Mind the gap: Can OTT content catch up?€¦ · 20 TV gaming A look at how payTV can carve out a niche in this highly competitive sector through STB and cloud-based gaming services

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12 Analyst cornerIHS Screen Digest’s Guy Bisson compares distribution and income for European channel brands

14 COVER STORY - OTT contentHow can the over-the-top content gap be bridged and how will it change the TV industry?

18 YouTube: friend or foe?Is YouTube an opportunity or a threat for traditional broadcasters?

20 TV gamingA look at how payTV can carve out a niche in this

highly competitive sector through STB and cloud-based gaming services

24 HTML5We examine how the over-the-top industry is rallying behind this technology as Flash fades away. Also, an expert gives his opinion on page 27

28 Dual-screen and social TVA UK government-organised event showed some surprising stats and attitudes on these hot topics and examined their impact on the industry

32 SNGSatellite news gathering is evolving towards mobile news gathering

35 Adaptive bit rateVerimatrix outlines how Smooth Streaming and HLS can give operators a pain-free way to multi-screen

43 Smart TV roundtableA diverse panel discusses the main issues faced

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Reports:Another week, another new online video streaming service. As Dixon’s new KnowHow Movies service launches in the UK, you’d be forgiven for wondering if there is any room left in a market that already contains a host of rivals catering for a relatively small demographic. This, somewhat perversely, is Dixon’s - the UK’s largest retailer - argument, that over 90% of the population are not engaging in digital video and it is confident it can kick-start the

consumer mainstream. Apart from a strong installed base of devices, the company has managed to acquire some decent content (see page 8) to take on OTT and pay-TV players. This is an issue many feel is key in the current OTT vs pay-TV debate/battle, and one we analyse on p14. YouTube has its own offerings in this space, which we look at on page 18. In terms of technology, HTML5 making a big splash in OTT and TV Everywhere, and this is deconstructed on pages 24 and 27. Goran Nastic, editor

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news in brief

Virgin to open up OTT

Virgin Media is in talks with

streaming services LOVEFiLM

and Netflix to provide added

content for its TiVo boxes, which

blend linear with over-the-top

broadband content. CEO Neil

Berkett said: “We want TiVo to be

completely open. We’re talking to

everyone.” The company is, how-

ever, taking a cautious stance on

the issue with a phased approach

to OTT content as opposed to

letting in the Wild West of the

internet. “It’s easy to publish all

sorts of things to it, because it’s

got Flash - but we want to land

the real heavyweights,” said COO

Andrew Barron. Since the TiVo

platform was launched at the end

of 2010, only 15 applications have

made their way onto the service.

The UK’s leading payTV platform

BSkyB is launching a streaming video

service to compete with new entrants

such as Netflix and targeting the 13

million or so UK households who do

not subscribe to payTV.

The new as yet unnamed over-the-

top service, which will go live in the

next six months, will have unlimited

access to a package of Hollywood

movies for a monthly subscription

fee, with sport and entertainment on

offer soon after launch. Pay-as-you-go

for rental of single movies will also

be available. The news comes as

KnowHow Movies became the latest

entrant into the increasingly crowded

UK online video market (see p8).

The move is part of the company’s

strategy to tap into the growth of

connected devices and reach those

who don’t currently subscribe to a

payTV service. The new service,

which will support recommendations,

will be available across a range of

connected devices, including PCs,

Macs, laptops, tablets, mobile

phones, games consoles and

connected TVs.

Sky already provides its Sky Go

branded multi-screen service to

existing payTV subscribers and

revealed as part of its Q2 results that

2.5 million customers have used it

some five months after launch, with

a high of 1.5 million unique users in

December. The Android version is

due out this month.

Overall, Sky generated a

turnover of GBP3.364 billion, up

5.6% y-o-y despite falling ad sales,

while net profit for the six-month

period climbed to GBP441 million.

TV growth was lower year on

year at 40,000, as the market

reaches saturation, although 60,000

new standalone communications

customers were added during the

period. Customers take an average

of 2.6 products each, with over

three million taking a triple

play of TV, broadband and

telephony, driving ARPU to a

new high of GBP544, with

churn at 9.6%.

HD subscribers reached

four million, with 138,000 net

adds in the quarter.

Sky to launch internet TV

News

http://www.atxnetworks.com

news in brief

DVR records all Freeview

channels, all the time

A new DVR has gone on sale in

the UK that can record every

channel broadcast on Freeview

and save it for up to a week. The

Promise products, initially

available in the London area,

record all the 50+ Freeview

channels allowing the consumer

to then pick the programmes they

want to watch. Promise Lite

stores all programmes for three

days and costs £1,200 while the

Promise Seven model, which

retains them for a week, has more

advanced options and costs

£1,998. New programs

automatically replace the oldest,

except for shows the user has

marked to be saved. The products

will be rolling out to the rest of

the UK in due course.

TV audience measurement

expands in Poland

Nielsen has won a contract with

partners cablenet UPC Polska

and ad sales firm Atmedia to

launch what will be the largest

TV audience measurement panel

in Poland. Nielsen will measure

the behaviour of payTV audiences

through a sample of 5,000

households, with research based

on return path data (RPD)

technology using UPC’s

decoders. The first batch of data

will be made available to UPC’s

thematic TV stations in May this

year, analysing viewership among

the cable company’s customers

and their use of interactive

services such as video on demand

and games. Panel design, data

processing and panel recruitment

will all be led by Nielsen, which

was last year awarded a four-year

contract by public broadcaster

Telewizja Polska (TVP) to

provide TV audience

measurement services.

06 March-April 2012 www.csimagazine.com

News

CTVMA expands east The Connected TV Marketing

Association is looking eastwards

with the formation of a regional

body focusing on Central Eastern

Europe, Russia, CIS and Turkey.

The newly formed CEE CTVMA

Board will be led by Mirek Smyk,

MD of Mirek Smyk Consulting

Group (MSCG), with members

coming from local broadcasters,

OTT and multi-screen platforms.

The board will consist initially of

ten executive members from all

countries in the region including

Russia and Turkey, and local

CTVMA boards will be created in

each country during the next few

weeks. Membership and other

cooperation opportunities will be

announced in due course.

The CTVMA CEE will close

appointments for Executive Board

members from other CEE countries

including Russia and Turkey by end

of February 2012 and will announce

its 2012 Annual CEE Activities and

Development plan during major

industry events in March.

CTVMA - itself only established

late last year to promote all things

connected TV - has identified the

region as a key potential growth area

for connected TV, where in markets

such as Poland already more than

half of all sets are internet enabled.

One of its key challenges is to

facilitate relationships between

content providers, CE manufacturers,

advertisers and consumers.

Hotel deploys second screen solutionThe Mandarin Orchard Singapore

has become the first hotel in the

country and one of the first in the

world to offer a mobile device

solution for a range of in-room

services including iPads for use

around the hotel.

The advanced in-room IPTV

system was deployed with local

operator StarHub and connects

guests at all of the hotel’s 1,051

rooms to features such as express

check-out, concierge and dining

services, movies-on-demand and 24

StarHub TV channels.

StarHub also installed a second

screen solution enabling resident

guests to remotely access in-room

services from hotel-issued iPad

devices. The specially designed

mobile device solution is connected

full-time to the hotel’s Wi-Fi network

and provides IPTV access from

anywhere within the premises.

Using the iPad app, guests can

navigate through IPTV via an

on-screen remote control, view

messages, select StarHub TV

channels and movies-on-demand, as

well as check real-time flight

information. In the next phase of

development, guests will also be able

to browse current promotions at the

hotel and The Mandarin Gallery,

control the room ambience, as well

as ordering in-room dining service.

A report from MRG identified

over 11 million hotel rooms and one

million airline seats as potential

IPTV applications, predicting the

market for hotels and airlines to be

worth $1.9 billion in 2012.

BBC: SmartTV should go back to basicsThe head of the BBC iPlayer catch-

up service has warned the industry

needs to rethink its approach to

smart TV, arguing that there will

always be disparity between

connection rates and usage unless

devices become easier to set-up.

“We need to go to basics with

connected TV to reach mainstream

audiences. It shouldn’t require a

firmware update,” said Daniel

Danker, speaking at the DTG

Summit, held in early March. “We

know we’ve succeeded when the

technology becomes invisible.”

Danker’s comments came as he

gave out some usage figures for

iPlayer across various devices. The

damning statistic was that four times

more consumption takes places on

the iPad despite there being more

than twice as many connected TVs

in UK homes. The single tablet

device accounts for 11.7 programme

views in the last month compared to

only 2.7 million over all types of

smart TVs, although this is growing

at a fast rate.

According to Rovi, over half of all

smart TVs sold globally aren’t

connected (52%), with the

connection rate in the UK standing

at only 35%.

Danker added that the BBC is

engaging in a renewed focus on the

Red Button for interactive TV, with

19 million people using the service

every month. “It’s a dead simple user

experience.”


HbbTV a “lightweight” standard, says Zeebox’s RoseZeebox co-founder and CTO, ex-BBC iPlayer head

Anthony Rose, has criticised the European Hybrid

Broadcast Broadband Television (HbbTV)

initiative, calling it a “lightweight” standard that

won’t satisfy consumer demand.

Speaking at a recent Westminster organised

event on the dual screen and social media (see

page 28 for a full review of the event), Rose said

European broadcasters have been slower to adopt

the opportunities on offer than their US

counterparts: “Whenever technology provides

something new, an incumbent always has a choice

of ignore, block or embrace, and as I’ve spoken to

broadcasters across Europe and US and

elsewhere, and I think some of the European ones

are a little bit more conservative; they wish the

internet would go away, it spoils the business

model.”

Rose argued that the nature of the standard will

simply lead consumers to go towards third party

service and applications. “If you look at the

HbbTV standard in Europe, what happened is the

European broadcasters decided they didn’t like

what TV manufacturers were doing, and instead

they said they would create a new standard, a

fairly lightweight standard that would allow

broadcasters to overlay things over their

programmes to create interactive experiences. But

importantly it also ensured that only broadcasters

could do it, it’s enshrined in the standard

essentially, that broadcasters could say, no one

else other than me can overlay things. And so as a

result, I think, it’s a very low technical standard to

implement and I think it will become quite

successful in being built into every TV in Europe.

“However, I think it won’t offer any excitement

because the broadcasters will fail to deliver, they

are the incumbents and they won’t be disruptive to

their own business and therefore the TV

manufacturers will continue to drive traffic to the

apps area and second screen makers will continue

to innovate.”

Rose also explained how Zeebox was

established in response to customer demands for

easier access to more information about what is

on TV, as well as to give them the ability to buy

things they see on the box.

The company, one of the most high profile

start-ups in this space, at least in Europe thanks to

Sky’s recent 10% investment, is rumoured to have

delivered around 200,000 downloads in

December, although MediaCom estimates that

only 1,600 tweets were actually made through the

Zeebox app.

BBC confirms 3D OlympicsThe BBC has said it will broadcast some events

in 3D during this year’s London Olympic Games

as part of its trials of the technology. The trial

coverage will be broadcast via the BBC’s HD

channel and will include the Opening Ceremony,

the Closing Ceremony and The Men’s 100 metres

final, as well as a highlights package at the end

of each day.

The BBC broadcast in 3D for the first

time last year when it showed the Men’s and

Ladies’ Finals of the 2011 Wimbledon

Championships. A number of other trials

are also underway.

“We have always said we believe some of 2012

should be captured in 3D, and we’re delighted to

confirm our offer to audiences in the UK,

providing them with a new way of getting close to

some of the key moments from the London 2012

Olympic Games,” said Kim Shillinglaw, head of

BBC 3D.

The public free-to-air broadcaster added that

the plans were never to have a dedicated 3D

channel for the games, a decision now vindicated

by relatively poor consumer demand and the

abandonment of certain 3D channels around the

world such as by Canal Plus in France.

It also admitted while its decision to go ahead

with 3D broadcasts has met with polarised

opinions, the technology should enhance the

overall experience and lends itself well to certain

Olympic sports.

• In other positive news for 3D, Empire Post

Media has secured funding to create and develop

new 3D TV projects that will complement the

company’s first television series, Journey Beyond.

The funding will allow the company to develop up

to ten new projects. The company’s strategy is to

select content opportunities that are positioned to

take advantage of the increasing number of

platforms and channels for 3D content.

Your vision...

news in brief

HEVC spec a step closer

A joint effort between the MPEG

group and the ITU-T has made a

draft of the next-gen High

Efficiency Video Coding (HVEC)

standard, also known as H.265.

The spec, which faces two more

hurdles before it is finalised, is

expected to provide efficiency

boosts in transmitting video of

35-40%, although one insider

claimed it could be as high as

67%, according to a report in the

EE Times. The draft international

standard is due in July, at which

time more chip designs are

expected, the report said.

The thinking is the successor

to MPEG-4 (H.264) would be

out on the market to support

new services such as ultra

high definition (UHD). A

final standard is aimed for

January 2013.

In-flight sports channel goes

live

IMG Media and Panasonic

Avionics have launched the first

live global premium 24-hour

sports channel for airline

passengers. Going live this week,

the Sport 24 service is being

broadcast via satellite to specially-

equipped Gulf Air planes. It will

feature live coverage of the 2012

Olympic Games, English Premier

League, and a host of other

sports content. Gulf Air,

Bahrain’s national airline, is

initially offering Sport 24 on its

‘Sky Hub’ which is currently

available on some A330 aircraft

retrofitted with Panasonic’s

Global Communications Suite.

There are ongoing discussions

with a number of other airlines.

The channel will also be available

to cruise liners from March, with

Norwegian Cruise Liners being

the first operator to broadcast on

select vessels.


News

KnowHow Movies launches in UKCurrys and PC World have become

the latest British retailers to make a

splash in the increasingly crowded

online video waters. The

transactional on-demand movie and

TV streaming service, called

KnowHow Movies, launches with

content from Disney, Warner Bros

and Momentum Pictures, with

three other major film studios in

the pipeline.

Launching on Thursday 1 March

across 600 stores, around 9,000

staff have been re-trained in the

process, the biggest training

programme in the company’s

history.

Around 1,500 titles will be on

offer at launch, with content to be

expanded daily thereafter. New

releases will be added in same-day

release windows as DVDs and Blu-

Ray, priced at £3.99 to rent and

£12.99 to buy. Catalogue titles are

priced from £2.99 to rent and from

£5.99 to buy, with TV shows

starting at £1.99.

Each new connected device sold

by Currys and PC World will come

with KnowHow Movies pre-loaded

and demonstrated at purchase by

store staff. Customers will be able

to access content on up to five

registered devices, allowing them to

place- and device-shift content

between them.

Initially available for PCs and

Macs, KnowHow Movies will be

rolled out to tablets, mobile phones

(Android/iOS), Smart TVs and

games consoles within the next six

months, again either pre-installed or

via a software update in app stores.

Gift cards will also be available to

buy in-store.

Rovi is providing the technology

platform and will manage the digital

supply chain. On many devices, it is

rolling out a new form of adaptive

streaming (ABRS) called Divx Plus,

which it claims will for the first time

enable the switch from HD to SD

smoothly and seamlessly. The digital

locker runs on Rovi’s proprietary

system but this will eventually

migrate to the Ultraviolet standard

later in 2012, which has been

gathering a greater level of support

from a range of companies. In

theory, it will make download

functionality consistent across all

retailers. (Rovi is also looking at

MPEG-DASH to fit with its own

ABRS technology, it said.)

While 96% of UK consumers have

internet access, the online movie

market is still in its infancy. Only 5%

are watching films digitally but this is

growing fast, with the market value

expected to increase from £138

million (EUR163m) in 2011 to some

£450 million by 2014. The company

is confident it can play a large part in

accelerating this adoption curve.

It thinks it can do so through a

combination of content, technology

and customer service. “None of our

existing competitors provide

everything that people want and we

believe we provide all the answers,”

said Niall O’Keeffe, KnowHow

development director. Dixons Retail

(part of the same chain) sells 4.5

million connected devices annually

and talks to 19 million customers

across its various channels. These

numbers make O’Keeffe confident

that service take-up will be

“substantial” although he wouldn’t

disclose precise targets. Moreover, he

argued that the move will benefit the

industry by broadening the market as

a whole.

