Silo Busting – Paving the Way for Future-proof “TV Everywhere” Solution
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Many operators have launched their TV services on one single type of network. However, advances in technology and competitive pressures have challenged that, forcing operators to launch their services across various types of networks, such as ADSL, FTTH as well as Satellite, in order to achieve growth and greater penetration.
The seemingly “easy” solution is to build a separate service “silo” for each network, however, this has proved to be expensive and inefficient. This is true especially among carriers providing over-the-top (OTT) services. Operators that want to establish market leading positions must shed redundant weight by breaking those silos and implementing one central unified service platform that will serve multiple devices over different types of networks.
This webinar will review how a single platform can replace multiple “silos” in order to streamline current services and prepare for the future. Philippe Rozes, head of New TV at Orange Group, will share his insights regarding the largest-ever IPTV/OTT middleware migration taking place in France, a process in which 3 different service platforms, for ADSL, FTTH and hybrid satellite-IP have been converged onto a single unified service platform by Viaccess & Orca.
Key issues which will be addressed during this webinar include:
- - Operators’ classic silos breakdown
- - How to address the different needs of multiple service “silos” with a single Unified Service Platform
- - Live testimonial by France Telecom Orange – the strategy behind merging silos by migrating FT’s subscribers to Viaccess & Orca’s platform
- - What does the future hold for “TV Everywhere” deployments
- - Brief on Viaccess & Orca “TV Everywhere” solution
- - Q&A
Webinar speakers:
Sefy Ariely, VP of Sales and Marketing at Orca Interactive, Noureddine Hamdane, EVP Strategy and Communication at Viaccess and Philippe Rozes, head of New TV at Orange Group.
Tags; Archive, Featured, IP&TV, IPTV, Orca Interactive, OTT, telecoms.com, TV Everywhere, Viaccess
Thank you for your questions. This Q&A is now closed.
2 issues with DTH services right now is, delay in content delivery (of live telecast) and also weather conditions impact transmission. What is the real challenge with broadband TV. Will it be quality and noise issues? please clarify.
The chanllenges are mainly rellated to delivering content over the internet, where no bandwidth is garanteed.
From a technology perspective, our solution supports adaptive bitrate (e.g. HLS, smoothstreaming) which ensure adaptation of the quality of experience with bandwidth resources whatever the content type (HD/HD).
Another challage relates to the security of the content delivery over the internet.
We can provide more elaborated answer if needed after the webinar.
Can we have management in the middleware management system in case we want to customize something like EPG, GUI, ADS, Banner
The Service Platform powering our TV Everywhere solution can offer a high level of customization. We offer a consistent, cross-device UI experience off-the-shelf to facilitate time-to-market. But our customer can definitely choose to design their own UI based on our APIs. A look at our customer references can certainly illustrate the level of customization offered.
Is it possible to provide full HD content via “TV Everywhere”? If yes, what is the required per channel bandwidth?
from a technology perspective, what is required to provide full HD conent in TVE – is adaptive bitrate (e.g. HLS, smoothstreaming) which ensure adaptation of the quality of experience with bandwidth resources whatever the content type (HD/HD).
If you need more information on the above, contact us after the webinar.
Hello,
How is the PC client accepted by the Major Content Providers. Is it already certified by them or this is a process that in now ongoing?
For PC, as well as other connected devices (i.e. not operator-controlled devices), we either rely on the native player/DRM capabilities of the Platform (e.g. PlayReady DRM for a PC), or supply a full ‘applicative’ secure player (of course this solution is fully in line with content providers requirements – I believe Viaccess’ long experience in this domain brings a lot of credibility to our solution)
Do you propose any content? We are interested by French content
We are a technology / service provider. We do work with partners who can supply content.
Could you give more explanation about how will be managed the QoS over Internet?
From a technology perspective, our solution supports adaptive bitrate (e.g. HLS, smoothstreaming) which ensure adaptation of the quality of experience with bandwidth resources whatever the content type (HD/HD).
For OTT, we typically ensure user experience remains adapted to the available bandwidth thanks to adaptive streaming technologies (e.g. HLS, Smoothstreaming)
Does the solution support advertising in any way? How does this fit into the model?
One problem with pause / resume / fast forward it that adverts can be skipped, how is this couteracted?
Various advertizing services can be envisaged, starting from Operator Promotions, up to integration with advanced ad servers (incl. advanced targeted advertizing scenarios). To your question about ‘counteracting ad skipping’, I believe you should consider the whole advertizing opportunity in a TV Everywhere context (incl. banners, recommendations etc.)
In our case, I’m sure there is not yet CDN that is installed in our land. If we’ll decide to choose your “TV everywhere”, how will we proceed?
