2014 Conference sessions and industry insights • IBC TV Show News, exclusive interviews, analysis and highlights from the exhibition floor and conference

• IBC Content Everywhere Hub Theatre panel discussions providing insights into the consumer behaviours, business models and technologies driving the growth of consumption over connected devices • IBC Content Everywhere Cloud Solutions Theatre presentations and case studies on Cloud Technology and products • IBC Content Everywhere Workflow Solutions Theatre case studies on the financial and production benefits of tapeless production • IBC Content Everywhere MENA Content Theatre and Hub sessions

www.ibc.org/VOD

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TV Connect London

26th - 28th April 2016, ExCel, London

TV Connect Industry Awards

27th April 2016, The Gherkin, London

2015

Broadband & TV Connect Asia Co-located with CDN Asia 12th – 13th May 2015, Suntec, Singapore

Smart Home World

23rd – 24th June 2015, Royal Garden Hotel, London

CONNECTED DELIVERY WORLD Connected Delivery World

6th – 7th October 2015, Radisson Blu Portman Hotel, London

Digital TV Central and Eastern Europe 27th - 28th October 2015, Warsaw, Poland

TV Xperience

6th - 7th October 2015, Hilton Time Square, New York

TV Connect MENA

2nd – 3rd November 2015, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai

16-19 November 2015

TV Connect Africa

17th – 19th November 2015, Cape Town Convention Centre, South Africa

Millennium Gloucester Hotel, London, UK

OTTtv World Summit

16th – 19th November 2015, Millennium Gloucester Hotel, London

WWW.TVCONNECTGLOBALEVENTS.COM pOBC TV Connect Series AprMay15.indd 1

20/04/2015 17:54