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Broadcasting the 2012 Olympic Games
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05 NewsAll the latest industry news and analysis
12 Analyst cornerIHS Screen Digest’s Guy Bisson notes there is still much room for channel brands to expand their HD offers across Europe
14 HbbTVAn analysis of the latest rollouts and developments of the hybrid broadcast broadband standard
18 COVER STORY - 2012 Olympics specialWhat can we expect from the first ‘Digital Olympics’ on the multi-screen, online and interactive fronts?
21 OpinionRed Bee Media’s Andy Bryant argues that content dis-covery needs art not just algorithms
22 Executive interviewCSI speaks to Verizon’s Brian Whitton about the cus-tomer experience and support challenge the operator faces with connected TVs
24 Advertising and ad insertionCable sees targeted advertising as a way of multi-screen monetisation, with tablets being the sweet spot
26 Business intelligenceThe value of data has exploded for broadcasters in the multi-channel environment. What needs to be done?
28 Show reviewOver-the-top strategies and other key takeaways from this year’s IP&TV World Forum
35 Energy efficiencyAn inside look at HGI’s energy saving work
EditorGoran Nastic
Commercial managerTiro Bestonso
Design and productionMatt Mills (Manager)Jason TuckerMatleena Lilja-PellingKeem Chung
Regular contributorsAdrian Pennington, Philip Hunter, David Adams, Stephen Cousins, Joe O’Halloran
CirculationJoel Whitefoot (Manager) AccountsMarilou Tait, Lynta Kamaray
Editorialtel +44(0)20 7562 2401fax +44(0)20 7374 [email protected]
Advertisingtel +44(0)20 7562 2427fax +44(0)20 7374 [email protected]
Subscriptionstel +44 (0)20 7562 2420fax +44 (0)20 7374 [email protected] www.csimagazine.com
Subscription ratesPer year: Europe £88; UK £68; Rest of World £98. Cheques payable to Perspective Publishing Limited and addressed to the Circulation Department Printed by Buxton Press
Managing DirectorJohn WoodsPublishing DirectorMark EvansISSN 1467-5935
Perspective Publishing3 London Wall BuildingsLondonEC2M 5PDwww.perspectivepublishing.com
Editor’s report:“If content is keen then metadata is queen.” This is how one executive neatly summed up content discovery, which is an issue facing the entire industry. As users are increasingly faced with the ‘paradox of choice’ - whereby the proliferation of content across channels, devices and platforms is actually leading to frustration and lower customer satisfaction - it can be argued that the content discovery experience is flawed. This is a fascinating field, where
EPGs, search and recommendation and now second devices have a large role to play. An interesting argu-ment on how we can bring some artistic creativity to the science can be found on p21. In different ways, data is crucial to broadcasters too. Channel 4 recognises this fact by calling data the new oil. The fear is that if broadcasters don’t get to grips with it then a company like Google will come in and eat their lunch. An expert view on how they can capture and analyse this data effectively is offered on p26. Goran Nastic
Contents
CSI is audited by ABC
news in brief
German DTH fully digital
Satellite TV is purely digital in
Germany following switch-off of
analogue television and radio
signals. Satellite operator Astra
first broadcast analogue TV
channels in the late 1980s and
the capacity on 19.2° East will
now be used for new digital TV
channels and HDTV services. A
large proportion of cable
meanwhile remains on analogue
(only 38% of subscribers were
digital as of April 2011) with
cable operators in no rush to
digitise their networks. Many are
resisting the DSO in order to gain
an advantage by providing access
to analogue secondary and
tertiary TV screens in the home.
There is no set date for cable to
go 100% digital.
HighTV is launching the world’s first
3D channel over a terrestrial network
later this year in Italy.
Italy was chosen as the first
country for the DTT 3D channel
because of its high penetration of 3D
enabled TV sets. According to
HighTV CEO Erik Klein some 1.5
million such units have been sold
there and expects this to grow to 2.5
million as a result of the Olympics
and European football
championships.
Overall, Klein estimates that
around 8% of TV sets globally
currently have 3D capability while
over 60% of sets over 40 inches are
3D enabled. He labels 3D as being as
significant a development as the
introduction of colour television.
“3D brings depth which is a whole
different perception that feels you
can engage with characters on a
different level,” Klein said at
Telenor’s press event in Oslo.
He admits though that there is a
need to understand who is watching
3D channels at home and that the
broadcaster is engaged in analysing
viewership habits.
The company will launch the
Italian channel over the country’s
DVB-T2 network with a local partner
in the next two to three months, also
making it one of the first localised
3D channels.
Established in 2006 (around the
time that Avatar was in post
production), HighTV has a library
of 400-500 hours of 3D content,
spanning genres such as sport,
cooking, fitness, reality and travel.
The channel is broadcast via
seven satellites in 37 countries,
with Telenor, UPC and Dish in the
US being the biggest platforms to
carry it. Another 11 deals have
been signed at MIP TV, with
services to start in Korea, China
and Canada.
HighTV is also looking towards
holographic TV and has two
production teams that have created
around ten hours of content. The
problem, according to Klein, is that
holographic requires a 360 degree
production to see the front and
back, which means shooting from
six different angles.
First 3D over DTT to launch in Italy
News
news in brief
New Twitter record set
The Champions League match
between Chelsea and Barcelona
has overtaken Superbowl to
become the most tweeted
sporting event. The semi-final
second-leg at the Nou Camp
peaked at 13,684 messages per
second, which beat the previous
record of 12,233 tps set during
February’s Super Bowl between
the NFL’s New York Giants and
New England Patriots. According
to Twitter, the all time record
belongs to a broadcast of the film
Castle in the Sky in Japan, which
saw a peak of 25,088 tweets per
second, showing the popularity of
TV programmes on the social
media site.
Netflix looks to new Euro market
Online video streaming service
Netflix has moved to a Q1 loss as
a result of greater costs related to
its international expansion but it
hasn’t stopped the company from
looking to launch in one more
European country before the end
of the year. It is thought that of
the three million new subscribers
Netflix gained through its
international launch around two
million are estimated to have
come from the UK and Ireland
due to the poor performance in
Latin America. Although Netflix
still expects it will take two years
to reach sustained profits as it
builds up its network in Europe,
the company said it will target an
additional European market
before end-2012 (with speculation
mounting around Germany).
CSI multi-screen
Make sure you visit us at
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minute news and analysis.
06 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
News
Elisa launches Euro OTT serviceFinland’s Elisa has become the
latest service provider to embrace
over-the-top by launching a TV
Everywhere service targeting
extreme sports enthusiasts
across Europe.
The EpicTV offer, which
launches this month across 15
European countries, will provide
live and on-demand content,
ranging from three-minute clips
to films, focused on extreme
sports such as surfing,
snowboarding, base jumping,
mountain biking and climbing.
It is available as a subscription
only service priced at EUR6.90
a month.
EpicTV will launch initially on
PCs, iPads and Samsung connected
TVs, with Android iOS platforms
and other smart TV brands to follow
in July. Microsoft PlayReady and
Widevine DRMs are providing the
multi-platform security for the
initiative. Users can register a
number of devices to view the
content on each account with
authentication performed via
Facebook or credit card.
The service is powered by Tvinci’s
back-end OTT platform, which
handles functions such as DRM and
content management, EPG
customisation, social, payments,
analytics and other services.
According to Adina Eckstein, VP of
product delivery at Tvinci, the
company has won three OTT
contracts since IBC with the latest, a
European satellite operator, to be
announced soon.
Having operated a managed IPTV
network since 2006, this is Elisa’s
first foray into the OTT arena,
which service providers are
increasingly using to widen their
geographic reach to new and niche
audiences. The company estimates
there is a European market of over
ten million affluent extreme sports
fans it is targeting, delivered via
commercial third party CDNs across
European territories.
New products certified by Cable EuropeThe Cable Europe Labs Certifi-
cation Board has certified Euro-
DOCSIS products from Motorola,
Cisco, Samsung and Technicolor
under its latest certification wave.
Products that successfully passed
testing by the independent test
lab Excentis used by the industry
group, and which are ready
for deployment in European mar-
kets are:
• Samsung SMT-G7440 –
EuroDOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem in
a Set Top Box
• Cisco EPC2325R2 –
EuroDOCSIS 2.0 Cable Modem
• Samsung SMT-C5120 –
EuroDOCSIS 2.0 Cable Modem in a
Set Top Box
• Technicolor TC7200 –
EuroDOCSIS 3.0 + EuroPacketCable
1.5 EMTA
Moreover, a CMTS from Motorola
- BSR64000 has been granted a ‘veri-
fied for base feature set’ label follow-
ing the release of testing results from
Certification Wave 46. It is the first
ED3.0 CMTS to get a European
label. Under this approach, vendors
can submit for ‘base’ feature set plus
other feature sets, such as IPv6,
upstream and dynamic channel bond-
ing and multicast, among others.