CDN technology can be deployed wither “on net”- where you purchase the CDN technology and deploy it on your network; or “off net”- when the CDN is managed by someone who has deployed this technology over an open/other network and you can purchase it as a service. We work with both technology vendors and service vendors. In the event that no service providers operate in your country, we can put you in touch with some of them and you can discuss the business case of introducing them into your market.
I realize the benefits of having unified platform for providing TV service everywhere. However, the market survey presented in the webiner shows that only percentage of users would be ready to pay add. $5 monthly for TV everywhere service, I wonder whether this add. ARPU justify the cost
The additional ARPU is not the only justification for the investment. you have to create loyalty and customer satisfaction with your subscribers base, in order to prevent them from leaving your servce. So reduced churn and stickiness in another justification. Researches show that that’s where the biggest saving for operators will come from.
Hello,
As I said, we don’t expect to have big increase of revenue in the short term.
We are operator and our strategy is based on access revenue :
- MAINLY : improve the experience of broadband TV (against competition), and decrease churn of broadband
- take the place on “compagnon” screens, when it’s quite easy (ie. before OTT take the place)
- prepare big move from 100% STB to share the STB place with connected TV, and/or open OS STB
Does your system allow customers to use smart phones as a remote control to the main television set?
Sure, the remote control feature is of course dependent on the choice of the STB
yes it will in the next months
I’d like to know more about the way your solution can work for over the top TV channels delivery (carlos.perez@virtualsat-plus.com)
we will contact you after the webinar with more information.
Would it be possible to host the end-to-end solution RighTV, Compass, Viaccess, Apps for multiple devices, and sell as Saas to several small operators, with one backend?
We definitely offer our solutions Viaccess & Orca as SaaS
We would be happy to discuss in more details your plans and support you to launch TVE services
How is your problem-solution fit addressing the end user or customer needs. Do you have any info on expectations and attitudes of users or consumers towards this technology?
Current research, such as that referenced in this webinar, support consumer attitudes regarding Multi-screen TV and the vast interest in the freedom to take their content with them. Check out the report from Parks Associates.
do you anticipate in the future cinema theatres / multiplex screen will shut down because of TV everywhere.
TV did cause Cinema theatres to close on the contrary
Silimarly, we don’t think TV everywhere will harm cinema theates/mltuiplex screen
I would see that it would be a competitor for the current content delivery models and third party on demand services (e.g. iTunes, netflix, love film etc.)
I think there will still be demand from customers to have the truly big screen, big sound, going to the cinema experience.
So don’t think it will drive customers away from cinemas in great numbers. However other on demand services / DVDs etc will suffer.
What kind of experience have you made with HD Videos, there must be network limitations and does the content adapt to the bandwith?
Hi Giovanni, from a technology perspective, our solution supports adaptive bitrate (e.g. HLS, smoothstreaming) which ensure adaptation of the quality of experience with bandwidth resources whatever the content type (HD/HD). From a business point of view, HD format can be managed as a different pricing offer although it represents the same movie as a SD format.
Today we offer SD and HD VOD on IP TV. HD price is higher.
HD is only accessible for customers with sufficient bandwidth for streaming.
We only offer SD VOD for satellite offer, what ever the network bandwidth.
It means customers have to wait if bandwidth is low.
We are evaluating technically adaptive streaming.It would mean offering “the best quality” and not “pre defined quality”.
This is not only a technical story.
We are looking to set up a pure fibre IPTV system. Does your system work with media streamers (similar technology to Roku, Boxee, Apple TV) that do not use traditional CA card based systems?
Yes we work with different types of client devices and CAS DRM solutions that are card-less
Are there any security risks working with a card-less CAS DRM as opposed to a conventional card based CAS?
Card-less CAS is a confusing terminology as it may translate into various types of solutions not all as secure
No one contests that smart card remains the most secure implementation of a content security
However, a card-less solution in some cases relies on a special HW that is embeded in the device in which case you can achieve a similar level of security. But in a way you just put a smart card equivalent in the device
All content seucrity solutions rely on a combination of HW, SW and network
But the difference is in the know-how and the experience in the field just like a good chef can do better food with the same ingredients
What is the model for payment of the content customers purchase? e.g. when a customer decides to purchase a film, what systems control the availability of the credit and then what system delivers the content?
today we have multiple PF and two main use cases :
1/ Subs VOD => IT gives the info to the PF, and customer may play the VOD on different screens
2/ classical VOD : customer buy it on one screen, and play it on this screen only
with convergence we target :
1/ Subs VOD => be more flexible on customer device registration, decrease contents management cost…
2/ classical VOD : offer “buy it on one screen, and play it on any screen” (if content contracts compatible)
Our systems are pre integrated with clearing houses, Operator’s post-paid and pre-paid systems. We manage the billing process of the transaction and of course the delivery of the movie to the client (including intergartion with the CAS sytem to deliver the entitlements, and with the Video Server system to provide the “address” of the movie).
am sorry i came in rather late, i still do not understand silos, how do i get more details about it? thanks
you’ll be able to watch the webinar later, and we’ll be happy to set up a call with you later to further explore this with you.