KnowHow Movies comes up

against payTV offerings and a range

of other subscription retailer-backed

initiatives such as HMV’s hmvon-

demand, Amazon’s LoveFilm and

Tesco’s Blinkbox, as well as the

recently launched Netflix. Amazon,

incidentally, just announced it would

buy the remaining 58% of LoveFilm,

which operates in the UK, Germany,

Sweden and Denmark with 2.3

million subscribers.

DVB to extend CI+ in 2012The DVB is looking to complete its

work on the technical specification

for the latest version of the CI Plus

standard this year, having begun

development in December.

Additional functionality

specified in the requirements for

v1.4 include dual-tuner support, IP

delivered content, extensions of the

browser to make use of broadband

connectivity and supporting

watermarking and transcoding

functions within the module.

While already possible technically,

the current spec prohibits any

manipulation of the content by

the module beyond decryption,

according to DVB.

Beyond v1.4, there are currently

discussions over a new form factor

for CI Plus given that the original

PCMCIA format has been dropped

by the PC industry. “This does not

necessarily invalidate its continued

use for CI Plus, but it is recognised

that here are now alternatives,” DVB

said in its bulletin.


Channel 4 launches second screen applicationChannel 4 will be the first terrestrial broadcaster in

the UK to launch a mobile application that reacts

to watermarked audio triggers within a broadcast to

unlock exclusive content.

Viewers with the Channel 4 app, which is

available at £1.49 on iOS devices, will be able to

listen in on episodes of Facejacker starting this

Spring to unlock features such as soundboards, a

booth to turn viewers into characters in the show,

videos and ringtones.

Digital watermarks are inaudible to the human

ear but detectable by mobile devices, forcing a

piece of content to be unlocked in the app. Each

broadcast episode will feature two distinct codes,

unlocking two new pieces of content.

The watermarks can also be found in other

Facejacker content, such as trails, 4oD episodes

and in the Facejacker DVD. Viewers will be

ancouraged to track down the audio to unlock all

the bonus material which includes additional

ringtones, ‘Facejack Booth’ masks and up to 30

minutes of original, unseen clips and behind-the-

scenes video.

The move is part of the company’s strategy for

deeper audience engagement, providing them with

more opportunities to interact with programmes.

The channel is using Cambdridge-based

Intrasonics software for the new service.

Channel 4 mentioned at a recent conference on

dual screen TV that it was looking at so-called

automatic device synchronisation technology,

which involves an audio signal (sometimes

watermarked) embedded within the television

broadcast that the companion device can

recognise to display more information in real-time.

This is part of a clear trend in the broadcast

space where media companies are looking to

exploit the synergies of companion devices to

augment their content. The FX channel recently

launched a companion app for the popular

Walking Dead series, which marked the first

commercial use of digital audio watermarking

technology in a second screen application in

the UK.

Studios unveil new standard for digital contentWarner Bros and Twentieth Century Fox are part of

a new initiative that aims to allow consumers to

easily organise, download, store and move HD

content across multiple devices.

The project, currently going under the working

title of Project Phenix, is being developed by the

newly formed Secure Content Storage Association

(SCSA), together with storage firms SanDisk and

Western Digital.

The alliance will create and license solutions

that secure HD and other premium copyright-

protected content in up to full 1080p quality on

local and portable hard drives, including flash

memory products including USB flash drives, SD

cards and solid state disk drives. Once content is

downloaded to a hard drive or flash memory

product, it could then be accessed, online or

offline, on any SCSA-enabled device such as

a connected TV, Blu-ray player, tablet, mobile

phone or game console, the SCSA said.

The idea is that optimised content will then be

made easily available for purchase via digital

download, digital files bundled with physical

media, kiosks in retail stores, or other means of

secure digital delivery.

“The device renders content up to ten times

faster than over-the-top internet. We see Project

Phenix as a key component of the emerging digital

ecosystem,” said Mike Dunn, president of

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

In addition to local storage, the content will

also be backed up via the UltraViolet industry

standard as well as other cloud-based services, the

SCSA added.

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news in brief

4.4M Freeview devices sold

UK digital TV platform Freeview

added 1.3m HD televisions and

set-top boxes in Q4 2011, taking

the total number of units sold to

4.4m at year’s end. Freeview

estimates that of the 2.6m smart

TVs sold across the UK, more

than 80% are Freeview HD sets.

The number of UK homes with

Freeview on their main TV is

currently 10.6m. According to

measurement company BARB,

two million homes are actively

using the service, which launched

18 months ago. Around 81% of

the country can receive a

Freeview HD signal, which

should grow to 85% by the time

of the Olympic Games in London

this summer, and 100% coverage

when the digital switchover

completes in October. The focus

will then likely switch to how the

platform evolves with the

upcoming YouView launch.

Satellite leads in Germany

Satellite TV has reached a

milestone in Germany where

more viewers now watch TV via

DTH than cable, according to

SES. At the end of 2011, 17.5m

households were watching TV via

satellite (5.9m in HD), up

900,000 from the previous year,

of which 90% were digital, leaving

1.8m still analogue. These homes

have three months left to make

the move to digital as DSO

approaches. At the same time,

SES claims cable lost about

900,000 households last year and

reduced its CATV to 17.3m.

Digital terrestrial TV lost 180,000

households, bringing its coverage

down to 1.8m. IPTV, meanwhile,

has continued to grow, albeit

from a lower base, with an

increase of 330,000 households,

to exceed the million-mark; it now

reaches 1.3m homes.


News

DVD Forum calls it a day as UltraViolet makes inroadsThe DVD Forum is soon to enter a

winding down phase with current

technical groups to be closed

following the body’s latest members

meeting.

At the 56th Steering Committee

meeting held at the end of January,

the 100-member industry body,

originally established in 1997 to

launch the DVD format, will

formally enter “a reduced activity

mode” from 1 April. The Forum

“will be reactivated as necessary to

address issues that may arise

through the end of its chartered

duration in August 2017,” DVD

Intelligence reports.

The 15th – and likely last –

General Meeting of the Forum, was

scheduled to take place in Tokyo

on 1 March. Of the two options put

up for discussion – “termination”

or “sleeping” – the members chose

the latter, the report said.

Earlier this week, an analyst note

from Morgan Stanley described the

home video business, for many years

a major cash cow for Hollywood’s

movie studios, as “an area of

concern”. Noting that video rental

spending surpassed video sales in

2011 for the first time since 1998,

this trend will likely to continue due

the economy, convenience of kiosk

and subscription channels, and an

overall maturation of physical DVDs.

The studios’ efforts to promote

downloads and streaming through

their own distribution channels won’t

bear fruit for a while, the report said.

The studio-backed UltraViolet

(UV) initiative has achieved a

milestone of 800,000 household

accounts in the US, according to IHS

Screen Digest, meanwhile. For each

account established, consumers have

redeemed digital rights to 1.25 titles,

meaning US consumers now have

added more than one million films to

their digital film collections via

UV-enabled discs.

Some 19 million digital film files

were sold during 2011 by electronic

sell-through (EST) vendors like

iTunes, Xbox Live and Vudu,

meaning that UV could encourage

consumers to buy more movies, the

analysts said.

Echoing Morgan Stanley’s

findings, the rental business has

dramatically outperformed the

purchasing segment in recent years,

with the number of US digital rentals

amounting to more than three times

the total for digital purchases in

2011, IHS added.

Home gateways to triple by 2015Home multimedia gateways are

expected to become the new hub of

the digital living room when they

take over from set-top boxes, with

the market projected to triple from

2012 to 2015, according to IHS

Screen Digest.

Shipments of gateways and thin

client boxes that act as receivers

are minute at present, but their

numbers will grow dramatically as

cable and wireless operators begin

to roll out services offering broader

connectivity and seamless access,

and are projected to reach 4.2

million units in 2012, up from just

345,000 last year and a mere 1,000

in 2010. Shipments then are

expected to continue to climb

quickly during the next two years —

rising to 6.7 million units in 2013, to

10.4 million in 2014 and to 12.6

million by 2015.

“Through the residential gateway,

a set-top box acting as a central

server can be connected to any

number of thin client boxes — and

eventually to other media devices

being used in the home, like

smartphones or tablets — in order to

deliver content. As such, gateways

can become the nucleus of the digital

living room, where consumers have

seamless access to material from a

wide range of sources,” said Jordan

Selburn, senior principal analyst for

consumer platforms at IHS.

If the current set-top box market is

any indication, countries like Brazil,

Russia, India and China could propel

the gateway space during the latter

part of the decade and beyond, IHS

predicts. In North America, many of

the leading operators are moving to

the server/client model, with the

“Whole Home DVR” service offered

by DirecTV, Comcast and others as

the first step.

The key component within the

residential gateway box — the media

processor, which converts media into

the right format and resolution —

is now ready for prime time, IHS

believes, with companies like Intel,

Broadcom and STMicroelectronics

launching products aimed at the

gateway and client markets.

IHS iSuppli Figure: Worldwide Residential Gateway and Thin Client Shipment Forecast

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Millions of Units 0.3 4.2 6.7 10.4 12.6

Source: IHS iSuppli Research, February 2012


news in brief

Video surges on connected

devices

Facebook users on average share

ten times more video than Twitter

users, according to Ooyala’s latest

quarterly Video Index report,

which also found that video plays

on tablets, mobile devices and

connected TVs nearly doubled in

Q4 over the previous quarter.

Tablet viewers continue to be far

more engaged than desktop

viewers, being 45% more likely to

complete at least 75% of videos

played. Video plays on Google

TV also saw strong growth,

increasing by 91% in the quarter.

VoD up 50% in France

Sales of DVD and Blu-ray discs

fell 9% in 2011 to an estimated

EUR1.26 billion in France, while

revenues from video-on-demand

transactions rose more than 50%

to EUR230 million. According to

figures from SEVN and market

researcher GFK, Blu-ray sales did

rise 20% last year, both in value

and volume, to ten million units

sold, to now account for 16%

(EUR210m) of total turnover of

physical media. SEVN attributes

the overall video revenue fall to

continually high levels of piracy.

Retrans grows in US

An SNL Kagan study analysing

Q3 2011 broadcast TV

retransmission revenue shows a

group of 16 US TV station

owners grew their average

monthly retransmission fees per

multi-channel subscriber by

46.8% between 2009 and 2011 to

reach an estimated 33 cents.

Univision Communications came

first at 61 cents, followed by

Sinclair Broadcast Group. SNL

anticipates that fees will remain

on an upward trend, thanks to

valuable programming like the

Olympic Games.

News

Real money for HTS to go beyond broadband access High Throughput Satellites (HTS) go

beyond mere broadband access

services, and the industry is beginning

to open its eyes to a number of other

possible applications of these powerful

birds that stand to deliver serious

revenues, according to NSR Research.

A good example of potential new

revenue streams came in December

when Eutelsat reported that mobile

facilities company Jackshoot was the

first to deliver TV rushes over its

KA-SAT satellite for the UK’s

Channel 4 Live and Lost with

Blackberry programme. NSR foresees

similar deals coming up that will eat

up total capacity on the KA-SAT and

other HTS.

Beyond traditional contribution

& occasional use services, NSR

sees promise in sectors including

corporate VSAT, backhaul,

commercial mobility, government/

military services, and even most

interestingly for DTH and video

distribution, which will account

for almost 20% of the HTS non-

broadband access capacity this

year, second only to enterprise

data applications.

Nevertheless, satellite broadband

access will dominate the use of

capacity on the growing number

of HTS entering the market in

the coming years and account for

nearly 90% of the expected leased

capacity forecast for 2020. But

there is real demand for HTS

capacity in other applications and

NSR expects that these first drops

will grow into a steady stream in

the coming ten years.

Equally important, NSR believes

these other applications will generate

much higher revenues per leased

bit than broadband access services.

The 10% of the global base of leased

HTS capacity in 2020 will likely

account for 40 to 50% of the

revenues generated on HTS capacity,

which will accumulate into a real

and significant revenue stream

for operators.

• Euroconsult estimates that a

total of 1,145 satellites will be built

for launch from 2011 to 2020, up

51% than the previous decade, with

almost three quarters attributable

to government demand.

Commercially, 203 comms

satellites with a market value

of $50 billion will be launched

into GEO orbit and a further

165 birds will be built and

launched into medium and low

Earth orbits. Euroconsult also

expects the value of satellite

capacity leasing to grow at 7%

over the next ten years.

TV advertisers look to multi-screenA joint Association of National

Advertisers (ANA) and Forrester

Research survey of more than 100 US

advertisers has found a renewed belief

in the effectiveness of television

advertising, especially with new

technologies and their role in the form

of the future of addressable

advertising, smart TVs and second

screen advertising.

Compared to 2010, the number of

respondents who believe TV ads have

become more effective in the past

two years has tripled.

Respondents particularly

expressed a growing confidence

in set-top box data that has the

potential for TV ads to be targeted

at specific customer groups. Nearly

three-quarters of marketers expressed

a strong interest in targeting their

advertising to addressable audiences,

making use of this new behavioural

and demographic data to place

television ads. They believe the

quality and accuracy of set-top-box

data will improve in the next

few years.

Nearly half of respondents are

further testing or planning to test

advanced TV ad placements in the

next 12 months via platforms such

as video on connected TVs. With

the growth of second screens, 18%

of respondents have already

implemented synchronised ads,

and another 31% will try out this

strategy this year.

TV ad spending will account for

47% of media budgets, which are

for the most part expected to

remain stable in 2012.

www.csimagazine.com March-April 2012 11

Global HTS Capacity Demand: Non-Broadband Access Applications, 2012

Enterprise Data44.6%

Contribution &

OUTV 1.7%

DTH19.0%

Distribution4.8%

Gov/Mil13.0%

Source: NSR

Commercial Mobility16.9%


Distribution is key (see last

month’s column in CSI),

but when it comes to the

business of channels, the

money is what really

matters. To some degree

the money that a channel

can make is a function of its distribution, but the

relationship is not actually as simple as that.

For pay-TV channels, carriage/affiliate income

is generally the primary source of money with

advertising making up the rest of the pie. Affiliate

revenue ratchets up with the growth of the

platform on which a channel is carried, being

based on a per-subscriber fee. Advertising is, of

course, partially correlated with reach. But any

linearity in the relationship is lost when the other

key factors that impact the channel business are

taken into account. Broadly these

are: maturity of the market, maturity

of the channel’s own local business,

brand power of the channel and

specific market strategies of the

channel group.

Thanks to the complexity of these

interacting factors, there is a

disconnect between distribution and

income, with the list of most widely

distributed European channel

brands differing from the highest

income brands. By extension, the

relative mix of top earning brands in

different countries and regions can

tell us a lot about the market in

which those brands operate.

Different mix in different

regions

While the brands that fill our top

slots for money may come as no

surprise — many, like Discovery and

Disney, are the key power brands in

Europe — the relative mix between

Western Europe and Eastern Europe

is interesting.

In the West, where pay-TV

markets are generally mature and in

a phase of low growth, sports and

movies are key to the premium

experience and the uptake of

premium brands is at a

level that boosts these

channels to the top earning

slots. Mixed among them

are core pay-TV properties like

Disney Channel and

Discovery Channel. MTV — Europe’s most

widely distributed channel brand — just makes

the top ten.

The mix in Eastern Europe is very different.

The top earning brands are the key international

power brands that can be considered drivers for

pay-TV in less mature markets. While movie and

sport channels are still crucial to the pay-TV

strategy in these markets, the relative lower

uptake in these less mature markets mean that

they fall lower down the pecking order.

In addition, among these genres, it is local

premium operations that make the top ten rather

than the better-known multinational European

sports and movie brands. Scandinavian operator

Viasat has cornered the market in heavily

localised premium sport channels in Central and

Eastern Europe, while HBO — a well known

channel brand in the US — has until its recent

Dutch launch focused its European presence

solely on Central and Eastern Europe.

As these markets continue to mature, the mix

of channel brands that make the most money will

evolve with movie and sports moving up the rank.

And it is at this point that the influence of

absolute reach begins to reassert its importance:

their ultimate power will relate to the platform

partnership decisions that they have made.