Also during Q1, a cable modem
from AVM, a Samsung set-top box
and an EMTA from Ubee Interactive
have been certified.
Cable Europe Labs said this is
contributing towards achieving the
broadband goals laid down in the
Digital Agenda for Europe, with
further EuroDOCSIS solutions
expected.
EUR15bn spent on Euro TV contentEuropean commercial broadcasters
spend more than EUR15 billion a
year on television content, according
to new research.
The study, commissioned from
the E-media Institute by the
Association of Commercial
Television in Europe (ACT), found
the aggregate spend in 15 countries
on programming was equivalent to
EUR41 million.
France invested about EUR5.4bn
on content and the UK EUR6.3bn,
where BSkyB alone paid out
EUR2.3 billion. Overall, around 40%
of broadcasters’ revenues are
reinvested in next season’s schedule.
The study also found the number
of non-linear services, such as VoD
platforms and catch-up TV, more
than doubled from 146 at the end
of 2008 to 314 in 2011 although
no figures were given on spend in
these areas.
ITV to bring Shazam enabled adsA deal between Shazam and ITV will see the
broadcaster become the exclusive distributor for
Shazam functionality in the UK broadcast
advertising space as part of its drive towards closer
second screen integration.
Under the deal, ITV Commercial will be the
exclusive UK sales force offering
advertisers the chance to have
their traditional 30 second TV
spots Shazam-enabled with the
media discovery company’s
audio-recognition technology
for the first time as they look
to enhance their campaigns
and connect directly with
audiences.
The ten million-plus
viewers in the country who
have Shazam installed on
their smartphones, will be
able to use the app to
interact with the ads to
enter competitions, get
additional information about a brand or product,
view additional content or download free music.
Shazam already has a similar deal in place in the
US, with shows and events such as American Idol,
the Grammys and the Super Bowl, where more
than half of the advertisers in chose to enable
their ads.
“Shazam’s audio-recognition
technology is at the forefront of
the second screen movement
which is transforming the way
consumers interact with content
including advertising,” said Simon
Daglish, group commercial sales
director at ITV.
Although not ad related,
Channel 4 recently became 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 as the second screen wave hits
the industry.
SES opens door for satellite multi-screenSatellite operator SES has led the way in creating a
new IP-based satellite reception technology that
demodulates and converts satellite signals to IP for
in-home distribution.
A demo of the SAT-IP involved multi-switches
showing the distribution of satellite programmes
over various IP-based infrastructures
(CAT5 Ethernet, Power Line, Plastic Optical
Fibre and WiFi). Programme streams are
forwarded over the data network transparently,
without transcoding, using standard
network protocols.
In a SAT-IP environment, all IP-enabled devices
will be able to receive satellite programming,
enabling a true multi-screen experience.
“With SAT-IP, large varieties of satellite offers
including the most important line-up of HD
channels will be accessible for consumers on
IP-enabled devices in highest and original satellite
picture quality and without using internet
connectivity,” said Thomas Wrede, VP of
reception systems at SES.
SES is positioning the communications
protocol as a new and open standard for
manufacturers for satellite in-home distribution.
Current prototypes already allow for the reception
of up to eight programmes on eight different
screen devices at home.
The first SAT-IP based products are scheduled
to be available later this year.
• Sky Germany has won exclusive multi-screen
payTV rights for all live Bundesliga football
matches under a four year deal.
The award from the German Football League
(DFL) covers the rights for all platforms,
including those currently held across satellite,
cable and web, and adds IPTV and mobile. It
covers the upcoming 2013/14 season through to
2016/17.
On average Sky, which has over three million
subscribers, will pay a license fee of EUR485.7
million per season for the 612 live matches
per season.
Modern Times Group, meanwhile, has acquired
multi-screen rights for Champions League football
in the Czech Republic for the next three years.
Your vision...
news in brief
Hotel installs Android IPTV
A hotel in Croatia has become
the first in the world to install an
interactive IPTV system with
Android IP set-top boxes. Hotel
Dubrovnik in the capital city of
Zagreb deployed an IPTV system
from Russian company NetUP,
which allows guests to access TV
and VoD content using Android-
based IP set-top boxes from
Vestel. The solution also consists
of Cisco network management
equipment and third-party
streamers for distributing TV
signal into DVB-C and IP. A
variety of Android apps and guest
services are supported by the
system.
Sky buys Acetrax
BSkyB has acquired Zurich-based
online video service Acetrax as
the satellite broadcaster looks to
penetrate smart TVs and other
connected devices. Acetrax is a
pan-European premium VoD
operator in seven countries: the
UK, Ireland, France, Italy,
Germany, Austria and
Switzerland. It has formed
partnerships with most of the
major connected TV
manufacturers such as Samsung,
LG and Panasonic, and has
predicted that it will reach 60
million embedded Acetrax apps
across Europe by 2015.
EchoStar to close US cable
business
EchoStar Technologies is ceasing
the sale of set-top boxes to US
cable operators, choosing instead
to focus on international cable,
satellite and telecoms markets.
The cost-competitive nature of
the US cable market was said to
offer “insufficient revenue return
opportunities”. Similar rumours
continue around Cisco’s and
Motorola’s STB operations.
08 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
News
Canal Digital to launch follow-me TVNordic payTV operator Canal
Digital is launching one of the first
“follow me TV” services in Europe,
which will enable subscribers to
start watching video content in
one room and resume in another
after pausing.
The move is part of the compa-
ny’s strategy to increase customer
satisfaction and loyalty and reduce
churn, according to Patrik
Hofbauer, CEO of Telenor
Broadcast whose group umbrella
Canal Digital falls under. Canal
has close to one million subscrib-
ers in the Nordics, a market of
around ten million households that
is close to saturation.
The multi-room HD DVR set-top
box is being supplied by Advanced
Digital broadcast (ADB) and the ser-
vice will role out across the Nordics
in the coming months.
The Canal Digital to Go TV any-
where service recently launched,
which makes a range of content
available on multiple devices,
although the channel line-up remains
limited due to rights issues with con-
tent owners.
Hofbauer added that the company
sees social TV and companion devic-
es as other services that will drive loy-
alty. At this stage, this involves sup-
port for subscribers recommending
content to friends via Facebook, while
20,000 customers are using the
iPhone as a remote control, for
example.
Hofbauer estimates that half of
customers are online as the same
time as they are watching TV so tap-
ping into this proportion that is
multi tasking is a big opportunity
going forward. “It is something we
need to understand and develop our
business for,” he said, speaking at
Telenor’s international press day.
DOCSIS 3 drives CMTS port growthEvery region worldwide saw CMTS
port growth in 2011, as cable opera-
tors worldwide continue their
DOCSIS 3.0 transformations,
according to Infonetics Research
Global CMTS port shipments hit
record levels in 4Q11 and are up
48% for the full year. However,
CMTS revenue is not keeping pace
with port shipments because revenue
per downstream continues to drop
(down 31% in 2011), as more high-
density downstream-only cards are
introduced and as the market contin-
ues to shift towards license-based
upgrades in regions outside North
America.
Combined CMTS and edge QAM
revenue grew 5% in Q4, ending the
year on a high note, up 17% from the
year-ago quarter. For the full year,
CMTS and edge QAM manufacturer
revenue grew 6% to $1.7 billion.
Cisco is the only of the top four
CMTS vendors that gained CMTS rev-
enue market share last year, growing
from 51% to 59% of the global market.
French group tackles UHD TVFrench research consortium 4EVER
has established a three-year project
to advance the technologies
supporting the production and
delivery of Ultra High Definition
Television, in the process taking in
such things as HEVC compression
and increased colour depth.
The research programme was
launched with the aim of
reducing the bandwidth
required for the delivery of
ultra-HDTV using High
Efficiency Video Coding
(HEVC), also known as
H.265, the next-generation
compression standard
developed jointly by ISO/
MPEG and ITU-T/ VCEG.
Currently a draft, it is expected to
be submitted for final standard-
isation approval in January 2013 as
MPEG-H Part 2.
Initially a large part of the
research effort will be invested in the
evaluation of the
television experience enhancement
that can be offered from not just
higher resolutions, but also higher
frame rates, increased colour depth,
surround sound, and more.
4EVER members include Orange
Labs, Ateme, France Télévisions,
GlobeCast, TeamCast, Technicolor
and Doremi, as well as the
Télécom ParisTech and INSA-
IETR University labs.
The consortium expects to
demonstrate a first complete ultra
HD production and transmission
chain within one year, and several
field trials are planned throughout
the 4EVER project for sports events,
music concerts and other live shows.
Smart TVs need USP - surveyA new UK survey has confirmed that most people
buy a smart TV with no specific intent to actually
connect the device to the internet.