Hello,
I have a question if the mobile apps are delivered as a part of the platform or they are developped by the customers idependantly? Or is there a sdk delivered including some mobile DRM solution?
We can provide both an off the shelf mobile apps, or provide the SDK to create it on your own. reg. the secure player – it should be pre-integrated with our DRM solution.
In some countries the service has not taken off, what do you see are challenges from the technology perspective on why the services hasnt taken off.
It can be lack of content because in TVE content is still king.
From a technological perspective, providing a TV-centric user-experience across all devices is not an easy task and requires smart TVE solution to deal with the complexity of rights schemes/restrictions, diversity/fragmentation of technology among devices while keeping the user-experience as relaxing as should be is a challenge.
Managing new business models is also a techological challenge (that we solve with our FRM Flexible Right Management which is an operator centric Digital locker system)
With so many multiple platforms in play where do you see the proper hosting domain for all the consumer data analytics which will be needed to support next gen targeting. Is all that now going to migrate into the cloud ?
To day, our heterogeneous platforms are operated in our private network (one for one country).
The data are highly protected in our “corporate cloud”.
The merge of the logs is complex, and we don’t do as much as we could with them.
We hope to simplify this with convergence on one single technology, and do extract more value.
I understand all the regulatory , legal and other complications in extracting commercial value from consumer ( viewing ) data. Do you see a future where major operators might outsource this to specialist niche Companies like ours or are the sensitivities so strong that you will keep it in house ?
Speaking from the side of the vendor, it is our experience that the commercial usage of consumer viewing data is indeed an extremely hot potato. It is hard enough for them to be able to rationalize using the data for their internal marketing campaigns; “selling” the data is unimaginable. I assume that by offering to “outsource” this, you might be interested in aggregating data from several operators; in the current environment this would entail an “anonymization” of the data to a level that might make it unusable.
You mentioned the complexities of the headend required to manage the streams, what is the architecture used and is it specific to the solution?
When you say TV Everywhere, is it global, or everywhere in your country of subscription / residence
Our operations are mainly mono country (ie France for French cust, Spain etc.)
We have not yet planed to have a multicountry or global system for a multicountry offer.
We implement some geoloc, related to our content contracts (our content contracts are mono country contracts).
It is really up to the service provider and based on the content rights which terrtories to serve and this can be managed on per piece of content
Our solution manage geographical filtering among other criteria for authorizing or not a viewing session in compliance with business rules and contractual restrictions by right owners
Excellent point! The early concepts of TV Everywhere were limited to the customers residence due to constraints (rights limitations and technical limitations). In the long run, subscribers will have no patience for this limitation and will not accept it. Therefore, TV Everywhere must be everywhere. The platform takes care of such issues as geo-filtering in order to allow global “travelling”, pending content rights. As long as the subscriber is within the footprint of the available rights, they should be able to access “their” TV content.
Hi, Would you be able to tell us how the geo-filtering works from a technical point of view? Is it based on MAC address or IP address or another system? Can it be circumvented via the user setting up a VPN?
Geo filtering is based on limiting or allowing specific IP addresses to access the system. for example you can allow access to devices that are connected from Sweden only or you can limit connection from other Scandinavian countries.
What STB partners do you work with, and is there any dependence on the STB, or anything that the STB can add?
One of the beauty of our TVE solution is its openness. Viaccess and Orca have a rich ecosystem of certified STBs that can fit various deployment requirements (based on feature, price etc.). We would be glad to understand your requirements more in detail to advise on the right STB.
As a content provider of a 24/7 channel, like all content providers we are faced with content rights challenges having our content over multiple devices. By implementing one central unified service platform that will serve multiple devices over different types of networks, will you be putting in place technology and manpower to black out certain content on certain devices?
This is exactly the purpose of the Unified service plaform: Giving you all means to let you in control of which device can watch which content via which network for how long, how many time etc, etc
As per our 36° Content Security Strategy, we will provide all required technology, services and support
For more details please feel free to contact us after the webinar
As a provider to Orange, which manages a complex service matrix over different devices, we have been faced with many interesting challenges of this type. The TVE Solution’s Unified Service Platform allows the Administrators to apply a variable rights matrix with respect to the devices that are allowed to view the content. Moreover, as the content protection technology that is supported may vary from one device to the other, the Unified Service Platform routes the key request to the proper encryption technology.
For those who are experiencing problems streaming this video, use this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7VW8Zyo9OA
Hello,
We began to operate on multiple screens some years ago (it was a main point of Orange CEO strategy).
Today, we manage this on multiple systems, coping with the complexity of our content contracts + the complexity of the systems.
This leads to costs + operation difficulties + limitations.
We plan to rationalise that with one single platform for orchestring content management + orchestring customer service.