Show me the money: brand powerThere is currently a disconnect between distribution and income for European channel brands but absolute reach will ultimately rule...

Guy Bisson is research director, television, at IHS Screen Digest. In this regular column, he gives CSI readers exclusive insight from the

company’s new channel strategies service

Analyst corner


Top earning brands: Western Europe

Channel Group

Sky Sports 1 BSkyB

ESPN Disney

Sky Sports 2 BSkyB

Sky Sports 1 HD BSkyB

Disney Channel Disney

Discovery Channel Discovery

Sky Sports 2 HD BSkyB

National Geographic Channel Fox

Disney Cinemagic Disney

MTV Viacom

Top earning brands: Eastern Europe

Channel Group

Discovery Channel Discovery

National Geographic Channel Fox

Disney Channel Disney

Animal Planet Discovery

TV 1000 Viasat

Viasat Sport Viasat

MTV Viacom

Sport 1 Chello

HBO Warner

TV 1000 Russkoe Kino Viasat


Trade Fair for Cable, Broadband and SatelliteCable

ANGA Services GmbH

Nibelungenweg 2 · 50996 Köln / Cologne

Germany

Phone +49 221 / 99 80 81-0

Fax +49 221 / 99 80 81-99

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1,600 congress attendees in 2011

Key topics: Hybrid Networks, HDTV,

Smart TV, VoD & Connected Home

Europe‘sleading Business

Platform for Broadband and

Content for more than 10 years

Untitled-1 1 01/03/2012 14:35:32

http://www.angacable.com

Asurvey by Informa found

that the industry sees

content issues as the

main roadblock holding

back over-the-top.

Indeed, 99% of

respondents believed

that rights holders withholding content from

devices will slow down OTT growth. The debate

however has shifted not to if OTT content could

change the shape of the mainstream broadcasting

industry, but to exactly how it will do so.

The amount of video viewed online continues

to rise. In December 2011, 182 million US

internet users watched an average of 23.2 hours,

up from 21.1 hours in October, according to

research from comScore. In Germany, in October,

internet users were watching an average of eight

online videos each day for 50 minutes in total,

according to comScore; up from six videos and 34

minutes a year earlier.

That growth must be a worry, on some level,

for incumbent TV service operators and for

content owners too, particularly considering the

challenges of securing content in the OTT

environment. Everyone working in TV or film is

also haunted by what has happened to the music

industry in the past ten years. And broadcasters

could also be forgiven for being unnerved by the

fact that OTT service providers like Netflix and

Hulu are investing in original content.

Meanwhile, US pay TV subscriber numbers

will fall by 200,000 during 2012, according to a

Credit Suisse Securities report written in late

2011. One could argue the US is a special case: a

combination of commercial, technical and

economic factors have encouraged cord-cutting

among pay TV subscribers. Cable subscriptions

also tend to be more expensive in the US than

elsewhere. But some of those factors, including

the spread of high speed broadband and of

connected devices and TVs, are present in many

other markets too, and the debate has spread to

Europe too.

Some of the OTT providers that took the US

cable industry by surprise over the past couple

of years are expanding

overseas. Netflix lost 800,000

subscribers in the third

quarter of 2011 when it raised

its prices, then gained 600,000

the following quarter. It has a

55% market share of the US VoD rental market,

according to NPD Group. It will be interesting to

see how it fares in the UK and Ireland, following

its launch in these countries in January 2012.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told the Daily

Telegraph that Netflix sees BSkyB’s movie

channels as its principal commercial rivals in the

UK; and criticised the user experience at

Amazon’s LOVEFiLM streaming service. But his

comments touch on a fundamental question that

will surely determine the extent to which OTT

services influence the future of TV: which is more

important in attracting consumers, the user

experience or the content offered? Netflix

supports a wide range of connected devices,

delivers a personalised experience and is

integrated with Facebook. But many independent

observers and consumers feel that the content

on offer doesn’t match that at LOVEFiLM or

Sky Movies.

User experience vs content

Last year, a report from Fitch Ratings declared

that OTT services will need to offer more

compelling content if they are to compete with

incumbent cable and satellite services. But it also

noted that content owners would be unlikely to

strike deals with OTT providers if this

undermined existing arrangements with satellite

and cable operators.

Of course, incumbent operators (most recently

Sky, targeting the 13 million UK households who

do not subscribe to pay TV) are launching OTT

services of their own too, in part because they can

be used to nudge consumers towards in-network

services, or to persuade existing subscribers to

keep or extend their subscriptions. “Incumbents

now see OTT as an important part of their

strategies,” says Steve Plunkett, director of

technology and innovation at Red Bee Media.

“There’s an expectation in markets like the UK,

driven by catch up TV and the BBC iPlayer, that

content will be available to view on demand, on

multiple devices. So operators have developed

partnerships with industry and invested in new

technology skills.”

There may be another challenge emerging from

a different direction. Connected TVs will account

Compelling content is widely perceived as the biggest hurdle faced by over-the-top services. How can this gap be bridged and how will this impact pay TV, asks David Adams

OTT content


Mind the gap…


OTT content

for more than 80% of total TV shipments by

2015, up from 27% in 2011, according to

Futuresource Consulting. Operators have seen

this coming: in January Verizon became the latest

to sign a deal that uses connected devices to cut

the set-top box out of the picture, streaming VoD

titles and linear TV channels direct to LG

connected TVs and Blu-ray players. Verizon’s

FiOS TV app for LG will launch in mid-2012,

part of a broader strategy to stream content to

connected devices, as it already does to

Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

But Sony is planning an IPTV OTT service of

its own, according to an interview its CEO Sir

Howard Stringer gave The Wall Street Journal in

November 2011. If LG or other manufacturers

come to form a more active part of the value

chain, what’s to stop them doing just that?

“The major change in the past ten years is the

rise of device manufacturers like Samsung and

Apple taking a big part of the value chain,” says

Michael Lantz, CEO at connected TV and IPTV

app provider Accedo. “That’s a major trend,

especially since certain companies have so much

money. They can, if they want to, become an OTT

operator, licensing TV channels and on demand

content.” That’s not to say that such a service

would necessarily succeed – Apple, Google and

Microsoft have all been trying to work out a way

of bringing their TV ventures closer to the

mainstream for a while now, without quite

managing to do so.

In October 2011, Dan Saunders, head of

content services at Samsung Electronics Europe,

told an IHS Screen Digest conference that his

company did not see itself as a rival to incumbent

operators, but as the provider of OTT services

through connected devices that would

complement the operators’ offerings. CE

manufacturers could not use content as a

differentiator, he said: the user experience

would be key.

Second screen and content discovery

This is a problem which will be complicated, but

perhaps also solved, by the use of ‘second screen’

technologies and services. One major trend of the

past 12 months has been CE manufacturers,

operators and technology vendors looking at ways

of exploiting a second screen – usually a tablet –

in the living room, to enhance the user

experience. But despite the appearance of some

promising solutions this still doesn’t really nail the

navigation problem. For the consumer a choice

between a few dozen channels and maybe a

reasonably well-organised collection of VoD titles

is one thing; trying to pick a path through

thousands of pieces of programming available

OTT is quite another.

“It’s such a fragmented market that how users

find content is one of the big barriers to growth,”

says Jake Ward, business development director at

streaming solutions specialist Groovy Gecko. “So

operators, whoever they might be, don’t just have

to pay for content rights, they have to work out

how you get people to discover the content.”

That process will surely also have to

incorporate some elements that replicate one of

the key pleasures of TV viewing. “You have to

provide intelligent technology yet somehow also

provide the serendipity that is part of the TV

experience,” says Red Bee’s Plunkett. He

advocates a solution like the company’s

RedDiscover, a discovery platform incorporating

search and recommendations and links into social

media. “So as well as using very good

recommendation algorithms you can have an

EPG that overlays conversations on Twitter,

including about content coming up, or that

was shown yesterday. You can do similar

things with Facebook.”

Being able to offer viewers simple and

straightforward navigation and content discovery

will be a crucial differentiator, agrees Niall Duffy,

managing director at the consultancy

Mediasmiths. “The easier technology is to use the

more people will use it,” he says. “If the platform

experience is good, the content will come. Studios

have been historically slow to see the benefit of

new platforms, but now they see that the widest

possible distribution of content is going to get

them the most money.”

Linear scheduling still rules

But even if an OTT provider comes up with a

good answer to the navigation problem there’s

another fundamental reason why OTT is likely to

remain in the background. “The reality is that on

demand viewing, even in homes that have had it

for a long time, is quite limited,” says David

Cockram, senior consultant, Oliver and Ohlbaum

Associates. “Even in homes that have had it for a

while it only accounts for about 10% of viewing.

In terms of viewing across the UK, there are 80

billion hours of TV and if you take all the various

on demand platforms only one to two per cent is

viewed on demand. Even in homes with a PVR

only around 15% of viewing is time shift TV. Our


UK streaming wars (Source: Oliver and Ohlbaum Associates)


view is that the amount of viewing of on demand

content will reach no more than 10% to 20% in

the medium term. Viewing is driven by linear

broadcasting schedules.”

Even if this changes significantly and if

technical barriers related to broadband speed and

network capacity can be overcome, many believe,

like Yonatan Sela, vice-president, marketing at

Tvinci, which develops OTT services for pay TV

operators, that incumbent operators are well

placed to benefit. “The power of the billing

relationship that operators have, the services they

offer and the content they’re able to get mean

they will still play a main role for the mass

market,” says Sela.

Any new OTT service backed by a CE

manufacturer, a technology giant or anyone else

would also still face the challenge of content

acquisition, says Pascal Portelli, senior vice-

president, solution strategy and portfolio

management for the connected home at

Technicolor. “It’s possible that at some point in

future massive amounts of money could be put on

the table by people with deep pockets to grab

compelling content, but probably the major

content owners would think twice about doing

that, because they have a lot of stock with their

conventional partners,” he says. “Signing an

exclusive deal with Apple or Google would be a

tough call to make for a content owner, to forgo

the big revenues they get with the big cable

channels.”

Joris Evers, director of corporate

communications at Netflix, is keen to push the

message that Netflix is not, in fact, competing

with pay TV, preferring instead to emphasise the

way his company’s proposition is a good fit for

the TV everywhere concept and talking about the

partnerships it has with other companies with

which it is already (or might soon be) competing.

“We’re on Apple TV, the iPad, the iPhone, we’re

on the Microsoft Xbox, we’re partners with Sony

on the PS3, we’re on the Amazon Kindle,” he

says. “Our model is very simple, we want to be on

every device, every screen that’s relevant to our

subscribers and we offer a low price point. The

great differentiator we have is the personalisation

in our solution, based on what Netflix has learned

about what you watch.”

But the differences between the US TV

landscape and markets in Europe and elsewhere

will be a factor that determines Netflix’s success

or failure in future, says Sela at Tvinci. “When

Netflix started most operators didn’t believe how

strong it could become,” he says. “I think after the

success of Netflix in the US pay TV operators

have changed the way they perceive OTT and how

serious a threat it is. I don’t think Netflix can

have the same impact in Europe as in the US,

because operators in Europe are better prepared.”

And even if OTT is already altering the shape

of the broadcast industry, Lantz believes it will be

absorbed by existing players. “In ten years I don’t

think the term OTT will be relevant any more,” he

says. “As soon as there are good enough devices

and legal agreements all service providers will

move to an OTT framework.”

Andy Hooper, director, converged experiences,

EMEA at Motorola Mobility, also believes

existing operators will turn these technologies to

their advantage, creating portal-type interfaces for

consumers through which they will discover

content and access interactive services. “That app

will become hugely powerful: you will have a huge

amount of information being gathered from that

subscriber’s behaviour compared to what happens

with conventional TV,” he says. “The amount of

recommendations you can push through is much

greater. For an operator, if someone else is doing

that, not only are you missing out on the

subscriber information, you are missing out on a

huge advertising opportunity too.”

In the end, it seems, OTT will have a big

influence and might one day become the primary

content delivery mechanism, but there are lots of

reasons for operators of in-network services to be

optimistic about their futures. “The impact OTT

has on pay TV operators is going to be relatively

limited, for the time being,” says Hooper. “It’s still

live TV, across demographics, which drives TV

viewing. The extent to which OTT services can

cannibalise that will depend on the extent to

which they can be seamlessly integrated into

conventional TV viewing. The main screen TV is

going to be there for a while yet.”

OTT content

16 April-March 2012 www.csimagazine.com

And the gloves are off...Netflix has well and truly shaken up the UK market and heated up competition. “The heavy bets they have laid at the table in terms of purchasing content and signing up partners, indicate that they are here for the long haul, and looking to land a knockout blow to both incumbents,” says Jeremy Michaels of Oliver and Ohlbaum Associates.

The company has signed deals with MGM, Lionsgate and Momentum, ensuring first payTV window title availability on a par with Sky Movies and its US studio arrangements – traditionally within six months of the DVD release in the UK.

“Add this to their existing US studio deals, and a host of other partners that include Miramax, All3Media, BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 and Viacom, and from a content perspective they could be considered to have the box seat,” adds Michaels. It has also started commissioning original content.

LoveFilm responded to the launch with its own content deals, with exclusive agreements with the likes of ‘Twilight’ franchise owners eOne, and StudioCanal. Other new streaming deal include Disney UK, under which subscription video-on-demand service, ABC TV On Demand, will offer LoveFilm members access to ABC Studios’ library of network and cable series, including all six seasons of Lost. Programmes such as Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and Ghost Whisperer will be available on-demand later in the year.

The much anticipated YouView service should also finally launch this year, which will further stoke the fires for the digital consumer, although the jury is still out.

Europe OTT 2015

Pay OTT on tablet, PC, TV other (4.6m)

Pay TV through hybrid set tops (7.2m)

Free to air hybrid devices (29.1m)

(Source: Rethink Research)


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www.ibc.orgCSI_Discovermore.indd 1 24/2/12 18:35:06

http://www.ibc.org

The numbers are incredible: 48

hours of video are uploaded

to YouTube every minute,

meaning eight years of

content go onto the site every

day. There are over three

billion views daily on a

seemingly infinite range of material. The site gets

800 million unique users each month. The number

of display advertisers increased tenfold in 2011.

Year on year revenues have doubled every year since

2009. It’s difficult to tell whether this Google

subsidiary is actually profitable, but as Google

owns it and there are tens of billions of dollars in

cash and investments at its disposal, one is tempted

to ask, at this stage, whether there’s much point

asking that question anyway.

But one question that is worth asking is what

the site’s continued growth and development

means for the TV industry? The average amount

of time users spend watching online video and the

average length of content watched are both

increasing. People all over the world are spending

more and more time on YouTube. Might that be

bad news for TV services in general?

In December 2011, YouTube rolled out a

revamped site: a new homepage, new versions of

its customisation and personal ‘channel’-building

capabilities, and enhanced integration with social

networks. This followed the announcement of its

first 96 partner ‘channels’ in October. They

include a Wall Street Journal lifestyle channel,

another dedicated to the gaming website

Machinima, sports and music programming,

channels covering subjects including astronomy,

pets, fashion, motoring and parenthood; and the

satirical brilliance of The Onion. Further

channels announced since (there are now 99)

include a news and education channel from the

Reuters agency.

There are no partner channels, as yet, run by

mainstream broadcasters. But many content

creators and owners have softened their stance

towards the site in recent years: you can now

watch thousands of movies there, many in HD.

While the money that comes from fees for paid-

for content is still a drop in the ocean compared

to the $1 billion or so the company earned

through advertising sales in 2011, revenues from

these sources are growing. The site doesn’t do a

great deal of live broadcasting, but when it does,

as for the British royal wedding in April 2011, the

numbers are again impressive – considering

dozens of TV networks were covering the event

live, it’s notable that 72 million in 188 countries

watched on YouTube. It is also investing, directly

and indirectly in some original content.

But still, the question remains, what is YouTube

really trying to do? Some industry observers

have dismissed the channels initiative as a

marketing ploy to convince investors that the

site has ‘matured’.

“I don’t understand the re-launch,” says Jake

Ward, business development director at streaming

solutions specialist Groovy Gecko. “They’ve got

90 to 100 channels, but I don’t understand where

it fits in. They obviously want to be a content

aggregator, but I can’t imagine pay per view ever

being a massive revenue stream for them.”