Only one third (37%) of British consumers
planning to buy a smart TV said that connecting it
was a factor in buying one, with the most
common reason being to have a more up-to-date
TV, according to YouGov.
Moreover, only half (53%) of smart TV owners
correctly identified a smart TV as a TV that
directly connects to the internet without the need
of another device, while a quarter of owners have
never used it to connect to the internet.
Again, quality is by far the most important
criteria: among people who already a smart TV
picture quality is cited by 96% of owners as the
most important feature, followed by the size of the
screen (93%) and sound quality (89%).
“The ‘smart’ part of a Smart TV is not yet the
main reason people are buying them; it’s more
about future-proofing their TV set in the same way
that lots of people bought HD TVs even before
HD channels were available. We see the profile
(in terms of tech adoption) as very similar
between iPad and Smart TV owners at the
moment,” said Dan Brilot, YouGov’s media
consulting director.
To this end, manufacturers need to understand
what the universal selling point (USP) of a smart
TV is, he added.
Sony leads the way in terms of devices sold,
followed by Samsung (33%) then Panasonic
(16%). However, almost two-thirds (62%) of
people planning to purchase one in the next 12
months are considering Samsung. Some 26% say
they plan to buy an Apple TV, even though the
manufacturer has not yet launched one.
In terms of usage, over a third of smart TV
owners say they now spend more time watching
TV through on-demand services, such as BBC’s
iPlayer, than they do watching traditional linear
TV. This behaviour is even more pronounced
amongst 18-24 year olds with a Smart TV, 53% of
whom say the majority of TV they watch is
on-demand – as well as smart TV owners with pre-
school children (51%).
Cablecom in new channel spreeUPC’s Swiss subsidiary UPC Cablecom is launching
26 new digital TV channels, including six in HD, in
what is the largest activation project in the compa-
ny’s history.
The channels will be added starting 5 June with
22 existing channels to be broadcast in HD. In
German-speaking Switzerland, two new digital
channels, RTL Nitro and Glitz HD, will be added
while 12 existing channels will be available in HD
quality in the future.
As previously announced, cablecom will be offer-
ing the three German private channels SAT.1,
ProSieben and kabel eins in HD quality for the first
time in Switzerland, as well as Swiss entertainment
channel 3+, all included in its basic Mini package.
The remaining new HD channels in German-
speaking Switzerland are the public service broad-
casters 3Sat HD, KiKa HD, WDR HD, NDR HD,
BR HD, SWR HD all included in the Mini package
along with ZDFneo HD and RTL Nitro in the
Classic package. The Comfort package will now
also include the niche channel 13th STREET
Universal in HD and the new channel for women,
Glitz, also in HD.
More than half of households in Switzerland are
digital and UPC will look to tap into this by adding
further HD channels in its line up, which has until
now consisted of between 11 and 25 channels.
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news in brief
VoD = 1% of Euro TV revenue
A new study has found that video-
on-demand only represents 1% of
total television revenues in
Europe despite recent growth.
There are estimated to be 435
individual catch-up and VoD
services available across 30
regional markets (the E30) but
they are usually ad funded or
available through public funding.
The report, led by consultancy
Attentional on behalf of the
European Commission, looked at
the implementation of the
Commission’s Audiovisual Media
Services directive. Overall TV
sector revenues have been flat at
EUR77 since a similar study in
2008 while Europe’s five largest
TV markets still generate 70% of
all revenue.
Cisco’s $5 billion purchase of NDS
underscores the industry’s shift in
focus away from set-top box hardware
towards software and services that can
help play a part in the transition to
payTV multi-screen, according to IHS
Screen Digest. As the opportunity
crystallises further, the analysts fore-
cast that the number of multi-screen
devices active on global pay-TV net-
works will rise to 303.7 million units
in 2015, from 29.5 million in 2010.
This contrasts with a relatively flat
performance of the STB market,
where the installed base of set-top
boxes will grow at a rate of only 9%
during the same period, compared to
a 59% CAGR of active multi-screen
devices.
The multi-screen device category
comprises a range of products,
including smartphones, media
tablets, portable media devices, video
game consoles, personal computers
and internet connected TVs.
“Over the long term, multi-screen
device access increasingly will
become the core metric that
determines the scale of operators’
coverage,” said Tom Morrod, senior
principal analyst of TV Technology
for IHS. “To cash in on this trend,
operators need DRM technology and
a compelling user interface (UI) that
can be ported across multiple
devices.”
On the Cisco/NDS acquisition,
Morrod notes that Cisco has
pushed hard to establish its multi-
screen solution, Videoscape, and
NDS provides key components to
support this. Security that can tie
together broadcast and broadband
content streams is vital to
maintaining value. In general, he
adds that as Google look set to sell
off Motorola’s set-top box business,
the industry may be on the cusp of
a significant shake-up of pay-TV
technology vendors.
Cisco/NDS reflects multi-screen focus
Worldwide Forecast of Multiscreen Devices Active on Pay-TV
Networks (thousands of Units)
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Source: IHS Screen Digest April 2012
HDTV is old news, right?
Been around forever. The
channel business is all
about 3D and multi-screen
delivery now. True, it’s easy
to think like that, given the
near universal uptake of
HDTV sets in UK homes, the advertising
campaigns from major operators around their HD
tiers and the launch of HD on digital terrestrial as
the UK approaches analogue switch-off. But an
analysis of the channel portfolios of major
international groups suggests the reality is a little
different.
Let’s take a little step back in time. Just like the
early days of payTV itself, the drivers for HD
channel launches centred on two key genres:
sports and movies. The reasons were not just
about consumer demand. Not only did both these
forms of content benefit most obviously from an
HD feed, but there was already a significant stock
pile of HD-ready content by the time international
pay operators launched their HD offers.
The first HD channel launches then were
focused almost exclusively on these two genres.
The next wave of launches focused on two other
key payTV driving genres, this time, those that
drive basic payTV: documentary and
entertainment. Again, both were fuelled by decent
levels of content access and a clear business case
for launch.
But what has happened since then? Certainly,
new HD channels have continued to launch:
during 2011, 144 new HD channel feeds appeared
across Europe. But an analysis of genres shows
that groups are staying firmly within their comfort
zones, with a continued focus on just the four key
genres.
Next phase: genre diversification
Launching an HD channel has always been
something of a balancing act. The increased
transmission, programming
and play-out costs coupled
with a reluctance among
platforms to increase affiliate
fees and the limited opportunity for advertising
uplift means there has to be a strong business
case for pushing forward with a new HD feed.
Nonetheless, channel providers and platform
operators seem to be missing a trick with the lack
of genre diversification that is evident across
Europe. Even among the new HD channel
launches of the major owners in 2011, it is a
struggle to find an HD channel that falls outside
these four genre areas. There are creeping signs of
change, with a handful of kids, news and lifestyle
channels that previously would not have got a
look in on the HD launch plan.
In the SD channel market, genre diversification
is something that occurs well into a group’s
lifecycle. Channel owners tend to rely on one or
two key genres for a good number of years before
growth targets demand diversification to target
new audiences and demographics. We are less
than a decade into the world of HD in Europe, so
it is perhaps not surprising that the major owners
have yet to enter this phase of diversification.
Outside of the major channel owners, a few
niche areas are becoming well served: a large
number of adult HD channels have launched
over the last two years, for example. For the
major groups, the next areas of focus seem likely
to be lifestyle, kids and cultural channels. Old
news or not, whatever route is next taken, one
thing is certain: there is plenty of growth, and
opportunity, left in the HD channel market
for those adventurous enough to take an HD leap
of faith.
Not old news yetWith 144 new HD channel feeds last year, there is still much room for brand expansion in Europe
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
12 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Childrens - 2%
Cultural - 2%
Documentary - 14%
Entertainment - 22%
Lifestyle - 1%
Movie - 32%
Music - 1%
News - 4%
Sport - 22%
HD channels by genre: major channel groups
HD channels by genre: Major international channel owners
Children’s 3
Cultural 2
Documentary 19
Entertainment 30
Lifestyle 2
Movie 43
Music 2
News 5
Sport 30
Despite some criticism from
certain quarters, HbbTV
has been accepted by
Europe’s national
broadcasters as a de-facto
standard with interest
spreading to commercial
operators and to other parts of the globe on the
back of new DRM and adaptive streaming
capabilities.
With estimates of 60 million HbbTV compliant
TV sets in Western Europe by 2014, HbbTV
appears to have settled as a ‘must have’ industry
standard. Almost every European country has
endorsed and/or adopted the standard, and the
remaining countries are trialling HbbTV or have
near-term plans to deploy it.