Niall Duffy, managing director at the

consultancy Mediasmiths,

thinks it’s wrong to treat

YouTube as TV. “I think

it’s an entertainment form

of Wikipedia. It’s much

more about clips. Where broadcasters have been

smart is in putting clips out to YouTube to drive

their sales.”

Michael Lantz, CEO at connected TV and

IPTV app provider Accedo, also thinks YouTube

should be regarded by broadcasters as a kind of

international sales display facility. “YouTube won’t

be a competitor for them, but a platform where

they can put their channels out to market and

hopefully generate revenues,” he says.

On a payTV front, YouTube launched its movie

rental service in the UK late last summer, adding

1,000 titles from Hollywood and British studios,

following similar launches in the US and Canada

earlier in 2011. YouTube Movie Extras will offer

blockbusters like The Dark Knight, to new

releases and archive titles. Films must be viewed

48 hours after the start, across multiple devices.

RTL’s stance

Oliver Herrgesell is executive VP of corporate

communications, public affairs and marketing at

Luxembourg-based broadcaster RTL Group.

comScore survey figures from October 2011

showed that YouTube accounted for 70% of online

video viewing in Germany. Should RTL be

concerned? “TV should not be anxious,” suggests

Herrgesell. “YouTube delivers user generated

content, but will this replace existing channels?

YouTube: friend or foe to the broadcaster?What does YouTube’s continued growth and development mean for the TV industry, asks David Adams

YouTube


“Channel 4 now uploads material to YouTube at the same time it loads it onto its 4oD catch-up TV website.”


YouTube

Unlikely. TV is the leading medium and will be

for a long time to come.”

He seems reluctant to accept that the

comScore online video findings are particularly

significant for the broadcasting industry.

“Broadcasters target more than just YouTube

users,” he says. “One has to look at the details.”

In any case, he points out, average viewing time

for linear TV also rises consistently year on year.

In 2011 in Germany, average viewing time per

person per day was 225 minutes, up from 223

minutes in 2010. “We won’t become complacent,

but the facts are reassuring,” he says.

“In times of fragmentation people trust strong

[broadcasting] brands. People want to lean back,

put on the remote control and see what their

favourite channels present. This is a fundamental

difference from what YouTube is offering, so far

at least,” he adds.

Herrgesell would not comment on possible

plans to build a relationship with YouTube similar

to that created by the site with Channel 4 (see

below), but it is possible that RTL Group might

use the platform this way, if that is what its

viewers want: “The strategy is very simple: RTL

Group will put its content and brands wherever

the viewers want them. But the TV industry

should not feel threatened: the future of TV will

be TV.”

A niche model for millions

For a company that does so much to let people

express themselves, YouTube has an interesting

attitude towards speaking to the press about

strategy. I can ask a spokesperson questions but

am not allowed to quote her answers directly and

am encouraged instead to quote from the rather

bland official YouTube blog.

However, I can tell you that the company

believes its success is due in large part to two

trends: the push towards niche content; and the

growth in numbers of connected devices. These

factors make it possible for the site to offer

visitors access to niche contemporary and long

tail content that would be unlikely to find a home

on conventional broadcast platforms, but can

reach millions worldwide through YouTube in an

ad-supported model. This content complements,

rather than competes with, existing TV services.

Furthermore, although most broadcasters may

not yet be setting up YouTube channels, some

have developed content sharing partnerships with

the site. For example, in the UK, following a deal

struck in January 2010, Channel 4 now uploads

material to YouTube at the same time it loads it

onto its 4oD catch-up TV website.

“This strategic partnership marked the first

time that a broadcaster anywhere in the world

made a comprehensive catch-up schedule available

on YouTube, providing Channel 4 with additional

advertising inventory and reach,” says Channel 4

spokesperson Jenny Cummins. “Channel 4 has

branded presence on YouTube and can sell

advertising around its content on the site.

“The deal offers value for Channel 4 and its

independent production partners, generating

additional revenue to invest in creating high

quality, original content. The deal complements

our own 4oD offering – where catch-up on recent

content is most popular – archive is more popular

on YouTube. Increasing the availability of 4oD on

multiple platforms remains a key tenet of Channel

4’s strategy, ensuring our content is in the places

that users want to watch it.”

Other broadcasters have found other ways to

make the site work for them. ITV is one of many

that upload clips or trailers from/for popular

shows. “When they had Susan Boyle on Britain’s

Got Talent and then there were millions of hits on

YouTube, ITV lost out on a pretty sizeable chunk

of video advertising,” says Groovy Gecko’s Ward.

“They realised the best way to do this was to

upload content then clamp down on other people

uploading ITV content for fair use. They’ve

integrated what they do well with a social media

campaign: YouTube is absolutely ideal for that.”

Might any of this change in future? “I would

imagine they would like to try some premium

subscription models,” notes Accedo’s Lantz. “So

you could choose from a number of different tiers,

maybe with a premium tier for some sport. Then

the long tail content free of charge.”

YouTube tells CSI there are no plans for any

radical changes of direction any time soon and

that the site will remain, above all, guided by its

users. They are, after all, largely beyond the

company’s control.

Perhaps one day something will come along

that supersedes it, but until then broadcasters and

content creators are probably best off trying to

find a way to make the power and reach of

YouTube work for them.



Sixteen days. That’s how

long it took the shoot

‘em up Call of Duty:

Modern Warfare 3 to

rack up sales of $1 billion

last November. That’s one

day faster than Avatar,

the highest grossing movie ever made. If you ever

doubted the influence of video gaming on the

masses, here was the proof that even Hollywood

couldn’t ignore.

As movie execs continue to ponder the best

way to move forward in the digital age, the video

games industry is striding ahead; the sector was

worth $65 billion in June 2011 and continues to

open up new markets across different age groups,

countries and genders.

The good news for payTV operators is that now

is the ideal time to tap into this rapidly evolving

sector, thanks to pioneering new technologies

and payment models. Dual-core processors

embedded into the latest generation of set-top

boxes (STBs) will enable more advanced gaming

performance akin to that seen on the iPad, while

cloud gaming services such as OnLive and Gaikai

are able to deliver console-quality games via

existing STB hardware. And where the typical

£40 (EUR50) price tag for a console game

might put off potential gamers, a new trend

for low cost casual games on TV – already made

popular on Apple and Android smartphones –

will attract new users and open up new

revenue streams.

Is TV gaming serious business?

Gaming has long been touted as a means of

encouraging user ‘stickiness’ and now the

industry’s big hitters are getting behind it and

announcing plans for dedicated gaming services.

France’s Bouygues Telecom will launch its Bbox

cloud gaming service, powered by Playcast, in the

spring; TV manufacturer LG has teamed up with

Gaikai to integrate PC gaming into its smart TVs;

cable operator Numericable has launched several

interactive game channels in partnership with

games publisher Visiware, and in the UK, BT has

won exclusive rights to bundle OnLive with its

broadband service, simultaneously taking a 2.6%

shareholding in the company. With Google TV

and Apple TV also planning dedicated gaming

services the industry is on the threshold of a new

era that could pose a challenge even to console

veterans Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony.

“We believe games will be one of the key

feature differentiators in 2013 and that over the

next three to four years games will become as

simple to access and enjoy on TV as films and

music,” says Jasper Smith,

chief executive at gaming

provider PlayJam, which is

currently working with CE

makers to port its games

distribution platform into

high-end STBs. “There is a

very high propensity for users

to play games on TV, for

example recent statistics from market research

firm Park Associates suggest that 65% of

connected TV users connect their devices to play

games,” he notes.

Despite the hype, you might wonder what all

the fuss it about, after all, pay-for-play TV games

have been around for years without making a huge

impact. However, technological innovations have

opened up opportunities to vastly improve the

user experience.

As previous head of gaming at NTL during

the late 1990s and current chief technologist at

hybrid/OTT TV innovator Amino, Kevin Lingley

has witnessed the transformation first hand:

“Games like Tetris, quizzes and crosswords were

very popular in their day, but now Apple has

cracked an entirely new market for bite sized

games costing around 69 pence to two pounds,

which is attracting multi-million dollar publishers

such as Electronic Arts. There’s a real

opportunity for low-cost gaming on TV and web

technologies such as 3D software webGL,

HTML5 and Flash make it possible to port

versions of popular mobile games like Angry

Birds or Cut The Rope to TV,” he says.

As CSI highlighted in our January-February

issue, 2012 will see deployment of the first

wave of Android OS-based STBs able to access

the thousands of games and apps in Android

Market. These quick to download games offer

new opportunities for targeted advertising,

in-game sponsorships and subscription services

designed to convert game usage into revenue

streams. iPhone and Android platforms also

currently offer ‘freemium’ games, through which

consumers avoid the upfront cost of a game,

but accept advertising as part of the experience.

Get ready for the gaming revolutionThe world is perched on the brink of a gaming revolution which will see high spec console games and smartphone-inspired apps delivered direct to users’ TV screens. But how can payTV carve out a niche in this highly competitive sector? Stephen Cousins reports

TV gaming

“Recent statistics from market research firm Park Associates suggest that 65% of connected TV users connect their devices to play games.”



Users then also pay for incremental in game

‘power-ups’ to attain new weapons, status, or

access higher levels.

Gaming via STBs and the cloud

The biggest industry buzz surrounds the concept

of cloud gaming, a third party service provided by

the likes of OnLive or Gaikai, which allows users

to stream HD console-quality videogames over the

web without the need for specialised hardware or

having to wait for games to download. The

technology is being tested by various operators

including BT, AT&T, SFR and others.

Accessible by PC, smart TV or handheld

devices, cloud gaming has particular relevance

for pay-TV operators that want to provide quality

games via existing legacy STBs which have lower

CPU and RAM. It works by rendering the game

at the server end then transmitting it to the STB

as a compressed video stream. Users’ in-game

movements are then relayed back as keystrokes

and new video are transmitted to reflect this.

“What’s held TV gaming back in the past has

been the need to write apps for different makes

and models of cable STBs,” says Dave

McElhatten, SVP for studio and services at

ActiveVideo, whose TAG gaming channel is

deployed on eight million screens from the cloud,

including those of Cablevision. “Streaming games

from the cloud benefits operators because games

can be written once and delivered to every STB,

which eliminates the need for lengthy writing and

test cycles and speeds time to market,” he says.

However, critics have warned that the service

can suck bandwidth and suffers from lag issues.

Gaikai founder and CEO David Perry also

recently admitted that current TVs are not

suitable for its platform because of in-built input

latency – and if getting access to games means

buying a new TV, many users will be put off.

As such, investment in next generation STB

hardware could make more sense for service

providers. The increasing processing power and

graphical capabilities of STBs makes it possible to

execute high-end games from the box itself, rather

than streaming them over the cloud.

“This is better for operators because it reduces

server CapEx and bandwidth use,” argues Yann

Courqueux, VP of marketing and business

development at IPTV technology provider

NetGem. “Economically speaking, as future STBs

gain the power and graphical capabilities, payTV

operators’ incremental costs to offer games

subscription services will become negligible.

Operators already have the IP infrastructure to

offer networked gaming so all-in-all gaming will

translate to higher revenues and lower churn rates

with no additional operational or upgrade costs,”

he says.

PlayJam is currently in the process of porting

its smart TV gaming platform to the next-gen STB

market and is working with chipset manufacturers

such as Broadcom, ST, Marvell and UK and US

operators to make it happen.

From casual games to a more immersive

experience

TV gaming has long been hindered by the

limitations of legacy remote controls, but

developments in gesture and voice-responsive

controllers will vastly improve the user

experience (UX).

Several announcements at CES in January

show the direction industry is taking: Samsung

has revealed that all of its smart TVs will support

control by voice and hand gestures, tracked by a

built-in camera. The firm PrimeSense, whose

motion recognition technology is already installed

inside the Xbox, demoed its reach UX system,

which enables users to gesture-navigate screen

content to create a much more “immersive” user

TV gaming


More advanced 3D games from Gakai

A smart TV games portal


interface. The company is currently working with

a dedicated development community to create

motion-based games for the system.

Meanwhile, next-generation STBs, which

are effectively PCs inside, will have the ability

to support a variety of game pads, and motion

controllers similar to those used on Nintendo’s

Wii such as Philips’ uWand and LG’s

Magic remote.

The key to games’ success on TV – whether

smart or pay-TV - is how effectively the service is

aligned with how users discover TV content.

Cable and satellite operators have an obvious

advantage because their content is accessed via a

dedicated EPG, so inserting a channel for on

demand games makes access easy and allows

operators to preserve their ‘walled garden’.

“On smart TV users are free to roam between

menus and different OTT content, which is a real

hindrance to discoverability,” says Piers Harding-

Rolls, senior analyst and head of games at media

research firm IHS Screen Digest. “Conversion

rates will be much lower in the smart TV

environment because people are also reluctant to

keep giving their credit card details to different

providers. Pay-TV’s aggregated billing structure,

whereby games usage is simply added to an

existing bill, is a real advantage,” he says.

The one-stop-shop approach has proved

successful for operators that deployed TAG

Networks’s games-on-demand channel, which

offers a range of casual and multi-player games.

Each month, TAG is currently serving up over 15

million gaming sessions of more than 20 minutes

each, which equates to five million hours per

month to eight million screens. In the households

that have registered player names, 42% play daily

and 72% play weekly, a surprising 49% of users

are female and 33% are in the valuable 18-34 year-

old demographic. (PlayCast incidentally cites

similar usage stats with its operator deployments

in Europe and Asia and claims games can boost

ARPU more than just superficially.)

“Subscribers like the fact that it’s an actual

channel in the cable operators’ TV lineup,” says

ActiveVideo’s McElhatten. “Their eyes are on the

operator’s brand, their hands are on the

operator’s remote and their focus is on the

operator’s ‘walled garden’. They are not straying

to OTT programming on their games consoles or

their smartphones... In the near future we will be

working with service providers to deliver

advertising that leverages the relationship with

these consumers, that’s where the next big

opportunity is,” he says.

Learning the lessons

Although pay-TV appears well suited to running a

games services, operators must get to grips with

its specific demands. Technological requirements

aside, the way people play games tends to be

fickle, so operators must ensure content is

regularly refreshed and invested in to keep users

interested. Games content must also be licensed

and revenue sharing arrangements could become

complex with numerous parties involved.

Lessons could be learnt from the more

experienced console makers, which work closely

with games developers and publishers to provide

and promote games for their platforms. Get it

right and the returns could be great and with

improved network speeds, faster processors and

more memory, TV could one day become the

games console of the future.

“In the near future we will be working with service providers to deliver advertising that leverages the relationship with these consumers, that’s where the next big opportunity is.”

TV gaming


Some operators are looking to technology that lets users control the TV through motion


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TV Everywhere needs global

standards like never before

in the broadcast industry,

given that by definition it is

supposed to connect content

providers and operators

with customers anywhere

on any device.

In the past when services tended to be

geographically confined within walled gardens,

there was scope for proprietary systems, and for

regional standards governing encoding and

terrestrial transmission. In the emerging world of

OTT and mobile TV, operators must be able to

reach end-devices over which they have no

control, over networks they may not manage, and

have to cater for a variety of display and

streaming environments, spanning multiple

regions. In this world, broadcasters, operators and

content owners alike are craving for common

standards to reduce complexity and costs, while

enabling them to reach as many devices as

possible with acceptable Quality of Service (QoS),

and support for the new features possible in OTT,

such as interactivity and addressable advertising.

Until recently, however, the standards roulette

wheel has continued to spin and it has been

unclear where the needle will stop. At one time it

looked for all the world that Flash would emerge

as the standard multimedia application platform

for playing video on client devices, but that was

before the advent of tablets and reckoned without

the late Steve Jobs’ determination that Apple

would not support it. This left Flash effectively

marooned in the PC environment, with Apple and

Microsoft for once in harmony promoting

HTML5 as the standard for running video on all

internet connected devices in principle.

At the same time HbbTV, the hybrid initiative

which also incorporates HTML5, is fast becoming

the standard for hybrid broadcast combining

linear services with online and mobile TV, in

Europe at least. Finally we now have MPEG-

DASH emerging as a likely candidate to unify

streaming as it has just been finally ratified. There

are many gaps still to be filled bringing these

standards together and embracing large smart TV

screens fully within this emerging standardised

environment, while also integrating security and

DRMs.