First demonstrated in 2009, impetus to hybrid
TV was given by 20 members of the EBU last
December who agreed to a European-wide rollout
during 2012. These included TVR (Romania),
RTE (Ireland); RAI (Italy); RTVE (Spain); TRT
(Turkey); YLE (Finland); MTV Magyar Radio
(Hungary); ORF (Austria); RTBF (Belgium);
NRK (Norway) and TVP and TVN in Poland
(see table, on next page).
“HbbTV is a standard (as a technology
solution), which is favoured by broadcasters, as
they do not lose control over the content and
environment,” says Shirlene Chandrapal, VP of
connected TV at Smartclip. “We see HbbTV as
one part of the connected TV world, which can
be described as the broadcaster-driven
counterpart to the smart TV approaches by
CE-manufacturers.”
The most mature market is Germany, which
now has a wide range of HbbTV services and
receivers in support of programming at ARD,
ZDF and Bavaria’s Bayerische Rundfunk.
German sports channel Sport1 is to use Teveo’s
HbbTV platform for distribution of its signal to
areas where the channel is not carried by the local
or regional operator and Eutelsat’s German
subsidiary, KabelKiosk, has launched a hybrid
service for cable homes. Services available
through ‘KabelKiosk choice’ include VOD and
catch-up TV, while network operators can
customise pages with regional news, RSS feeds,
clips, or marketing campaigns.
France Télévisions is backing the HbbTV
variant TNT 2.0, GlobeCast and France 24 are
launching an exploratory HbbTV service with
Orange and SES; while TF1 will launch its digital
brand MyTF1 on HbbTV this autumn.
Danish national broadcaster DR is into a year-
long pilot HbbTV-based TV anytime service
partnered with Nordija. The new service, Dr Nu,
is available via the dr.dk website and is based on
Nordija’s fokusOn middleware.
Dutch broadcasters (SBS, NPO and RTL) are
aligning in a choice of HbbTV as their standard
for hybrid connectivity. NPO is conducting
HbbTV trials on its Canal Digital satellite DTH
platform and Ziggo cable networks. These trials
will begin with Sony Bravia CTV sets with built-in
satellite tuners as well as HbbTV support,
although other leading CE manufacturers - Philips
and Samsung - plan to join the
burgeoning Dutch hybrid
market with HbbTV sets by
year end.
Spain’s public broadcaster
RTVE, Mediaset Spain and
telco Telefónica, have entered into a three-way
alliance to trial an HbbTV service, with Mediaset
España making video content available from its
internet TV portals and Telefónica adding its web
TV service, Terra TV, into the mix.
In Eastern Europe, Czech TV has teamed with
Slovak digital TV hardware producer ANTIK
Technology to test an HbbTV service with 40,000
subscribers, while Polish broadcaster TVN started
HbbTV tests in March 2012.
The UK situation is more complex but FTA
satellite service Freesat has revealed that the
second generation ‘G2’ spec for its receivers will
use HbbTV to take advantage of digital TV
chipsets being developed for that standard.
YouView, meanwhile, will launch with a
proprietary Flash-based implementation.
“Although MHEG-5 is now effectively a legacy
technology, the DTG-promoted CTV platform has
not announced deployment, no receiver
conformance regime and it seems inevitable that
this platform will morph into an HbbTV profile,”
says Keith Potter, CEO, Digital TV Labs, a
member of the HbbTV Steering Group as well as
vice chair of its Testing Group.
Major events this summer - the Olympics and
the UEFA European football championship - will
likely boost the purchase of HbbTV-ready TV sets.
The EBU is offering three white-label HbbTV
applications for the Olympics free of charge to
members, who can customise them to offer a
range of interactive services. Spain’s RTVE is one
participant in the scheme.
Aligning with other standards
It is interesting to observe the increase in the
number of operators - paid and free - reviewing
HbbTV as an evolution of their current platforms.
Growth is being partly driven by the desire to
standardise on the delivery of content and the
tools that can be used to manage them.
“A neutral platform allows these operators to
increase the range of set-top box vendors that can
supply them and allows them to bring much of
The evolution of broadcastAlready reaching maturity in Germany, HbbTV is not only set for rollout across Europe but also in other parts of the world, says Adrian Pennington
HbbTV
“We see HbbTV as one part of the connected TV world, which can be described as the broadcaster-driven counterpart to the smart TV approaches by CE-manufacturers.”
14 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
HbbTV
the specification of the product back in-house,”
observes Bob Hannent, chief technologist at
Humax, which has committed to utilising HbbTV
and OIPF-based (Open IPTV Forum)
technologies in a number of projects.
“This is an important step, given the
competitive pressures facing commercial broad-
casters today,” says Steve Morris, systems archi-
tect at ANT Software. “They wouldn’t do this if
they didn’t think it made commercial sense. It is
yet another big sign of the commitment that is
being made to HbbTV as a cross-border solution
for interactive services coming from the EBU.”
It is also the first successful standard to enable
a horizontal market for OTT services and
interactive applications. “Other than with MHP,
richness of content was until now only possible
through proprietary standards, but the evolution
of web technologies has provided a significant
platform to build bold and flexible content
services,” notes Hannent.
There are discussions intended to more closely
align HTML5 and OIPF so that content creation
for one platform can be re-used on another. The
Nordic specs for Scandinavia include HbbTV for
iTV services, which Morris expects to be an area
of significant future deployments.
Version 1.5 of the HbbTV spec, which is
partly a browser-based technology, adds support
for HTTP adaptive streaming based on the
MPEG DASH standard (which TNT 2.0 is
the first platform to deploy) for an improved
viewing experience.
This will not only improve the quality of
the content, but will also allow content providers
to protect their content with DRM technologies,
notes Peter Hutchins, product marketing
at Espial.
It also adds support for improved access to
EPG data from the broadcast, enabling
broadcasters to produce full seven-day EPGs and
manufacturers to build EPGs using HTML for
deployment across a range of receivers.
But HbbTV has to evolve and make sure it
doesn’t lag behind, warns Ye Wang, director of
product management, DTV, at software firm
Access. “We must look to HTML-5. Everything in
1.1 and 1.5 is not relevant to HTML-5 based on
feedback I have heard but it is a key element we
must incorporate.”
The DRM challenge
There remain further challenges, some common
to any system built on a public standard.
“Harmonising different approaches and different
Above and below: HbbTV-based hybrid services in France and Germany
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 15
Broadcasters committed to HbbTV
TVR Romania
RTE Ireland
RAI Italy
RTVE Spain
TRT Turkey
YLE Finland
MTV Magyar Radio Hungary
ORF Austria
RTBF Belgium
NRK Norway
Nordig Scandinavia
TF1, France 5 France
SBS The Netherlands
TVN, TVP Poland
speeds of adoption by different countries
is tricky but we can be confident that we
will find a way,” says Wang.
Although v1.5 offers an interoperable approach
to DRM, this is practically, and politically,
difficult to standardise on, “requiring at least two
vendors to be selected – that is if any at all can be
agreed upon at all,” notes Humax’s Hannent,
“The UK’s DTG in the UK has standardised
on an OIPF/HbbTV variant, but has currently
been unable to make the leap towards fixing a
content protection mechanism,” says Hannent.
The French appear to have agreed on Microsoft
PlayReady and Marlin, and the Germans are
letting the market decide on a de-facto from
content providers.”
Support of multiple DRM with a common
encryption will allow service providers to provide
secure streaming to HbbTV 1.5 sets, and is a
major step in making CTVs useful devices for pay-
TV services and VoD.
However, warns Jean-Marc Racine, managing
partner, Farncombe, retail devices are not pay-TV
devices, and the control and maintenance of the
security of the device will be a challenge. “The
industry has to take it into account and integrate
it in its operating mode. This is not yet the case,
and HbbTV and the device manufacturers
integrating it with DRMs or Ultraviolet are facing
similar challenges that will need to be addressed,”
he says.
Potter at Digital TV Labs agrees: “Unlike a
closed, vertical operator environment where
application interoperability is guaranteed by
intensive testing of a one or two proprietary STB
implementations, HbbTV applications will be
running on hundreds of
different digital TV devices
that are uncontrolled by
the operator or content
provider.
“In the UK this problem
was partially solved by a
good industry test suite via
the DTG and a strict
conformance regime tied to
the Freeview Logo, yet
writing MHEG
applications still required
lots of interoperability
testing,” says Potter.
Conformance test issues
HbbTV is planning an ‘honesty box’ conformance
system, where manufacturers self-certify their
compliance to the standard. “Many operators
completely underestimate the interoperability
problems they will encounter unless they
implement some type of manufacturer
conformance enforcement, through a logo, white
list or controlled certificate-based authentication
system,” advises Potter.
As HbbTV services begin to take off and
become increasingly more sophisticated, the need
to closely monitor the performance of the
network in order to improve customer services
and reduce churn will become more important.
“Consumers may not be able to take full
advantage of the service due to compatibility
issues with their existing hardware and software,
requiring them to upgrade their current set up,”
says Jean Schmitt a Director at JDSU. “HbbTV
does, after all, require an HD terminal device and
broadband connectivity, which may involve
additional costs.”
Getting the TV or set-top box connected to the
internet is another challenge. Until wireless
networking and other alternatives to Ethernet
such as powerline networking becomes the norm
in smart TVs and set-top boxes, connection rates
will remain low.
“The industry can’t expect users to run
Ethernet cables around their homes just to
connect their TV,” says Morris.
Work must also be done to build applications
and portals for connected TV which are simple
to use for the consumer. New features like
the Red Button which allows the start of an
OTT application directly out of a linear
streamed TV broadcast channel, combined with
DRM and streaming protocols, will enable
premium content services and support
multi-device usage.
“HbbTV can potentially offer the best of both
worlds through both ‘red button’ applications and
through manufacturer portals,” says Morris.
“Application developers and manufacturers will
need to focus on the quality of their apps, rather
than the quantity – offering a huge number of
apps in a TV portal can confuse the user rather
than helping them.”
According to Smartclips’ Chandrapal, one
theory is that populating TV screens with
suppliers’ apps will put customers off because it
complicates the viewing process. “However, we
see through fast growing traffic numbers that
consumers are attracted by apps, extending the
consumption of linear broadcast through
interactive music channels, casual games, catch-up
TV offerings or VoD stores.”
New features going forward
Long term, Farncombe’s Racine expects
connected TVs and OTT services to capture a
significant part of the viewing habits of European
consumers. “Connected devices are a fantastic
opportunity for established player to diversify
their services and attract new audience, it is also a
threat as it opens the door to competitors, and
certainly creating a clear strategy on how to
address them is more important than ever.”
Future features and standardisation of HbbTV
includes the development of open APIs that go
beyond next HbbTV releases, cloud assisted
services, and even face recognition and gesture
control, reports Schmitt.
“With strong existing alternatives including
IPTV, cable and YouTube (still the leading
provider of online video), broadcasters need to
determine what extra value employing the
additional interactivity that HbbTV services
provide will add for consumers and, indeed,
whether there’s currently sufficient market
demand to make it economically viable to invest
in,” argues Schmitt.
The technology may also go global. HbbTV has
also caught interest in the US, Japan, Australia,
China (which is conducting trials) and Malaysia,
where the imminent terrestrial DVB-T2 roll-out
has specified HbbTV.
“HbbTV is the first successful standard to enable a horizontal market for OTT ser-vices and interactive applications.”
16 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
HbbTV
Records always tumble
around an Olympic Games
and the broadcast of it is
no exception. Host
Broadcaster Olympic
Broadcasting Services
(OBS) has a mandate to
deliver more and more coverage at the best possible
quality and to be seen to pioneer new technology
to do so. This year, of course, is touted as the
‘Digital Olympics’, which more specifically
signifies that 2012 will see a tipping point in the
balance of viewing between linear TV and online
interactive services.
The dominant viewing media of course remains
TV with a total global TV audience expected of
five billion, but in mature markets streaming
media will play a major role in keeping audiences
up to date with almost every aspect of every sport
- live.
“The London Olympics are expected to fuel
broadcasters and service providers worldwide to
add significant live multi-screen and time-shifted
viewing capacity,” says ABI Research senior
analyst Sam Rosen. “Broadcasters are preparing
IP video for laptops, tablets and smartphones to
support viewing of live events while at work, as
well as augmenting their VoD capabilities to
provide audiences with control of which sports to
watch at home. Many will experiment with new
video distribution to customers including through
Facebook, HTML5 websites optimised for
multiple screens, dedicated iPad or Android apps,
and apps for connected TV products.”
Leading the charge is host broadcaster the
BBC, which will have up to 24 simultaneous live
streams running across its digital platforms. At
Beijing, it had eight. It wants to make its 2,500
hours of coverage (more than double that of any
previous Games) available across desktop
browser, mobile, connected TV and tablets.
Online this includes ‘dynamic semantic
publishing’ - a page for all 302 medal events, a
page for all 240 countries and a page for every
athlete (up to 12,000 of
them).
The 24 HD streams will be
available via BBC Sport’s
website, the BBC Red Button
service and corresponding
EPG channels and also for cable and satellite
providers. These services are being built by the
platform operators themselves in line with BBC
product, technical and user experience (UX)
designs.
“While it is significantly more complex to
design and deliver standard services for connected
TV, we are working hard to make sure our
audiences have as much choice and access as
possible on all platforms, alongside our core
digital offer on the BBC Sport website,” says Phil
Fearnley, general manager of news and knowledge
at BBC Future Media. “Over time the lines will
blur between IP and broadcast channels, and
between platform boundaries.”
“As the digital rights holder for the games, the
BBC has a responsibility to exploit the games and
our rights across all screens,” he adds. “The
London Olympics will provide the perfect
backdrop for an explosion in take-up of digital
services and in the process see digital
Going for goldTouted as the first Digital Olympics, Adrian Pennington reports on the multi-screen, online streaming and interactive initiatives due to take place during the 2012 Games
18 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Lond
on 2
012
Olympics special
Olympics special
The London Olympics will see digital consumption go mainstream Over time the lines will blur between IP and broadcast channels, and between platform boundaries.” – BBC
consumption go mainstream.”
The multimedia galleries in BBC Sports’ brand
new production facility in Salford can handle 18
streams and up to ten red button outputs
simultaneously.”
“The big future change is the move from red
button to IPTV, which 2012 will definitely boost
with multiple launches on IP platforms - but
fundamentally IP is another output,” says BBC
Sport’s technical executive, Charlie Cope. “What
matters is our ability to deliver in HD from here
(MediaCity) which we could not do from TV
Centre.”
OBS
OBS will produce 600 more hours than for
Beijing, totalling 5,600, all in HD and stored on
EVS XStoreSAN media servers. The material will
be available throughout the Games; in Beijing,
material had to be deleted every three days. Audio
will be produced in 5.1 with all channels
embedded in the HD stream.
A Broadcast Data Feed will contain a
comprehensive set of competitor information,
logging data, transmission information and event
results and scores to help broadcasters trigger
graphics, prepare schedules, and distribute
information to websites or other applications.
The broadcast compound which houses the
Technical Operations Centre (TOC) serves as the
transmission hub of the venue. All TV and radio
signals (multilateral and unilateral) will pass
through the International Broadcast Centre
facilities under the direction of OBS.
Signals related to the multilateral transmission
and the unilateral coverage are transported from
the TOC to the IBC via a contribution network of
fibre optic, radio frequency (RF), microwave and
satellite transmission facilities. The circuits of the
contribution network are received at the
Contribution Centre in the IBC and controlled,
processed and distributed by the Distribution
Centre.
Here the signals are synchronised and
processed to provide both SD-SDI and HD-SDI
video signals. Audio signals will be delayed as
required to match the video and embed the audio
into the SDI stream for rights holders requesting
digital distribution.
For new media operations OBS will provide
international signals from all of the venues in
different compressions (16-20 Mbps, 6-10 Mbps,
1.5- 2.5 Mbps, 2500-500 Kbps).
“One of the big changes is the introduction of
tablet devices into the market, almost all sales of
which have occurred since Vancouver,” notes
Mark Hyland, QuickPlay’s general manager,
EMEA. He expects the penetration of tablets,
plus the critical availability of higher resolution
content, to result in new records being set for the
volume of consumption on portable devices.
CTV
QuickPlay is a technology partner of Canada’s
Bell Media (and its subsidiary CTV) which with
Rogers Media formed a consortium to win the
rights to London 2012.
“We are building on what we achieved at
Vancouver, which in itself was built on learning
from NBC’s digital delivery of the 2008 Games,”
says Mark Silver, senior digital director. “For
Vancouver we ingested, edited and encoded clips
into a MAM in a traditional broadcast manner.
For London the intention is to create the same
content but not rely on broadcast systems for
anything other than creating the live TV product.
We will produce rough cuts from the digitally
encoded stream for 100% of our on-demand video
content and make those clips available across
devices without touching the broadcast
environment.”
“We need to produce digital-like TV, which
means ensuring that the TV pictures have a digital
story running in parallel to it,” says Silver. “We
are trying to keep users engaged in content
regardless of the platform it is viewed on so that
the two media complement each other.”
The consortium is also keen to make
complementary and contextual use of social
media so that whether audiences are watching on
TV, PC or mobile a story is told in a way that
compels them to use other digital media – TV, PC
or mobile – to find out more.
“One of the areas were we continue to struggle
is scalability,” he adds. “While OBS provides a
great deal to rights holders, the onus is still on us
for video streaming, for example, so picking a
partner which allows you to scale without
significant capital expenditure is important.”