But while the final verdict on MPEG-DASH,

and for HbbTV as a global standard has yet to be

delivered, it is now seen as certain as it can be

that HTML5 will be the universal platform for TV

Everywhere. This is after even Adobe has

abandoned support for its

Flash platform and rallied

behind HTML5 for smart

TVs, as well as Android

tablets and smart phones.

Flash is dead. Long live Flash

Apple’s refusal to support it was a major factor in

the demise of Flash, exacerbated by the impact of

its iPad and iPhone in OTT, but there are also

technical reasons why it has lost the fight to be a

multiple device platform for video.

“Flash applications running in a browser or the

Flash environment are slower than native

applications, and even if you are prepared to put

up with that, there is the issue of the cost of

supporting an application environment on many

different devices,” says Andrew Glasspool,

managing partner at Farncombe Consulting. “To

support a variant for PCs is one thing, and maybe

only one variant for Android, but the integration

with every TV set and set top box is incremental

work, and for currently a small market. The

advantages of HTML5 are that it is open, unlike

Flash, so supporting multiple devices with it is

easier, and, again unlike Flash, it was created with

mobile and portable devices in mind.”

It is just worth noting that Flash is not dead

and buried yet, and will continue to play a role for

applications that require heavy duty graphics or

high levels of interactivity. “In the shorter term it

is still a good choice for heavy-interface

requirements such as vector-based animations,

advanced video and audio features, and immersive

environments,” agrees Kirk Edwardson, director

of marketing at IPTV vendor Espial.

But for mainstream OTT, HTML5 is carrying

the tide, and is really what the industry needed,

according to Eric Elia, VP for TV solutions at

online video platform vendor Brightcove.

“HTML5 allows video to be expressed in

hypertext mark-up language via the video tag

syntax,” says Elia. “By making the video tag

Does the standards roulette wheel stop at HTML5?The over-the-top industry is rallying behind HTML5 as Flash fades away, says Philip Hunter

HTML5

“The verdict on MPEG DASH and HbbTV globally is yet to be delivered but it is now seen as certain as it can be that HTML5 will be the universal platform for TV Everywhere.”



HTML5

standard across all major browsers, publishers

are able to simplify and standardise playback for

any device via the browser, including smart TVs,

which promises improved and interoperable Web

experiences. Having open-standards-based video

playback eliminates the need for downloads and

updates of proprietary plug-ins, and removes

the need for plug-in on start-up, bringing faster

video experiences.”

HTML5: A work in progress

This avoidance of need for extra software was

cited as a key factor in HTML5’s takeover from

Flash as the client platform of choice for online

TV by Frode Hernes, VP for TV products and

connected devices at Norwegian web browser

developer Opera Software, which invented

HTML5. “It makes it possible to integrate it with

hardware support by the browser manufacturer or

platform manufacturer, without the need for

special middleware,” says Hernes. “Now that the

base standard is there, we will see extensions and

development that will help in the use cases we see

in this industry, including support for subtitles,

synchronisation with other media, adaptive bit

rate streaming, and content protection.”

By implication these extensions are not yet

available, and one disadvantage of this switch in

focus to HTML5 while it is still maturing is that

many of the functions needed to support online

video are still missing, notes Elia. “By and large,

HTML5 is still in its infancy. The challenge today

is that HTML5 video is really only focused on the

core function of playback, which is undoubtedly

the foundation of great video experiences, but

publishers want more holistic video experiences,

such as branded players, playlists, advertising,

analytics, calls to action, and content protection.

Right now, more complex features such as these

have to be rebuilt from the ground-up to work in

the HTML5 environment.”

Elia also pointed out that while HTML5 is

supposed to facilitate playback in a standard way,

this has not yet been achieved fully in practice,

with differences in behaviour between devices.

“Consumers are accessing HTML5 video through

nearly 20 different versions of iOS and Android

operating systems, which affects the reliability of

video playback, and creates differences in

advertising and analytics behaviour.”

Another omission until recently at least was the

lack of support for video playback on large

screens, which would be a serious handicap if we

are to believe that 2012 will be the year internet

connected TVs really do coalesce at last around

common standards, and start to take off as a

result. However this is now being addressed,

according to Espial’s Edwardson. “Specifications

are being developed by a number of industry

players for a “Full Screen API” that allows a “full

screen” HTML element.”

This highlights another issue, which is that

browsers are tending to implement various



features of HTML5, including full screen support,

in different ways, and this also applies to core

functions such as encoding and adaptive bitrate

streaming (ARS). “Some HTML5 browsers are

supporting the MP4 Video format, while others

support the WebM format,” notes Edwardson, the

former being a digital video storage format that is

part of MPEG-4, and the latter a royalty free

audio/video compression format designed

specifically for HTML5 video.

“Additionally HTML5 Adaptive Streaming isn’t

supported on all HTML5 browsers either,”

Edwardson adds. “So as you can see, not only do

current browsers have to support multiple

formats, or agree on one, but older browsers

would also have to be upgraded.”

Is DASH the final piece in the OTT puzzle?

Adaptive streaming, alongside standardized DRM

support, are two of the biggest remaining issues to

be resolved for HTML5, although the answer may

well come with just two words, MPEG-DASH.

This is emerging quickly from MPEG, and is

becoming an ISO (International Standards

Organisation) standard for adaptive streaming

over HTTP, the underlying application level

transport protocol used by the internet. It is being

touted as a replacement for, and point of

convergence between, existing streaming

protocols, including Microsoft Smooth Streaming,

and Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), elements

of both of which are incorporated in DASH.

Like all other HTTP adaptive streaming

protocols, DASH breaks streams into small

chunks of two types, one comprising the audio/

video payload itself, and the other manifest files

containing names and URL addresses of the

streams. They all are based on the traditional

HTTP progressive download, where the client

cache has to fill up before playback can begin, but

because the files are now very small, it behaves

like a live streaming service.

The difference between streaming protocols lies

in the method of delivering the chunks, with

Adobe for example using Real Time Messaging

Protocol (RTMP), which needs a near-continuous

connection between a streaming server and the

player. DASH has a new protocol derived from

both the 3GPP Adaptive HTTP streaming (AHS),

and on HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) defined

in Open IPTV Forum Release 2.

Another key point about DASH is that it is

attempting to do for live streaming what The

Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem

(DECE) consortium is doing for the download to

own video model, through its Ultraviolet (UV)

platform. Both have taken the Common File

Format and Common Encryption (CENC) for

transmission of secure content, and both also in

principle enable any DRM to be used with them.

In practice UV is running with five DRMs, but

in principle can support others, while at present

DASH is DRM agnostic. The idea is that the

encryption itself is standardised, but the

individual DRMs retain control over key

distribution and management, which can be tuned

to suit the deployment.

When it comes to DASH, the exact outcome

over streaming remains to be settled, but a fast

growing number of vendors in the HTML5 sphere

believe it is a vital piece of the OTT puzzle,

including video encoding specialist Envivio. “The

three major formats aren’t incompatible and have

roughly 80% similarity in their architecture,” says

Matt Smith, Envivio’s VP of internet Television.

“MPEG-DASH seeks to align this commonality

and define specifications so that providers can

‘mix and match’ among media elements encoded

in one format or another. DASH and HTML5 can

work together to ‘lower the bar’, so that media

experiences can flow more universally across

browsers, devices and platforms.”

It is up to HTML5 though to help enable the

rich features service providers will want to

differentiate their offerings, and on this front it is

already beginning to deliver, according to Milya

Timergaleyeva, VP for market strategy at London

based browser and IPTV software vendor Oregan

Networks. “One of the key end user benefits is the

enhanced speed of rendering through the

implementation of background scripting,” she

says. “The API (Application Programming

Interface) makes it possible to run multiple

threads of scripting simultaneously to the main

page script.

Timergaleyeva also cites HTML5’s support for

building search applications as an important

factor, and attributed the fast growing range of

HTML5 APIs in general to its being an open

source platform tapping into a wide body of

developers. “The HTML route is successful for

the same reasons that Linux (open source

computer operating system) has been steadily

gaining mindshare,” argues Timergaleyeva. “The

open source roots make it a continuously evolving

standard through an effort of an immense

community of enthusiasts. There is simply a lot of

good will behind HTML5.”

This, rather than any immediate technical

advantages, looks like being the reason HTML5 is

going to win and is already being adopted en

masse for online video deployments.

“Now that the base standard is there, we will see extensions and development that will help in the use cases we see in this industry.”

HTML5



Over the past couple of

years, several new

technology acronyms

have hit the TV

market but none has

been as widely hailed

as HTML5. Outside

of core engineering teams, what few people

realise is that HTML5 isn’t a product or even a

browser specification; it’s an umbrella specification

containing many individual technologies, only one

of which is pure HTML and a large number of

which are still under development.

When most people think about HTML5, they

focus on a small number of the technologies that

the umbrella encompasses, most notably the

video tag, canvas and SVG. Individually, many of

these technologies have significant benefits for

TV, but treating them collectively as some form of

global panacea risks masking their true benefit

and re-creating the disappointment that HTML4

turned out to be.

Potential areas of mismatch

Probably the most talked about HTML5

technology is the video tag and few would argue

that its introduction is anything but a significant

step forwards from the HTML4 approach of

programmatically scaling and positioning video.

However, there are a few areas that equipment

providers and content developers are

advised to consider.

Firstly, only the basic video tag

functionality has actually been

standardised, most of the

extensions are still under

discussion. Trick modes in

particular have yet to be agreed which could be a

considerable problem for the CE industry where

products are not always supported once deployed.

Another area for

potential mismatch in

expectations is that, unlike

Adobe Flash which had its

own video format and

content security, the video

tag simply passes the media

stream down to the

underlying platform to play. Unless the platform

has the relevant codec, it will be unable to play

the media even though it can proudly claim

HTML5 video tag compliance.

Whilst this isn’t much of an issue on the

desktop, where software codecs can be

downloaded, in the embedded device, codecs are

normally chosen at the point of manufacture and

most carry a licensing cost meaning that the

range on any given device is normally quite small.

The problem becomes even greater if any form of

access control or rights management is required

since these too are unlikely to be able to be added

to an embedded device as an afterthought.

Canvas too is rather misunderstood. Its

programmatic layout approach is highly analogous

to the way that Adobe Flash performs its

rendering. This makes it ideal for games and other

applications where consecutive frames have little

in common, but for user interface rendering it

suffers from the same poor performance and

memory problems that have dogged Flash for

nearly a decade and may well have contributed to

Adobe’s decision to re-think their embedded

device Flash strategy.

SVG delivers on HTML5’s promise

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) by contrast is

one element of the HTML5 technology suite

that’s already delivering on the HTML5 promise

of greater performance and easier content

authoring. Leading middleware companies such

as Open TV, Ericsson,

Motorola, and BeeSmart

have all embraced the use

of SVG to deliver richer

customer experiences with

smoother animations.

The reason behind the increase in performance

when using SVG comes from the way in which it’s

architected. SVG is fundamentally designed for

graphical layout whereas HTML is fundamentally

designed for text layout. This radically different

starting point drives a significant difference in

nature of processor usage, the very foundation of

user interface (UI) performance. Processors

rendering HTML spend the majority of their time

on layout and only a small fraction on rendering.

With SVG it’s the opposite meaning that most

time is spent rendering, where modern processor

hardware acceleration capabilities can be

leveraged to the fullest extent. This typically

produces between a four and tenfold increase in

UI frame rate resulting in a smoother, more

visually compelling UI.

Middleware providers also benefit from the fact

that SVG is fundamentally time based, rather

than frame based (as with Flash and canvas).

Animations are defined in terms of start/end

conditions and the duration meaning that the

same UI can be delivered across a wide range of

set-top boxes, including legacy devices, with the

higher speed products benefiting from even

smoother transitions.

As an umbrella specification, it’s clear that

HTML5 has a great deal to offer the TV market,

and those who are selectively picking the best bits

are already seeing great results. It remains

important however, that delivery strategy is not

driven by those who see HTML5 as a single

product or solution since, fundamentally, HTML

itself is just as slow as it always has been.

An umbrella specification

Opinion


Ekioh’s Stephen Reeder wonders if HTML5 is what the TV industry has been searching for all along, arguing that it is dangerous to treat its constituent parts collectively


Companion devices and the

related field of social TV are

the two hottest topics in

broadcast. This was reflected

in the fact that a West-

minster run conference on

the subject, ‘TV bites back –

dual screen viewing, social media and the power

of the schedule’, had twice as many attendees

from the UK’s television sector as usual.

The context was set against a general belief that

‘Live’ will have enduring value in TV – in the

form of news, sports and certain other X-factor

style entertainment programmes. The expected/

feared drop in viewing hasn’t happened and we

are consuming more TV (on-demand and linear)

than ever, around 28 hours a week in the UK,

partly as a result of PVR growth. Also important

to note is that large levels of VoD and catch-up

are driven by the main schedule.

Another key point is that social media has

enhanced TV (or should in theory anyway), not

competed with it. Some interesting stats came out

to support this. On Twitter, for example, 40% of

tweets are centred on and around TV programmes.

Incidentally, ITV’s Take Me: Out The Gossip was

the most tweeted about show the week before the

conference, with 3,000 tweets a minute running

alongside the programme.

Freeview’s Ilse Howling observed that tweeting

is the new watercooler moment, only immediate.

Significantly, for now the majority of second

screen activity is not linked to main TV viewing,

which is what the broadcasters want to tap into.

Figures from Thinkbox showed emailing, general

browsing and social networking to be the main

tasks performed while watching TV. Only a small

proportion – some 4% of smartphone users –

were actively using the internet to engage with the

programme (find information about actors etc),

brand or advert in some way. The rationale,

therefore, is for linear audiences to follow

broadcasters onto new connected devices.

All the major broadcasters have programmes

with sizeable followings on Facebook, such as X

Factor and Eastenders with millions of fans, and

they are building larger programme brands by

extending their shows into the social arena. ITV,

moreover, has seen 150,000 downloads of its

Dancing on Ice sponsored experience app. This is

also the main challenge, getting consumers to use

dedicated TV show-related apps rather than

simply third party services on Facebook. Channel

4 is also looking at so-called automatic device

synchronisation, which involves an audio signal

(sometimes watermarked) embedded within the

TV broadcast that the companion device can

recognise to display information in real-time.

Always focus on the first screen first

Having laid the groundwork for the importance of

social TV and companion devices, a clear message

was that media companies should not get carried

away by the still nascent dual screen opportunity.

Firstly, the majority of viewing

still takes place without a

second screen. Moreover, a

relatively small percentage

(6.5%) of the UK population

used Twitter in December. For

this reason – and many others

besides - the main TV set screen should still be

where the efforts should be focused on. “It’s scary

when people put more effort into second screen

than the first,” said Tess Alps of Thinkbox.

Channel 4, ITV and the BBC all backed this

argument. “The BBC approach is a TV-first

strategy; people want a lean back experience,”

said strategy director John Tate.

That is not to say new opportunities should not

be explored, and this is partly formed by a fear of

what happened to the music industry. Tom

McDonnell of Monterosa noted there was a whole

generation of content that can be created in the

next five years that can make much better use of

connected audiences: “You as the programme

creator, have to do quite a lot of work and quite a

lot of persuasion to get somebody to get involved.”

Zeebox isn’t a content owner but is one of the

most high profile start-ups in this space, at least

in Europe, helped by Sky’s recent 10% investment

in the company. While its app is rumoured to

have delivered around 200,000 downloads in

December, MediaCom estimates that only 1,600

tweets were actually made through the app –

again, it’s early days.

Alive and kickingA UK government organised event on the dual screen found the TV industry in buoyant mood on the opportunity of companion devices, although it was warned the potential should not be overestimated, writes Goran Nastic

Conference review


Data is the new oilMark Cullen, chief executive, ETV Media Group: “Channel 4 has described data as the new oil, and we are in the very beginnings of baby steps about how we turn that into real revenues. We think that whoever grasps this opportunity, and scarily we think it won’t be from the television industry because we think the TV industry will be too conservative to make these steps, will be in a good place. Hence you look out at Google or someone else, but whoever it is has a real chance to re-establish new value in the food chain. I would like it to be broadcasters because I think they’ve got a real place to play in this, but they could see themselves being nudged over by someone else who comes and eats their lunch.”