Remote production by fibre
High profile live event productions require the
ability for uncompressed video links during the
production lifecycle. Net Insight says it has
received orders from several media service
providers to deliver its Nimbra multi-service core
switching (MSR) platform to handle video
transport between major broadcasters and the
TV/media centre.
As a specific example, the Nimbra MSR
platform will be used by Swedish telco
TeliaSonera International Carrier to deliver
remote production of the Games for clients over
its fibre-based media network. TeliaSonera is
providing broadcasters from Scandinavia, Japan,
Korea and Brazil access to eight TV studios
located at the edge of the Olympic site to create
content for their Olympic coverage.
From the studio facilities, broadcasters will be
able to take live studio feeds, routed over
TeliaSonera’s network, across borders to a
centralised location within the broadcaster’s
headquarters.
“This saves money and time in terms of not
having to send an OB truck and OB production
team out on-site,” says the telco’s UK MD Dan
Pope. “Studio personnel can access content
anywhere, on an as-needed basis, enabling the
studio crew to remotely control, produce and edit
media content seamlessly over a virtual studio
network.”
The solution is able to provide a real-time, low
latency network technology that enables
centralised production and remote workflows with
the same quality as if they were on site.
“People have done this on metro area fibre, but
this will be the largest distance anyone has done
long haul. When you look at this concept in detail
we are providing an exact replica of what would
normally be done in an OB truck. Graphics and
other parts of the process have typically been
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 19
added remotely but the difference here is that
literally every single function in a truck can and
has been moved to wherever you want it. You can
only do so on a fibre-based network and
compressing using JPEG-2000 (not MPEG4).
Even though a 4-camera production does use up a
bit more bandwidth, JPEG-2000 is incredibly
suitable for this sort of application because of its
low latency and minimal delays.”
The latency between London and Stockholm
over fibre, argues Hope is “the odd millisecond.
London to New York around 70ms and further
afield 300-350ms. By contrast, satellite would
be longer.”
NBC’s multi-screen delivery
NBC will deliver its most extensive Olympics
coverage to viewers this Summer, with all events
streamed in real time on at least one NBC
platform (broadcast, cable, or digital). Live
streams will be available across NBC’s mobile
platforms, offering 360-degree coverage. Helping
the broadcaster achieve this are a clutch of
Harmonic storage and transcoding products.
Harmonic is providing Omneon MediaGrid
shared storage systems and ProMedia Carbon
enterprise transcoding software to NBC
Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group,
during its coverage of the 2012 London Olympics.
The media storage and transcoding systems will
enable NBC Olympics to quickly create content
for NBCOlympics.com, mobile devices, and IPTV
and VOD services.
To ensure a fast turnaround for on-demand
content, NBC Olympics will use a ProMedia
Carbon transcoding farm to generate the high-
quality multiformat video delivered on-demand to
TVs, PCs, and mobile devices.
MediaGrid storage systems will operate with
Avid edit and media management platforms to
facilitate a file-based highlights production
workflow in which multiple editors can instantly
access content.
Incoming HD content from various venues will
be recorded on Sony XDcam XDS-PD1000
systems and transferred along with a low-res proxy
to a 288-TB MediaGrid at the International
Broadcast Centre. Simultaneously, those full-
resolution recordings will be replicated and
transferred by Harmonic’s ProCast IP
acceleration solution over a 10G circuit to a 432-
TB MediaGrid system at NBC’s ‘30 Rock’ facility
in New York City. In both London and New York,
ProMedia Carbon will perform transcoding of
content on the MediaGrid systems.
Avid’s Interplay media asset management
system provides access to proxy versions of newly
captured content for shotlist creation, as well as
extensive live logs and stats, scoring, and timing
information embedded as metadata. The resulting
shotlists will be sent out to distribution outlets or
delivered to edit rooms when needed for
broadcast.
In addition to the MediaGrid and ProMedia
Carbon systems at the IBC and 30 Rock, NBC
Olympics will use 72-TB MediaGrid systems along
with ProMedia Carbon transcoders at the three
largest venues – track and field, gymnastics, and
swimming — integrated with EVS XT servers to
offload content over a 1-Gbps connection,
enabling the broadcaster to keep event footage
readily available over the course of the
competition.
Ericsson is also providing a range of products
to NBC Olympics including MPEG-4 AVC
encoders, receivers, multiplexers and satellite
modulators as well as a team of support engineers
in both London and New York.
TV is king though
Even though the Games is a multi-device event,
the TV broadcast platform is the most important
one for the broadcasters, points out Simon
Farnsworth, head of contribution services at
GlobeCast. “This time, you are going to see more
data feeds being delivered, such as live scoring
and results. These data feeds allow broadcasters
to do more with that information back at their
base - perhaps with enhanced graphics or
interactive platforms for connected devices such
as an iPad app that can show video alongside
scores and other information,” he says.
Recent research of 2,000 people undertaken by
UK DTT platform Freeview reinforces this idea,
indicating that what consumers want most are
technologies that enhance current television
viewing behaviour and give the viewer a more
personalised experience. Catch-up, TV anytime
and an enhanced EPG came top of the wish list.
3D viewing and mobile TV, meanwhile, are
considered less appealing but still “nice to have”.
“In the melee of the television world, it’s often
easy to get caught up in industry hype on the
latest fad. We must make sure that technology
isn’t running ahead of consumers in terms of
what they actually want,” warns Freeview MD Ilse
Howling.
Once all is said and done, it will be interesting
to see what proportion of the Games is viewed
across each device type, platform, live and
on-demand, once these figures are released after
the event. Only then can claims of a first truly
Digital Olympics be judged.
20 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Olympics special
3D OlympicsWhile it has polarised opinion, 3D technology should enhance the overall experience and lends itself well to certain Olympic sports.
To this end, the 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 100m final, as well as a highlights package at the end of each day.
Eurosport will broadcast more than 100 hours of 3D programming over the course of the event, with payTV broadcasters Sky and Virgin gaining from the content.
In the US, Panasonic and NBC will partner to make the Games available in 3D to all US distributors who carry Olympic coverage on cable, satellite and telco, the first time that the Games will be distributed in the US in 3D. The 3D broadcasts, which will be produced by OBS and shown on next-day delay, will span multiple competitions throughout the Games, including the opening and closing ceremonies, gymnastics, diving and swimming.
Is it just me or does working in TV these
days require mastery of an ever-increasing
barrage of new technical concepts?
Content discovery is emerging as one of
the major themes in our industry and
within a couple of minutes of exploring it
on Google my screen was swamped with
terms like flexible API, TV-centric app,
recommender system tools, collaborative filtering
and search algorithms.
I turned to good old Wikipedia for clarity: “As
operators compete to be the gateway to home
entertainment, personalised television is a key
service differentiator”. That sums it up nicely,
along with the neat observation from C21’s
Jonathan Webdale after the recent CES show in
Vegas that “if there was one thing that stood out…
it was the fact that the internet and television are
becoming one”.
As the content discovery gold rush intensifies
(and, to declare an interest, Red Bee Media has
just launched its own set of services in this space
under the RedDiscover banner), I believe the key
question is this: to what extent will the consumer
experience be shaped by an artful blend of
innovative technologists and brilliant designers?
In a session recently with media researchers
Decipher, their MD Nigel Walley made the point
that a few years ago UK broadcasters and
platforms tended to abdicate responsibility for
innovation in this area to “future media” or VoD
teams, with the “artists” responsible for creativity
and brands getting a bit detached. As we rapidly
reach the point at which all producers,
broadcasters, platforms and device manufacturers
need their own strategies and solutions to help
viewers search, get recommendations and find
their content, the balance needs to be redressed.
In the words of Google’s executive chairman, Eric
Schmidt, in Edinburgh, we “need to bring art and
science back together”.
I believe that the winners in content discovery
will not just be those with the whizziest
algorithms but those who recognise the
importance of what Jane Cunningham and
Phillippa Roberts call ‘The Aesthetic Code’. Their
book Inside Her Pretty Little Head explores the
differences between men and women when it
comes to decision making. Writing about female
motivation and what it means for marketing
(which is, perhaps, a helpful antidote to the
traditionally male-dominated world of
technology), they say: “The aesthetics of
something have a profound appeal that goes way
beyond the systematic and the conscious”.
Services that inspire
The market is in its infancy but, for inspiration,
iPad users can already turn to Fanhattan
(fanhattan.com), a “digital entertainment
discovery service”. Its elegant user experience
(UX) design helps you delve deeper and deeper
into multiple layers of content in a really fluid and
intuitive way. Even the most casual browsing can
take you seamlessly from episode details of a
show to a simple array of viewing options,
Metacritic reviews, social media feeds, cast bios
and other relevant material, without ever making
you feel lost. It is a wonderfully immersive
experience that makes it easy to discover new
content and new contexts. Another inspiring iPad
app is yap.TV, which enables you to log in via
Facebook and interact with your friends and
fellow fans via a visually rich EPG.
At Red Bee Media we’re seeing an increasing
number of advertisers learning from media brands
and creating their own content portals with
innovative UX design. A good example is
Mercedes-Benz.tv, which successfully employs a
“timeline” interactive pattern that allows users to
browse though a surprisingly large library of video
content via fluid scrolling or navigation buttons
(eg, Style, Motorsport or TV ads) to jump to key
points/areas within the timeline. Users also have
the ability to re-organise the content along the
timeline or filter it for greater personal relevance.
Staying with the iPad, we can also draw
inspiration from the ways in which magazine apps
like Wired, GQ and Flipboard have been
executed, allowing something that feels quite
familiar to be extended with additional interactive
functionality, through personalised filtering of
content or mixing more functional elements (such
as an EPG) with editorial content. iPad
magazines also offer the ability to zoom out and
get an overview of the whole magazine, then jump
back in at a different level. This shows evidence of
designers thinking hard about human interaction
and behaviour patterns rather than adding
increasingly complex functionality simply because
technology enables it.
Returning to Wikipedia’s description of
Content Discovery, the “key service differentiator”
will not just be the technically ingenious
personalisation underpinning the new gateways to
entertainment but the brand understanding,
creativity and design artistry applied to the user
experience.
Andy Bryant is director of creative at Red
Bee Media
It’s in the blendContent discovery needs art not just algorithms, argues Andy Bryant
Opinion
www.csimagazine.com January-February 2012 21
GN: Tell me a little
about your multi-
screen strategy.
BW: Our platform
for payTV is FiOS.
Over that we offer
managed broadcast
linear and live TV,
as well as managed
VoD. We also offer
an app called FlexView which allows you to get
on-demand OTT content delivered to multiple
screens, TV, PC, tablets and smartphones. It also
enables users to start watching video on one
device and continue on another.
As a starting point, 26 of our linear TV
programmes are also delivered over our CDN so
subscribers can watch on devices like the Xbox, as
a connected app (Ed: Verizon uses Velocix CDN
equipment). The 26 channels were launched in
December 2011, and the number will grow.
This multi-screen approach aims to ensure that
FiOS subs don’t churn but also acts as a potential
opportunity to be a sales lead for penetrating
additional subscribers and market share.
GN: What do you see as the main
challenge or barrier to Verizon’s –
and other operators’ – presence on
connected TVs?
BW: It’s about managing the experience to the
end-user. So now if the set-top box were to go
away physically and be replaced by some software
that’s in TV, now we have to make sure that the
same level of rigor is carried forward on certifying
and testing and qualifying that software in the TV
so that it behaves in functionality like a set-top.
Because if it doesn’t, if the customer is having
issues, say bugs, the TV resets, or there is a loss of
video quality, who are they going to call? They
will call the operator, someone like Verizon; we’ll
get that phone call. The effect of that is to drive
cost back into our business. So just because I see
a nice slide that says the STB is going away, it
may not necessarily be a case of seeing savings.
You really have to be guarded. Verizon is a
large company, with thousands of technicians; we
have to train them to support, maintain and
debug STBs, but at least we only have five or six
models to worry about. If all of a sudden all that
software goes into a TV, the technicians have to
be trained to support all those TVs - that’s hun-
dreds – so obviously our operating expenses could
increase if we have to become experts from a cus-
tomer care perspective on all these TVs.
GN: So you think service providers will
invariably bear the brunt of such support
issues, rather than the CE makers?
BW: That could be an outcome and if that were
to be the case it would undermine the rate of
adoption in displacement of set-tops for software
–based clients in TVs. So for this emerging
model, for market opportunity to really take off, it
will be important for TV/CE manufactures to
understand and adopt the approach of hardening
and making resilient their TV and the functionali-
ty that represents the set-top so that we have same
level of reliability and our customers get the same
experience. If that doesn’t happen then the cost
structure becomes in doubt, the customer experi-
ence becomes questionable and that would poten-
tially thwart the growth of the market.
GN: IMS has forecast that 80% of CTVs
will have integrated WiFi by 2016. Do you
think this will get people to connect their
sets more or is there a wider issue here?
BW: It could stimulate usage, but I also think
it’s a potential risk. When our customers are pur-
chasing payTV quality they expect high quality
and a seamless experience. WiFi is an unlicensed
frequency and this is where technologies like
MoCA help out. You could then use coax to deliv-
er the OTT service without the fear of service
impairment, I don’t know of any CTVs that have
integrated MoCA but know that those discussions
are ongoing between the CTV and chip makers.
GN: PayTV cord cutting:
are you a believer?
BW: No I’m not. I think
cord cutting got a considerable
amount of notoriety or
visibility in the press. It was
distorted because of the
marketplace conditions, the economy was in a
poor situation. Cord cutters, especially those at
university, are easy to spot as potential adopters
of only OTT viewing. However, they are using
tablets, PCs, laptops and such personalised
devices, but as they graduate and start families,
the idea of them sitting in their living room
continuing the same lifestyle is unlikely. I think
ultimately we will see today’s so-called cord
cutters are just tomorrow’s MSO/MVPD
consumer, so I don’t see this as an issue.
GN: Do you potentially see payTV
providers going more towards a la carte
offerings, either to counter the potential
OTT threat or for other reasons?
BW: A lot of what’s happening with OTT is
stimulated not so much by technology adoption;
rather its catalyst is tied back to the cost of the
bundled payTV services. And as that cost
continues to get more expensive, growing
considerably faster than inflation, I think the
conditions could be there for a la carte to
emerge as a possible outcome. This is my own
personal view although our CEO did recently
make references to the potential of such a la
carte offerings.
Supporting multiple screensVerizon’s executive director of access technologies, Brian Whitton, tells Goran Nastic of the customer experience and support challenge the operator faces with connected TVs
Executive interview
22 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
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Targeting and personalisation
are going to be critical for
success in the multi-screen
era where content is
increasingly both time and
place shifted. So far the
emphasis for multi-screen,
and to an extent catch-up TV as well, has been on
combating churn and holding up ARPU, and
therefore halting revenue decline rather than
opening new sources of it. But as the volume of
viewing on alternative screens grows, so will
opportunities for new revenues that operators
cannot afford to miss.
Targeting will be crucial for all the new revenue
opportunities, both for upselling content and
delivering adverts that are much more relevant for
the viewer. Both require the same infrastructure
even if the business rules are slightly different,
capable of selecting adverts or promotions
according both to the context of the surrounding
content and the identity of the viewer. This
applies equally whether the operator is promoting
its own services, or inserting an advert for a
third party.
There are several challenges to overcome on
the way. These are not principally technical since
most of the underlying standards and mechanisms
are now more or less complete, but relate to the
business model and the rate of growth in viewing
on alternative platforms.
“This is not so much a technological hurdle as
a business hurdle,” agrees Jeff Brooks, VP of
business development at Arris, whose Skyvision
Ad Manager platform is being enhanced to
support advanced advertising. “The main hurdle
exists in aggregating the fragmented nature of this
type of delivery, so that those purchasing the
advertisements experience the same measure of
simplicity, reach, and monetisation as today’s
linear insertions”.
But 2012 could be the year multi-screen
advertising comes of age as operators approach
the required critical mass of viewers. “An operator
needs to have a sufficient volume of viewers for a
multi-screen service before it gets interesting from
an advertising perspective,” says Gidi Gilboa,
senior product marketing manager for advertising
solutions at NDS (which was incidentally recently
acquired by Cisco primarily for its content
security and multi-screen software capabilities,
including its dynamic addressable advertising
platform). “We’ve now started to see this happen
in some deployments. In this respect, advertising
will become more important
in multi-screen environments
going forward as eyeballs shift
to this new type of viewing.”
Operators need to be prepared for this even if
they are not inserting adverts yet, in order to
avoid losing out on revenue when the time comes,
and ensure they do not fall behind competitors in
the emerging market for targeted ads. This means
having the platform in place, with critical
mechanisms being measurement of ad
engagement, insertion, addressability, and
campaign management. Measurement will be
needed whether the aim is to present specific ads
for single screen viewing with one-to-one targeting,
or just to replicate the ads of the main broadcast
stream, exploiting multiple screens as alternative
points of access. Either way, measurement is
needed to provide the evidence of engagement
that will bring in revenues.
Insertion and addressability need to support
different levels of targeting down to households
and devices as well as the less fine grained
demographic groups used at present. This goes
hand in hand with campaign management to
exploit addressability, with the aim of exploiting
the unique advantages of each platform.