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To date, digital TV switchover

is a great British success

story. Co-ordinated by the

team at Digital UK and

supported by organisations

such as the DTG, BIS,

DCMS, Ofcom and industry,

the UK digital switchover campaign has succeeded

in raising consumer awareness, ensuring the

right equipment is in homes and ensuring the

live regional switchovers go smoothly through

scenario testing.

As of 22 February, approximately 18 million

homes (68% of the UK) had completed the

switch to digital television. However, the biggest

switchover to date is just around the corner –

in April, London will begin the switch to digital

just in time for this summer’s Olympic Games.

The London Olympics will be the first ‘digital’

Olympics in the event’s history and will further

reinforce the UK’s position as a world leader in

the development of digital television.

With the final digital switchover to complete

in just eight months, the industry’s focus has

shifted to the emergence of hybrid TV devices

and services and the future uses of spectrum left

over from the digital switchover such as Long

Term Evolution (LTE) and White Space devices.

LTE will provide the next generation of mobile

broadband services, this is increasingly significant

with the rise of tablets and smart phones and the

ever increasing demand for bandwidth. White

Space devices try to intelligently choose

frequencies available in the area to maximise

efficient use of the spectrum. Such devices are

likely to include ‘Smart’ devices such as in-home

appliances and energy monitors.

In response to the drive towards next

generation products and services, the DTG is to

publish its enhancements to the technical

specification for Freeview and Freeview HD

(D-Book 7) on 31 March. New features in the

2012 D-Book include an enhanced EPG with the

ability to go both backwards and forwards and

remote booking which enables viewers to book

recordings or set reminders from a website or

application. The new version also includes

enhancements to the current Broadcast Record

Lists feature and clearer reference of the ETSI

MHEG specification.

These enhancements build on the current

edition of the D-Book (D-Book 7) published in

2011, which marked a turning point in UK digital

terrestrial television with the introduction of an

industry-agreed, technical specification for

Connected TV products and services.

The DTG is committed to the international

harmonisation of digital television standards.

The D-Book’s adoption of the European ETSI

standard for MHEG interactive applications

underlines how the Group works with

international standards bodies to drive innovation

while maximising international standardisation.

The second version, published in 2011, brings it

in line with DBook 6.2 and introduces a number

of technical solutions from other platforms that

have adopted MHEG. This makes ES 202 184

the central resource for MHEG implementations

around the world.

The new version of the D-Book, references

ETSI directly and contains only clarifications

and profiles that are specific to the UK’s

requirements. In the future the DTG will publish

all enhancements to the UK MHEG profile

through ETSI to ensure that all international

platforms derived from ETSI can benefit from

the DTG’s technical leadership.

Looking to the

second screen

The DTG recognises the

importance of emerging

technologies such as ‘second

screen’ and interoperable home networking.

Development work in these areas will begin in

the Spring. The DTG will also focus on future

uses of spectrum such as the coexistence and

interoperability of LTE and White Space Devices.

The “3D D-Book” is already in draft form and the

DTG will aim to publish this by the autumn.

2013 will see the reorganisation to complete

the clearance of the 800 MHz band for LTE.

Current World Radiocommunication

Conference (WRC) discussions are proposing

harmonisation in the 700MHz band for

mobile broadband use which would mean

a significant re-plan and re-think on the

600MHz auction plans.

The Digital TV Group has balanced UK

business requirements and high consumer

expectations with the increasing demands of

globalisation and business complexity to delivery

consistently world leading digital television

standards for Freeview and Connected TV.

The role of the DTG in the post-switchover

environment is to ensure coexistence of new

technologies and compliance with the D-Book

and DTG test regimes in order to replicate the

success of the current DTT market.

The big switchLondon begins the switch to digital TV in April in time for this summer’s Olympic Games leaving future uses of spec-trum for LTE and White Space devices

Guest column

Simon Gauntlett is technology director at the DTG, the industry association for DTV in the UK. This is the latest in a line of regular guest columns to

provide CSI readers with updates on the DTG’s initiatives and activities.



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With budgets

squeezed

and the

demand for

pictures

unrelenting,

the

technology for gathering news is evolving at pace.

The emergence of solutions which take advantage

of mobile and internet networks offer a potential

threat to satellite incumbents but the satellite news

gathering (SNG) sector has responded with new

technology which is likely to see newscasters and

managed service providers offer a range of

complementary pipes to deliver the news.

“In the more developed and metropolitan areas

some of the traditional SNG deployments may be

replaced by mobile technology,” believes Tomas

Petru, CEO of SI and multi-screen platform

provider, Visual Unity. “However, while SNG

output may remain the same, the sheer number of

channels (digital, online) demands to be

addressed by new solutions for mobile content

acquisition using IP or mobile networks.”

According to Simon Farnsworth at Globecast

UK, the traditional SNG vehicle with 1.5 to two

metre antenna and a dedicated SNG engineer, is

aimed more at the sports market (particularly

payTV operators) where picture quality is key.

“The criteria for news are speed of deployment

and cost,” notes Farnsworth. “Often lower quality

pictures are justified as an editorial look.”

“The public’s appetite for a breaking news story

is such that they will accept sub-standard

pictures,” agrees Mark Shadbolt, sales director at

SIS Live. “It’s not unusual to see mobile phone

footage on mainstream programmes. Often, any

picture is better than none but news providers still

want HD for the archive even if they don’t

transmit it.”

Visual Unity’s Petru agrees: “For broadcast

quality, live transmission quality of service is

needed. QoS is available on satellite, and it may

be available on different mobile networks if

agreed with the specific operator, but the trick is

in the ‘agreed’, which is almost impossible to do.”

Purveyors of mobile technologies would

contend that the growing connectivity of

terrestrial cellular networks (3G, 4G LTE, 4G

WiMAX, and Wi-Fi ) provide an increasingly

resilient alternative to streaming even HD video

over satellite and fibre.

Rise of the new breed

Among the pioneers is Israel headquartered

LiveU, which counts CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox News

and Germany’s ZDF among customers of its

LU60 mobile uplink kit which fits into a backpack

weighing 5kg (see picture).

LiveU’s technology bonds multiple 3G, 4G

LTE, 4G WiMAX, and Wi-Fi modems to

aggregate bandwidth over multiple carriers

via an in-built RF antenna. It provides enough

throughput to transmit 1080i HD signals using

H.264 encoding. Average conditions are in the

1-2Mbps range, but the technology is claimed to

transmit effectively even at 500kbps, depending

on the selected resolution and settings.

“Our technology can transmit effectively from

many dead spots and areas where a specific

carrier may not have adequate coverage

including in tunnels, crowded public spaces

and underground metro stations,” says

Ronen Artman, LiveU’s VP of marketing.

During the Japan tsunami, Fox news used

LiveU’s cellular roaming

solution to deliver live

broadcast from the disaster

area. It was also used to cover

hurricane Irene.

“Newcasters on the US east coast (hit by Irene)

weren’t able to use to use satellite because of the

wind and line of sight issues. The only technology

that could assist live, quality shots was ours,”

claims Artman.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that this is

always the case. SIS Live’s Shadbolt says that in a

warzone or tornado aftermath the chances of the

terrestrial network being down are high. “Where

newscasters are operating outside their home

territory, in Syria for example, they are more

likely to take a BGAN than a bonded 3G/4G

system since they are not sure what the terrestrial

infrastructure is going to be like,” he says.

Artman responds that feedback from its clients

has been that the first infrastructure to be

re-instated is cellular due to ease of deployment.

“Setting up a satellite van in these areas or in

bad weather is not always a simple matter and

in any case LiveU is easily connected to dual

BGAN terminals as was the case in Haiti during

the earthquake.”

There are increasing uses of images gathered

from smartphones or iPads, mainly but not

exclusively as user generated content (UGC).

MTV Finland, for example, enables instant news

gathering: “This is a hugely important business

development for us,” explains Jukka Vehkaoja at

MTV Finland which has invested in Aspera’s

Mobile Client Application to speed video to its

bureau from Android and iOS apps. “The fact

that reporters couldn’t upload content from

certain mobile phones was a significant hole in

the system, especially with the increasing

importance of citizen journalism.”

Shadbolt is certainly not dismissive of the

abilities of cellular but is adamant that the

technology is unlikely to erode the viability of a

fleet of SNG trucks.

“A newscaster could equip every one of its

reporters with a bonded 3G terminal at relatively

low cost and get some pictures back - but it would

be complementary to the fleet,” he says. “If we

could give our customers the same level of

service, cost and convenience by having a bonded

The future of SNG is MNGSatellite news gathering is turning into mobile news gathering, discovers Adrian Pennington

SNG

“Often, any picture is better than none but news providers still want HD for the archive even if they don’t transmit it.”



SNG

3G antenna rather than with a satellite dish we

would. The fact is that although such solutions are

seen as complementary technology they are not

making a lot of headway in the SNG market,”

Shadbolt says.

Developing towards IP

Pointing out that most of the transmission from

Arab spring hotspots was done using 3G, Luke

Kennedy, DTH director at Vision247, declares

that 4G will reduce SNG market share.

“However SNG will stay the dominant solution

for time critical delivery where low latency

and redundancy are required - notably for

sports transmissions,” he says. “Clients

want operational simplicity and a cost

effective TX solution to deliver clips and

live streams from any point on the globe.

IP delivery over mobile networks is the

Holy Grail the news gathering community

was waiting for. How can you beat a

EUR1,500 cigarette box-sized encoder with

HD-SDI input and built-in 4G transmitter?

Especially when a gadget like that replaces

a complete SNG van.”

Vision247’s new technology in this

space is XtremeCDN, which Kennedy says

will deliver the last missing ingredient to

transmission over the internet – virtual multicast

at the edge.

SNG has typically been about one way

uplinking, but it is developing towards IP on two

fronts: by deploying wireless camera connections

with very long range, and using satellite links with

IP to enable bi-directional communication.

SIS Live, for example, offers VSAT terminal

uPak, which can fit into a rucksack, and the uPod

uplink system which is IP capable by way of

integrated modem offering 4.2Mbps up and

18Mbps down.

One of the primary arguments used to

promote cellular newsgathering is its greater

ability to circumnavigate signal fluctuation

hazards. Black-spots, caused by skyscrapers or

tree cover for example, are a big problem for the

satellite industry.

“Having encountered a blackspot, the time it

takes to pack up, move the team and equipment

to another location and setup again can cost

valuable coverage time,” observes Martin

Coleman of monitoring and control specialist,

Colem. “The other problem is that with no prior

knowledge of black-spots in the area, the SNG

crew could very well go through that whole

process only to encounter a bad signal area.”

Embedded into Colem’s X-Mobile and camera

control systems, and using available GPS

monitoring and local area maps, is an alert which

can warn the SNG crew when they are in, or near,

a black-spot area before setting up.

Another problem for SNGs is satellite

interference, which a working group of the

Satellite Interference Reduction Group (sIRG)

has been set up to combat.

“sIRG has spent a great deal of time and effort

in introducing Carrier ID across the industry,

however it is not yet possible to identify the

satellite itself, which leads to carriers mistakenly


LiveU LU60 backpack and unit


using the wrong satellite,” says Coleman, who is

also executive director of the group. “It is

fundamental to auto-deploy Comms On The Move

(COTM) systems which by its nature is

unmanned and prone to inaccuracies.”

The sIRG plans to find ways to introduce

satellite ID, as well as work towards a standard for

auto-deploy systems. The aim is to significantly

reduce interference during deployment. “In

addition, it is hoped to form a new group early in

2012 to look at the future of on-board satellite

technology with the inclusion of satellite ID,”

reveals Coleman.

Ka-band as a saviour

Satellite remains the cornerstone and it is

investments in technologies to tap the KA band

which gives Farnsworth reason to suggest SNG

has a “massive future.” KA band promises twice

the frequency of KU using smaller antenna.

“Although there is a licensing issue in the UK

and other European countries for KA band fixed

mobile uplinks I anticipate that in five years KA

availability will become such that SNG operators

will have built KA band fleets,” Farnsworth states.

Indeed, Globecast has invested in its first truck,

out of Italy, where it is being tested operating

Eutelsat’s KA-SAT NewSpotter service.

“NewsSpotter complements traditional satellite

uplinking,” says Cristiano Benzi, head of video

value added services at Eutelsat. “It is a new SNG

system which works over IP networks.”

Among the pluses are its IP-based point-to

point satellite transmission

capability, a lower service

cost, and uplink technology

that will allow television

stations to outfit SNG

vans for a fraction of the

cost of a comparable Ku or

C-band rig.

“An operator or

broadcaster could

commission a fleet of SNG

vans with a minimal

satellite footprint, instead

of using much larger

trucks,” says Benzi.

Download speeds of up

to 50 Mbps with up to 20

Mbps uplink return can be

reached, ample for SNG.

“We provide committed

information-rate

bidirectional IP

connectivity, either between terminals or from a

terminal to a site connected to the backbone,”

says Benzi. “Video contributions via IP can be

easily integrated into today’s IP workflows and

offer exceptional value for SNG work.

“For example, if your SNG van contained four

camera channels, you could encode all those

camera feeds and stream them in parallel to your

broadcast HQ for editing, rather than perform

that function on-site and contribute just the final

feed,” he says.

Alternatively an operator could field a van,

servicing two clients simultaneously from two

stand-up positions. Each feed could be routed to

an IP address at the destination broadcaster in

different territories.

“The newsgathering production environment is

already perfectly integrated into IP workflows,”

adds Benzi. “File-based technologies have

revolutionised newsgathering from camcorder

recording, to offline editing over laptops in the

field. IP contribution by KA-SAT provides the

missing piece in the workflow.”

Inmarsat is building a $1.2 billion network for

global coverage in the KA band including three

new satellites. Planned to launch in 2013, Global

Xpress will offer downlinks up to 50Mbps and

5Mbps up from compact terminals. Each of the

new Inmarsat-5 satellites will carry 89 Ka-band

beams, which can be configured to focus on

hotspots in any part of the world. The company

says that global coverage is already available from

existing Inmarsat L-band services, but Global

Xpress will cost-effectively offer up to 100 times

the bandwidth on the downlink.

There is also NovelSat’s new NS3 3D-Sat

modulation scheme which effectively allows the

squeezing of more bits of bandwidth giving

satellites a new lease of life. The mechanism

enables the handling of full wide transponders,

such as 72MHz as a single carrier, ‘dramatically

expanding satellite capacity’, states the company.

“You may even find that using such new

modulation technology makes it cheaper than

fibre in the long run, which is not the case at the

moment,” notes Farnsworth.

It may be that cellular technology outpaces

even this. Ongoing investments in R&D into

transmission algorithms and intelligent encoding

will continue to take advantage of the rapid

advances in mobile network rollout, notably 4G/

LTE which is widely available now in the US.

“We already take advantage of LTE networks

and were able to transmit using LTE from the

Superbowl and Grammies in February,” says

LiveU’s Artman. “It opens new horizons for us

but we are also focussed on providing a resilient

HD quality video even when hundreds of

thousands of people are in one place.”

It is already dated to be referring to satellite

news gathering when the field has already shifted

to mobile news gathering where that implies a mix

of flexible small vehicle or portable

communications over IP, mobile networks

and satellite.

“The fact that reporters couldn’t upload content from certain mobile phones was a significant hole in the system, especially with the increasing importance of citizen journalism.”

SNG


LiveU LU40i with GUI


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Evolving towards a multi-screen world

www.csimagazine.com

Focus sponsored by




Multi-network, multi-

screen video services

are quickly

becoming “must

have” features on

the roadmap of

competitive video

service operators around the world. While early

incarnations of multi-network architectures were

primarily focused on combining managed IP

networks (telco TV grade) with traditional cable

and satellite networks, the focus recently has

expanded greatly and is now largely focused on

combinations of services over DVB broadcast and

unmanaged (over-the-top) networks.

This evolution has most certainly been fuelled

by the advent of adaptive rate streaming (ARS),

which powers consumer quality OTT video

services to enhance ARPU, subscriber loyalty and

lure incremental advertising dollars. ARS is also

particularly well-suited to mobile content delivery,

as it replaces the concept of fixed reservation

network managed QoS in favour of a client

optimised consumer experience. The delivery

technology makes use of what the Web does best

– efficient and massively scalable delivery of data

using the HTTP protocol.

Leveraging ARS supports the development of

new OTT video service architectures, and offers

operators a fast and cost-effective route for adding

interactive services to previously broadcast-only

pay-TV networks. Thus a new breed of multi-

network architectures has been born.

Emerging network configurations

Perhaps the most pervasive combination of multi-

network (hybrid) deployments right now is DVB

in combination with OTT as such architectures do

not fundamentally require a new agreement with a

broadband service provider, or a significant

infrastructure investment. Operators can leverage

their existing DVB network, whether it is satellite,

cable or terrestrial, and add the OTT functionality

through the consumer’s own broadband links. Of

course those operators with two-way cable

deployments can be both video broadcast and IP

service providers, which gives them a competitive

advantage as far as commercial relationships with

the consumer are concerned.

A deft combination of managed DVB network

delivery and OTT delivery can hit a number of

important bases, including:

• Very high, TV quality presentation (including

3D for instance) on the main screen of the

household or home theatre installation;

• New business models that include early release

window material;

• Seamless catch-up services over unicast

connections; and

• A merged program guide navigation for

managed and unmanaged network content feeds.

ARS is particularly attractive for DVB + OTT

networks as multiple new streaming technologies

have recently emerged to further simplify the

deployment process, while also facilitating the

development of new business models and

increasing revenue security.

This configuration, although it presents many

benefits, is not without its own set of unique

challenges, including QoS and QoE. The focus on

quality is particularly vexing given that

traditionally an enjoyable video experience

has been best supported in a controlled,

managed network, which makes effective

QoS management over a multi-hop internet

delivery system seem unrealistic.

Fortunately, the technology behind video

delivery services is evolving to keep pace

with the new market

dynamics. The emerging

substitute for managed

network delivery of video is

the technology of ARS.

Consumers with high-

bandwidth connections and

newer hardware can experience HD quality OTT

video streaming, while others with lower

bandwidth or mobile devices receive a stream

optimum to their conditions.

ARS of video provides an optimum-quality

viewing experience that scales effectively on

global and local networks, makes highly effective

use of today’s content distribution networks, and

ensures that true HD media experiences over the

internet can become a reality.

Spotlight on HLS & PlayReady

Smooth Streaming from Microsoft and HTTP

Live Streaming (HLS) are two adaptive streaming

technologies that are exceptionally well-positioned

to address QoE challenges.

An increasing number of operators are

choosing to leverage a combination of HLS and

Smooth Streaming for OTT video services. Their

goal is to reach the most diverse range of device

types and maximise the use of native device

support for ARS where it exists. Since both ARS

technologies fundamentally rest on a backbone of

HTTP, they can easily co-exist. All CDNs already

have massive deployments of acceleration servers

that support HTTP protocols. That means as

Re-defining multi-networkSteve Christian, VP of marketing at Verimatrix, describes how a mix of Smooth Streaming and HTTP Live Streaming can give operators a pain-free way of supporting multiple device types

Sponsored feature



video traffic ramps up, there are capital and

operational efficiencies in delivery using HTTP,

and no separate server delivery systems which

would otherwise be required to support

proprietary streaming protocols such as RTSP

and RTMP.

HLS, for example, is especially well-suited

for tablet and smartphone delivery since a solid

base of such devices preferentially support

HLS. Protected stream support for HLS, which

leverages Verimatrix enhanced security, can be

supported on the iPad, iPhone, set top box

devices and connected TVs.

Smooth Streaming, which typically integrates

PlayReady DRM, is also gaining momentum

where PC and Mac devices are preferential

devices for video consumers. PCs and Macs with

the Silverlight plug-in both feature native support

for Smooth Streaming, as does the X-box.

While it is possible to use a single stream type

to service all of these types of devices, operators

are tending to prefer Smooth Streaming for PCs

and Macs because of the sophisticated (and free)

Silverlight environment and preferentially choose

HLS for other connected devices.

While some have argued that splitting their

delivery technology between these two stream

types might lead to compromises in the

management of subscriber rights and unnecessary

complexity of DRM solutions, there is no

compelling reason to believe this should be the

case. Combining the strengths of the dual prong

approach with an appropriate high level rights

management solution, the harmonisation of DRM

management becomes relatively straightforward –

and even leads to the concept of “super domain”

management. In other words, converged

management of user devices across multiple

DRMs in the OTT space and STBs on the DVB

or managed IP network.

Securing the new multi-network

From a content security perspective, perhaps the

greatest challenge for operators is to grasp how

content protection requirements are evolving in

an OTT environment, as well as the details of how

these must be supported at fine grain level. It

seems that after an initial burst of “free to

everyone” video service euphoria, the industry is

rediscovering all the pay-TV security issues and

threats that drove traditional conditional access

(CA) systems for the past 20 years. Among issues

are the needs for device identification and

authentication – to securely associate a specific

device with a payment method and the distributed

responsibility for other hardware security support

features in the target devices.

The ability to accommodate multiple DRMs is

another critical capability of an effective and

comprehensive content security strategy.

Operators wanting to reach beyond managed

networks to various types of mobile devices using

OTT video streaming delivery via Smooth

Streaming or HLS must be able to seamlessly

manage multiple DRMs.

Perhaps the real business challenge is for

operators to eliminate the distribution and

consumption silos that often frustrate consumers

and nudge them towards alternative sources.

Therefore, the service provider needs to enable

support for native DRM systems on the devices

that they wish to provide services for, and to

provide the user with a completely transparent

consumption experience.

Operators need to accommodate a diversity of

receivers over broadcasting and IP networks,

regardless of any embedded DRM, supporting

fixed or mobile reception over both managed and

unmanaged networks. For example, Verimatrix

has devised a solution for these multi-platform

challenges, called MultiRights, which provides

DRM and content consumption transparency

across networks and devices.

The MultiRights for PlayReady DRM solution

secures Smooth Streaming formatted video

services under a unified multi-network, multi-

screen framework. This fully integrated DRM

solution for linear and on-demand digital TV

content delivery extends the security architecture

to Silverlight enabled PCs, Windows Phone 7

devices and connected TVs. The advantage is

that these client devices, which are equipped

with standard Microsoft Silverlight players,

do not require any additional security

integration at the client level.

In order to use the HLS protocol for

premium video delivery, an enhanced security

platform is necessary to make it suitable for

delivering high-value pay-TV content in both

live and on-demand scenarios. By adding a

mechanism for registering and authenticating

individual devices, together with a way to

manage entitlement for content viewing, ensures

that client devices are attached to paying

customers. Therefore, only bona fide subscribers

are able to watch protected content. This type of

security also allows for more flexible business

models that can help up-sell OTT content and

cross-sell services from the DVB network.

New architectures, new business models

It is important to deploy a security solution that

can seamlessly accommodate a wide range of

devices; it is equally critical to leverage a

streaming technology that features robust revenue

and content security. Both are essential for

ensuring that an operator’s delivery platform

reaches as many device types as its subscribers

could possibly want to use. Increasing the number

of supported device types reduces and helps

increase subscriber adoption of new services.

Additionally, the more screens are supported

simultaneously, the more eyeballs you have for

both advertising and transactional revenue.

Using a combination of Smooth Streaming

where appropriate, and HLS where appropriate,

provides operators with an ideal environment for

developing and deploying applications on each of

those device types. The resulting service is well-

protected and operates in a reliable fashion on all

supported devices.

Technology advances through ARS technology,

particularly those based around HLS and Smooth

Streaming, are likely to alter the current

framework of managed network vs internet

delivery. Choosing the right protocol, and the

right revenue security solution, will enable service

providers to provide a richer consumer

experience, with more personalised choices as

regards content, time and place.

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Source: Broadpeak

Ten years ago, no one knew

the word iPad, but it is a very

different world today. With

rapidly evolving video

streaming technologies,

consumers today can stream

high-quality video content

over connected TVs, PCs, and mobile devices,

often receiving that content over the top (OTT)

The thirst for high-quality online video,

anytime, anywhere, shows no signs of slowing

down. In fact, according to a recent study by SFR,

OTT video will represent 70% of Internet traffic

in 2015. With the surge in the demand for and

consumption of video, content providers are faced

with a hard time controlling the quality of the

video content or the costs involved.

As network operators’ video traffic increases,

so do their infrastructure costs. Consequently,

they use traffic shaping to delay heavy

investments, decreasing the quality of video

consumers view OTT. Network service providers

(NSPs) and operators, such as cable companies

and satellite operators, are tasked with finding a

way to provide high-quality video content to

subscribers while generating new revenue streams.

One such approach, called operator content

delivery networks (CDN), is a viable solution for

NSPs and operators, because it eliminates global

CDNs from the equation, with regards to a local

content delivery.

Wholesale CDN architecture

An operator CDN provides a direct relationship

between the content provider and the operator,

allowing the network owner to accurately monitor

the amount of bandwidth being used, thus

guaranteeing quality of service to its subscribers.

An operator can deploy its own CDN and lease

space directly to the content provider, which

means the operator receives revenue directly

from content providers. Through a wholesale

feature on the operator CDN solution, operators

can also deploy their own CDN and contract

directly with smaller NSPs that can’t afford to

invest in a CDN deployment. Sub NSPs generally

suffer from the increase in online video traffic

even more than other NSPs and operators

because they can’t afford to invest in the

infrastructure needed to increase their capacity.

Therefore, they are stuck paying high transit costs

to main NSPs.

When a major NSP deploys a CDN within a

sub NSP’s network, it sets up points of presence

in the sub NSP’s network and provides the servers

that will be managed by the global CDN. The

main NSP generates revenues from leasing its

CDN to the sub NSP and attracts a wider base of

content providers. The sub NSP reduces transit

costs by storing popular content coming from

main NSP providers in its own network and can

contract directly with a local content provider,

generating revenues.

An operator owned CDN architecture more

closely monitors bandwidth, reducing network

congestion, and increasing the consumer’s quality

of experience (QoE). It provides revenue

opportunities to all the players involved by cutting

out the middle man — the

global CDN.

Wholesale CDN vs

traditional CDN

Let’s look at three scenarios where a wholesale

CDN is beneficial for an operator and NSP. In

the first case, the major NSP and content

provider are located in geographical zone A and

the sub NSP is located in geographical zone B.

The sub NSP subscriber located in zone B wants

to access content from zone A deployed in major

NSP network. Without the wholesale CDN, the

content travels through the peering point, which

generates high transit costs for the sub NSP.

Additionally, there is not a guaranteed quality of

service for the subscriber. Using the wholesale

approach, where the CDN is deployed in a sub

NSP network, the sub NSP saves on transit

costs, optimises content delivery, and enhances

quality of service for the subscribers due to

removal of contention points (see Figure 1,

on the next page).

In the second scenario, a major NSP is located

in geographical zone A, and the content provider

and sub NSP are in zone B. A sub NSP subscriber

located in zone B wants to access content from

zone B. Without the wholesale CDN, the content

provider has to contract with a CDN service

Nivedita Nouvel argues the case for wholesale content delivery networks for efficient, cost-effective delivery of multi-platform video

Cutting out the middle man


CDNs


provider, which means there is no revenue for the

major NSP and no guaranteed quality of service

for the subscriber. On the other hand, using

a wholesale approach, a CDN is deployed in

a sub NSP network, and the content is

provisioned in a sub NSP network. The major

NSP leases the CDN; therefore, it receives

revenue based on traffic. Moreover, the sub

NSP optimises the content delivery and enhances

the quality of service for its subscribers by the

removal of contention points (see Figure 2,

above).

In this the example, a major NSP is located in

geographical zone A, and a content provider and

sub NSP are in zone B. If a major NSP subscriber

located in zone A wants to access content located

in zone B, without the wholesale CDN, the

content provider has to contract with a global

CDN service provider, missing out on revenue

for the major NSP or for the sub NSP, and not

providing a guaranteed quality of service for

subscribers. With the wholesale approach, a CDN

is deployed in a sub NSP network and the content

is provisioned in major NSP network. The sub

NSP generates revenues from contracting with the

content provider and the major NSP, which leases

the CDN and generates revenues based on the

traffic. Moreover, a major NSP optimises the

content delivery and enhances quality service for

major NSP subscriber due to the removal of

contention points (see Figure 3, opposite).

Bandwidth control

To set up an operator CDN, an operator

needs to install a central control system, such

as Broadpeak’s BkM100 Mediator. This

administration tool manages the available

bandwidth and works with integrated servers to

output video content. It functions as a portal,

allowing the operator to define what bandwidth

they want to resell and how content is distributed

to different points of presence. An operator can

provide administration rights to one or more

resellers and allow resellers to define policies

relative to content, such as the number of

channels and which VoD catalogs to deploy.

Operators also have the capability to invoice each

player according to its contribution.

Statistics and quotas help the network owner

determine the amount of bandwidth that is going

to be used. Operators can deploy a CDN through

the allocation of quotas per service. Three types

of quotas are generally provided: the bandwidth

used (Mbps), the number of simultaneous

sessions, and the content volume per time unit. In

addition, the network owner has access to

statistics, including:

• Bandwidth usage;

• Viewing sessions;

• Content consumption;

• Delivery failures; and

• Overall demand.

The level of control afforded by the

wholesale CDN architecture helps eliminate

CDNs



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network congestion, leading to an increased

QoE for subscribers and increased revenue

for the operator.

Handling technical issues

The level of control that operator CDNs

offer over regular CDNs is also useful for

troubleshooting technical issues. For example,

in some situations, a provider may not have

broadcasting rights of content in a geographical

area. In this instance, an operator CDN

determines, depending on the time and the

geographical zone, whether to stream the main

content or the alternative content. Broadpeak’s

solution, called geo-content replacement, is

currently being used by Telecom Argentina,

Argentina’s largest telecommunications group

and network service provider. If the content

in Argentina is a football game, but a provider

in Paraguay doesn’t have the rights to the

football game, the geo-content replacement

feature automatically replaces the game with

alternative content.

Another technical issue an operator CDN

resolves is optimising content storage according to

the region where it is most viewed. The content

control system continuously monitors the

popularity of content based on usage patterns.

Popular content is automatically pushed to the

edge of servers while long-tail content remains

on the larger central library. This automated

process reduces the need for storage at the edge,

therefore, reducing the total cost of ownership

of the solution.

Operator CDNs also offer a secure,

multilayered PoP topology that monitors and

updates each server’s status. The location,

availability, and status of video streamers are

monitored, so if a PoP breaks down, another

PoP located in another region or from another

operator can be used.

As high-definition and multi-platform viewing

become more prevalent in households, it’s even

more important for providers and operators to

deliver the highest quality signal to viewers. While

there are certain benefits of global CDNs, such as

experience and the ability to handle international

content distribution, they don’t offer the same

peace of mind as operator CDNs, which enable

operators to deploy their own CDNs and more

closely control how, when, and by whom the

infrastructures are used. This extra control gives

operators guaranteed quality of experience that

global CDN providers can’t match. The wholesale

feature of an operator CDN also offers small

operators a way to value their network.

In addition to the boost in content quality,

operator CDNs provide a more fair revenue share

to all the players involved in video delivery.

Operators can lease space on their own CDNS to

content providers or NSPs and receive revenue

directly from those providers. A smaller NSP that

can’t afford to invest in a CDN deployment

reduces transit costs by storing popular content

coming from main NSP providers in its own

network and generates additional revenue by

contracting directly with a local content provider.

Overall, the wholesale CDN provides a

guaranteed high-quality viewing experience for

consumers and revenue opportunities operators

and network providers by cutting out the middle

man — third-party CDNs.

CDNs

Nivedita Nouvel is VP of marketing at Broadpeak

The winners will be announced at IBC, on Friday 7 September 2012

AWARDS201210th ANNIVERSARY

Enter nowDeadline for Entries: May 14 2012www.csimagazine.com/awards

For awards enquiries contact: [email protected] +44 (0)207 562 2439

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Smart TV roundtable

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Panellists:

Smart TV roundtable

Chairman: Richard Lindsay-Davies, director general, Digital Television Group (DTG)

Richard is responsible for the organisation’s overall growth and development.

With over 20 years of television industry experience, Richard drives the DTG’s collaborative culture.

Richard joined the Group as director of public affairs in 2004 working with government and

stakeholders to establish the UK digital switchover body, Digital UK. He was appointed director

general in 2006. Prior to DTG, he worked at Sony, Toshiba and Pace.

Dr Neale Foster, VP global sales IA,

Access

Neale’s 15-year experience spans

broadcast, connected TV and CE

industries to spearhead Access in Internet

Appliances. Prior to Access, Neale

worked at Miniweb and Espial. Access

develops software solutions solutions that enable companies to

connect the broadcast and CE worlds.

Mark Rooney, director of media, InView

Technology

Mark is responsible for all content

partnerships, working with third parties in

Inview’s key markets to provide

applications across a broad genre VoD,

music-on-demand, social networking,

lifestyle, news and information. Mark has spent the past 25 years in

the telecom and DTV industry, including BT, Entone and Pace.

Richard Broughton, head of broadband

media, IHS Screen Digest

Richard heads IHS Screen Digest’s

Broadband Media and Technology teams,

following areas such as broadband access,

digital media, VoD and connected devices.

He also heads research into advanced TV

and cross platform services, and provides consulting work for

companies in the payTV and broadband sectors.

Phil Walder, managing director,

Connect TV

Phil has been involved in internet

television for many years, having launched

an innovative internet television shopping

service for WH Smith as early as 1999.

He was most recently the COO and a

co-founder of IP Vision, the owners of FetchTV, the UK’s first hybrid

DTT/IPTV service. He has also worked for set-top maker Netgem.

Luke Kennedy, DTH director, Vision247

Luke has nearly 20 year’s experience in

the broadcast and IPTV business,

including Homechoice, now Talk Talk, in

the UK and subsequently consulting

across Europe for major TV platforms.

Luke was appointed DTH director for

Vision 247 in January 2012.

Dan Saunders, director content services,

Samsung

Dan is responsible for content strategy

across a range of different devices with a

current particular focus on smart TV.

Previous experience includes marketing

and distribution roles in broadcast and

IPTV targeted advertising.

Future roundtables: CSI will be staging roundtable discussions on Social TV (26 April); Access services (22 June), as well as those on TV gaming, CDNs and the changing nature of the set-top box.For speaker/sponsorship opportunities contact Tiro Bestonso at [email protected] or +44 20 7562 2427

Click here for a 2 minuite video summary from each of our panelists

http://www.csimagazine.com/csi/roundtable_temp.php


Chair: One of the first things we always think of at

a base level is how many connected TVs are actually

being connected and what are the barriers to that?

Dan, you have the largest deployments, what’s

Samsung’s experience in this area?

Dan Saunders (DS): Well, unfortunately I can’t

give you an exact number which is what

everyone’s hoping for but we are very pleased with

the connection rates we’ve seen. I think the

benchmark within the smart TV industry is

looking towards the game console world where we

think figures in the region of 60-75% are

considered good. I don’t think it’s unrealistic for

smart TV to achieve those sorts of levels within

the next 12 months; we’re on that type of

roadmap. So while we don’t publish figures you

can see the confidence we have in the smart TV

proposition by how central it’s become to our

messaging to both trade and consumer.

Chair: How do we get that to 100%?

Mark Rooney (MR): I would say one of the key

things is to have the set up process to get the

connection to either WiFi or LAN as simple as

possible and as a fundamental part of that set-up.

It also relates to the work of individual CE

companies. Some manufacturers feel their work is

done once that TV has left that shop and don’t

push that connection.

Phil Walder (PW): That’s very interesting Mark

and supports what we’ve found out in the few

months we’ve been operating Connect TV. We’re

in the fortunate position that we get analytics

from all manufacturers and what we’ve seen is

that the makers that are most successful in their

percentage of connections on our Freeview

connected platform are those that almost make it

imperative to connect at point of installation. I

won’t embarrass people by saying who is best and

worst but when comparing percentages of

connection vs sales they don’t match up.

Richard Broughton (RB): It must be remembered

that the primary functionality of the game console

is that they need to be connected whereas TV’s

primary purpose is broadcast TV which doesn’t

need a connection. OTT is a secondary

functionality. So while I would say that while

65-70% is a good target to aim at I would be

surprised if it reached that across the board in the

next 12 months.

MR: A lot of that would depend on the

applications, the interest and the drive of what is

there to supplement linear TV. We’ve seen

movement in pushing the idea that the internet

and associated apps will allow consumers to get

further value from their TV and you’ve seen

certain companies really pushing that side of

things, rather than for it to be seen as just a

novelty.

Discoverability, locality and the user experience

Chair: If we talk about service and content

discoverability, TV used to be easy. How do we

get smart TV as close to that simplicity?

Luke Kennedy (LK): We’ve been working with

Connect TV in Freeview HD deployments and

our belief is that the EPG is the primary place for

consumers to find content. We believe entirely

that the route Connect TV has provided in the

UK Freeview scenario is the one because it’s the

one that people are used to and that’s the way to

access content, regardless of how it’s delivered.

Neale Foster (NF): I agree we need a user case to

connect these TVs much like the games consoles

and some good work has gone into advertising

this to the consumer. Samsung is in a good

position with all the products they offer to create

an understanding that people can push media

from one device to another. We see it as a multi-

screen challenge now, not just television. The

BBC iPlayer is a good example of that changing

proposition, but do you get it from your TV,

tablet, cable provided TiVo like service or

Freeview service? There are so many

opportunities available now.

MR: Going back to something that Luke touched

on, we always get asked about the number of

applications and it’s difficult to compare to the

iPhone but I think there is one Über app on TV

for the internet and it is the EPG. We at InView

come from an EPG background, we make the

apps part of that whole EPG. TV is an immersive

experience and you want to be entertained and

the EPG is the easiest way of doing that.

Chair: Some of the things we missed at the DTG

when specifying Freeview HD is the backwards EPG,

Smart TV roundtable

TV brain powerIn CSI’s latest roundtable, held at DTG’s HQ in London, industry experts and veterans debated how the various challenges affecting smart TV are being overcome and gazed into their crystal balls for future forecasts


so we’re doing it now with D-Book 7 and it will go to

market in a year’s time. Building on from that, the

regional country by country consumer habits are not

all the same throughout Europe and we have

different experiences. How do we overlay the

globalisation of discovery in international platforms

with that regional bit we are used to?

DS: It’s a tough one and will require a lot of

further work to get to the answer. At the moment,

and rather naively, there is a general distinction

between the broadcast world and IP world. So

what you have within the TV device is the IP

stack where all your apps are and the broadcast

stack which is still fed by the EPG. As we move

forward those barriers are beginning to erode so

you will see within Samsung devices we are

shipping that we’ve made closer integration

between a lot of the traditional TV functionalities

and IP stack. We call it the Smart Hub, the idea

being it becomes the hub of the experience. Now

how we manage it against the EPG is something

we still need to work on. But one thing that is

becoming clear and that will start to happen over

the next 12 months is that broadcasters will begin

to use the technology to create their own bridges

between these two stacks.

Chair: From a business perspective, we’ve had some

discussions at the DTG over how do we get British

PSBs onto the global standards, things like HbbTV

and OIPF. The conclusion was we’ll be deploying

services to devices that meet our business

requirements - we won’t set the bar as low as

HbbTV. As the rights issues evolve how do you see

those requirements being met.

RB: One of the key issues is fragmentation of the

device landscape. Companies like the BBC can hit

multiple devices but standards are absolutely

essential for Tier 2 and 3 companies to reach the

majority of consumers. You see a lot of the online

video platforms and the ad serving platforms in

existence actually making a business case out of

having a library of catalogue of devices that can

serve that to smaller broadcasters and IPTV

channels can’t afford to. Certainly having

standards to help them get content out onto

multiple devices will help.

Chair: If we don’t resolve fragmentation will we

always hit that wall of penetration?

RB: You won’t necessarily hit a wall but players

will be cut out of the market and delayed for a

period of time. Ultimately there will be a

convergence but when that happens is up for

debate. There won’t be any casualties necessarily

either and let’s not forget that OTT video is such

a small proportion of most companies’ businesses.

NF: I would agree that as a percentage it’s very

small but any company that doesn’t have it is

clearly on the way down. Most payTV channels

might not have an OTT proposition but every

single operator needs to have it and they are

increasing this need for standards, such as

HTML5 and DLNA. These standards are being

mandated because every company needs an IP

strategy. Look at Virgin and their TiVo box for

example. The casualties will be those that don’t

keep up, either proactively or reactively.

DS: From a device manufacturer’s point of view,

much of what we are doing is looking to the

market to understand what we need to do in order

to render ourselves interoperable over the services

that are out there. So what you are seeing is

fragmentation being done away with through

competitive forces, which is slightly messier than

it otherwise might be but means ultimately we will

arrive at the best solution for devices.

PW: I think we’re making a big mistake if we

think the focus should be on technology. It should

always be on the viewer, and if we think we will

change their behaviour just by putting an app in

TV or a connection we better think again because

viewers don’t change habits overnight. Live TV

and EPG will remain the focus for many years to

come and the legacy of devices out there will stay

there for a long time. It might on the fringes -

complimenting viewing, such as being able to

press the green button while watching a concert

to buy that gig or CD, but it won’t replace the

main viewing experience. There is also pressure

on people sometimes to stop tweeting about an

event on a second screen in the living room but

immerse themselves in TV.

NF: The irony is that the amount of video

watching had gone up with all these extra devices.

MR: I agree with what Phil said about not letting

technology take over the experience and

consumers don’t care whether something is OTT

or linear. What I’m finding talking to content

providers is that apps you do for a TV have to be

complimentary and not just replicate what’s on

linear TV. The OTT experience has to be weaved

into linear; if it just looks gimmicky it will not be

used.

PW: The most successful way of promoting things

on TV is from existing broadcasters. Cross

promotion is what works and if there’s a call to

action at the end of the programme that is most

likely to be the biggest influencer of behaviour, so

it has to start with where the viewers are. Don’t

start in a walled garden or a different method of

consumption as people won’t find it.

Chair: For TV to delight you, what do we break

those mission critical things down to?

DS: One of the critical things to bear in mind is

what we’re trying to do with smart TVs in general.

You have to make a distinction between TV as an

experience and TV as an object. TV as an

experience works because it feeds this innate

human desire and that’s not changing. But TV as

an object is changing, in terms of its physical

form and in terms of what we can use it for. I

agree that much of what needs to happen within

the TV world needs to come from broadcasters


Smart TV roundtable


and there’s a sense that the first obvious step is

catch-up TV and there’s a strong argument when

broadcasters talk in terms of catch up TV being

an extension of broadcast. The obvious thing that

then has to happen is the major broadcasters need

to bring their catch-up services to the smart TV

platform and they need to figure out how to

create the integration between non linear services

and existing linear ones to create seamless

environment which sees the end-user still inside a

broadcast world.

Business models

Chair: From a business perspective, current money

is still inside traditional business models. Sky’s

announcement to go off dish may change this a

little. Where do you see the money Richard?

RB: Sure the money is still tied to traditional

companies. Today, there aren’t any stand-alone big

subscription online video services of note that

have succeeded. You could argue Netflix but it

built that on the back of large DVD rental service

in the US. And where the money will be is still

tied up to existing payTV operators. They have

the rights, brand power and customer

relationships and a lot of new entrants to market

will find competing with them very difficult. If

you look at Netflix content in the UK it’s poor

compared to what Sky has. In theory Apple and

Google have the money to do this but practically

it is another matter. Apple makes money from its

devices; it’s content margins are absolutely

minimal. Amazon is an interesting one with its

LoveFilm and tablet play.

MR: Premier League football is the staple for Sky

and what drives its payTV.

PW: That’s where technology changes the game,

when we go into flexible content rights and

platforms that will enable consumers to mix and

match. This is where the bundling versus à la

carte argument comes in.

LK: A global player could step in to buy these

rights or Al Jazeera might (as recently

acknowledged by ESPN’s European head in

British papers) and sell it in the UK using the Sky

platform possibly, and then sell those rights

throughout Europe. Someone could do that to

disrupt the existing market. But it will take

conviction like when Sky first started out and lost

money for the first ten years.

Chair: We talk about apps a lot, is there any money

in the app stores?

DS: In the context of TV there is still a lot of

learning to be done in this environment.

Intuitively it seems the TV is a very different

device from the more personal handheld device.

Our approach has been to focus on bringing

immersive TV like experiences to TV rather than

worrying about how many apps we simply bring

onto the platform. It’s difficult to know at this

stage. We used to talk about programmes now we

talk about apps but an application within the

context of TV is really just a technology to deliver

a service, so we talk about LoveFilm, Netflix or

iPlayer etc and the app is just background

software rather than a new commercial

phenomenon.

PW: The idea that secondary and tertiary

technologies are taking over TV is looking at it

the wrong way round. The broadcasters are really

the people to control this as they are the creative

people that delight the audience. They are better

at that than manufacturers and app writers. Now

they realise they can use social media and other

platforms to drive and compliment what they do

on the main screen.

Chair: It’s the old adage that radio will kill

magazines and TV was going to kill radio and now

you have lots of magazines about TV and radio...

Smart TV roundtable



From the business side, I agree with Dan in that

Darwin will take over and we’ll have some

evolutions that will resolve that in time. But money

is still with the same people. Do you have predictions

what will happen in ten years time?

RB: It will look much like today but with a little

more viewing on an on-demand and DVR basis

but there won’t be a sudden sea change.

NF: I disagree. If you look at how Apple came in

and changed the mobile industry I think

something similar will happen to TV. The

fundamental changes that are happening with

social media, recommendations, content delivery,

multi-screen and so on are having a major impact.

It also affects advertising.

PW: The fundamental concept of sitting there

and watching TV however stays the same.

Chair: Dan, will you start subsidising TVs like the

seismic change we saw with mobile?

DS: Never say never. However the reality is that in

many ways what we’re doing in the content space

with IP apps is the same as it was in the old days

of analogue or digital tuners; we’re building

technologies that allow content providers to use

our devices as a platform to further their reach.

There is of course some refinement of business

models and other innovations that can only be

done through cooperation of different industries.

For me, this cooperation is the cornerstone of

convergence.

NF: You have to look at UPC’s Horizon box as a

clear strategy in the cable space around

convergence. The STB isn’t dead but the margins

are getting smaller and smaller.

One for the road

Chair: To round up a wide ranging conversation, if

we all imagine we are VCs investing in one thing we

think will make a big difference in terms of user

experience and business model, what would that be?

MR: By far the most important thing is the

EWPG and to have it blend linear, catch up, the

recommendation engine and the ability to quickly

access apps that are coming from the internet.

DS: I would like to put my money in HBO or the

new equivalent to that - those building killer long-

form content - because that’s where it’s at.

NF: On the technology side, the landscape is

going across multiple market segments and the

clash or coming together of those is where

companies can exploit commonality and

differences between them.

LK: It’s someone who has the vision to hook all

those things together, the technology and the

consumer product on a global scale.

PW: What I think will change the model is

transactions. And when I say transactional TV it

doesn’t just mean buying content or the old

subscription model, I’m talking about being able

to interact properly with the TV two-way. A horse

racing channel on TV is a good example, being

able to bet on a horse race with a remote control.

It’s a different way of consuming TV.

RB: There’s fragmentation of devices that I talked

about earlier but there is also fragmentation of

the advertising landscape and anything that can

organise and establish a single trading currency

for advertising for connected TVs and other

devices is going to be very well positioned.

Chair: For me, stemming fragmentation and

common standards and trying to get these to work

for a local market is the real challenge but it’s

getting easier. Let’s see how our predictions stack up

when we meet again this time next year.

This roundtable took place at the DTG’s

headquarters in London. Situated on the banks of

the Thames with views of Parliament and the

London Eye, the DTG’s modern conference centre,

meeting facilities and state-of-the-art digital TV

demonstration room are available free of charge to

DTG members and can be hired by non-members

for corporate events.


Smart TV roundtable


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