“Operators leveraging these technologies will
be best placed to seize the benefits of advertising
on multiple screens,” argues Gilboa. But this
raises an important question that will determine
success in multi-screen monetisation, which is
finding the right formula for targeting across the
different screen types and sizes. “The larger the
screen, then the longer viewers spend consuming
video, so we tend to talk about “snacking” on
mobile, “browsing” on tablets, and “watching” on
TV,” notes Boris Felts, vice president of product
marketing at video encoding specialist Envivio.
“On the other hand, the smaller the screen the
more interaction you see.”
The tablet may prove to be the sweet spot for
targeted advertising therefore, with enough
viewing to present brands and advertisers with an
enticing target audience, but also with ample
scope for targeting and interactivity. “The tablet
sits at an interesting crossover point between
Who needs ad insertion?Cable companies are looking to targeted advertising for multi-screen monetisation, with tablets being the sweet spot, discovers Philip Hunter
24 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Advertising
“video consumption” and “interaction” and
therefore it should be the prime candidate for
one-to-one targeted ads,” says Felts.
“It’s also important to remember that most
applications on tablets use a log-in or other form
of user authentication, so from this perspective
there are no real issues in audience targeting. The
operator will know who has logged on to a
particular app and be able to target accordingly,”
he adds.
One-to-one vs traditional targeting
Technically then one-to-one advert targeting to
smart phones, tablets and PCs is, or soon will be,
possible for most operators, but this comes back
to the business model, and the question of
whether it is desirable or likely to bring in extra
revenues for the operator. In the immediate future
one-to-one targeting is unlikely, according to
Aseem Bakshi, general manager of advertising at
SeaChange, whose Adrenalin platform brings
together the back office components needed to
deliver targeted advertising insertion for linear,
catch up, VoD and multi-screen services. This is
because SeaChange believes local ad replacement
is the most promising application for multiple
screens in the short term, complementing
traditional regional advertising on linear channels.
“Local ads delivered to multiple devices
constitute a financial opportunity for many
operators and OTT distributors,” says Bakshi.
“Although there are solid reasons for
re-transmitting linear TV to multi-screen devices,
there is greater potential for replacing local ads in
linear streams in the same manner that they are
inserted by the content distributors on a regional
basis for traditional TV.” This of course does not
require one-to-one targeting, but does exploit the
geographical location features available with IP
delivery over the Internet or mobile networks.
NDS has been musing over the same question.
“Our NDS Dynamic can do one-to-one targeting
today, especially on personal devices that are
registered, activated and authorised through our
system,” notes Gilboa. “The question is more
about the ad sales models on these platforms and
whether these will be “internet like” models with
the one-to-one targeting approach, or closer to TV
that tends to be more regional, or based on
targeting wider demographic audiences. There
is no doubt multi-screen will open new
opportunities in this respect and that we’ll see
some one-to-one approaches where it makes sense
from a business perspective.”
Some of the leading cable operators are well
placed in that they have already deployed some
targeting with ad replacement within VoD and
catch-up services, such as SeaChange’s customers
Virgin Media in the UK and Rogers Cable in
Canada. “Both operators are using their growing
VoD tier for ad or promo insertions pre-roll, post-
roll and mid-roll,” says Bakshi.
Regulatory questions are still widely to be
addresses worldwide, particularly related to
addressable one-on-one advertising, with common
consensus that this will take time. Sky’s AdSmart
technology technology, which is set to roll out in
2013, will only see occasional ad spots devoted to
addressable ads and without a healthy premium
at first.
According to Nick Adams, head of digital
development at MindShare UK, perhaps some 8%
of TV advertising revenue will come from some
form of targeting by 2016. He believes that
addressable ads will likely to appeal initially to
direct marketing organisations rather than mass
market brands.
Not a question of standards
The standards though to facilitate advert targeting
and insertion around catch up and multi-screen
are now fairly mature, with the two main
contenders being the Society of Cable
Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) 130, and
the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Video Ad
Serving Template (VAST). These are sometimes
regarded as being alternatives, and it is true cable
operators in particular will have to support both,
but there are some important differences. Both
are based on XMP protocols for encoding, but
SCTE 130 was designed for addressable
advertising across all platforms focusing mostly
on VoD and linear ad insertion, while VAST is
pitched squarely at online advertising. VAST
therefore includes guidance for handling the
leading video players including Microsoft
Silverlight and Adobe Flash.
A crucial difference is that VAST does not
decide when to show the ads, which is up to the
player in the online world. SCTE 130 on the
other hand decides when to play ads whether with
VoD or linear content, although of course for
VoD the user determines when the content as a
whole is viewed.
A key point, as Envivio’s Felts notes, is that
SCTE 130 is widely used for the back end
infrastructure within linear services, but when the
adverts are transferred to an online platform,
streaming and web standards are also involved.
Operators therefore need to understand both.
“Transposing the traditional linear ad
architecture requires a good understanding of
SCTE130, but also of all the adaptive bit rate
technologies, as well as all the web-based
advertising models,” says Felts. But above it
requires understanding of how users will respond
to and interact with ads on the different
platforms, which will determine how they are
constructed and presented.
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 25
Advertising
The C3 windowThe ability to insert mid-roll ads is constrained by the so called C3 catch-up window. This is the three day period after the scheduled showing during which an operator is contractually obliged to show the original ad sold with the programme. The idea is that because most catch-up viewing occurs within this three day window, it is treated as part of the overall package. It enables the operator to monetise the main catch up viewing in effect by counting it as part of the total viewing figure, but it does mean that scope for ad replacement around catch up is confined to pre- and post-roll, until the C3 window has expired. Advertising deals need to evolve to take account of the fact that some catch up viewing occurs on alternative screens such as tablets, presenting greater opportunities for targeting and interactivity.
Q. Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements
Among Total Consumers Summary of Agree Strongly/Somewhat
US %
Canada %
Germany%
France%
Japan%
UK%
I would be willing to provide more personal information online if that meant I could receive advertising more targeted to my needs and interests
26 23 14 23 26 4
I am comfortable with having my web browsing activity tracked so that I could receive advertising more targeted to my needs and interests
21 21 24 22 27 5
Consumer willingness to share personal information
Source: Deloitte Media Democracy Survey, 2010
The broadcasting industry is
undergoing something of a
revolution. After a number of
false starts IPTV is finally
taking off and the industry is
readying itself for a new
world in which the consumer
is in control. They get to decide not only what they
watch, but when they watch it, on what device and
how they interact with the content.
This concept of personalisation and
interactivity is creating an explosion in
applications around TV. Downloadable apps
enable you to interact with other fans online in
real time, sharing your likes, dislikes and
commentary. They provide a portal through which
broadcasters and their partners can deliver a
multitude of additional services – from interviews
with the stars through to games and competitions,
forums and even opportunities to purchase
merchandise. The upshot of all of this is that
suddenly broadcasters and content providers have
an overwhelming amount of data at their
fingertips. And data means information. But
first you have to figure out how to turn one into
the other.
Taking a step back
Before we start talking about data let’s take it
back a little bit. We tend to think of TV through
the internet as something very new but in actual
fact the IPTV landscape has been around for a
considerable time in the UK. Four to five years
ago we had companies like Home Choice who
even then were built around the concept of
accessing TV content through the internet. They
failed for two main reasons: Firstly there was the
issue of bandwidth. Connections were too small
and often unreliable and
speeds were too slow. The
second reason is that the
video compression technology
at the time was simply not
efficient enough. With today’s
technology you can transmit
high quality videos over a low
bandwidth with good results; this is something
you couldn’t even imagine five years ago.
The ability to deliver content over the internet
also has a significant impact on the cost of being
a player in the broadcasting industry. Traditional
means of content delivery are expensive and when
we say traditional that includes digital – that is to
say cable and satellite broadcasting. The reduction
in costs of internet delivery brings along with it
the opportunity to reach a global audience and
means we are already seeing new IPTV players
come in to the market.
Google has already invested significantly in
Google TV platform technology. Version one
failed as it was priced out of consumer reach and
the interface was considered by many to be too
geeky. Version two is much more attractive and
looks like it’s going to change the game. Apple is
also eyeing the same space. The Apple TV
offering originally had TV on demand only.
Recently, with an update to apple iOS, they can
now stream NBA basketball games live, so the
shift we are seeing in IPTV is not just around
internet-type content, but also live TV.
Lower cost to market entry means that we will
continue to see a sharp rise in the number of
broadcasters out there. At the moment,
broadcasting stations are expensive and is
therefore only an offering for the rich. However, if
the cost barrier goes down there will be more
broadcasters across the world. This will then
create ‘TV Beyond Borders’. For example, if you
are from China you would be able to watch one of
your regular TV shows whilst sitting in the UK.
This is because it is not restricted by traditional
broadcasting structures; all you need is an internet
connection and you can watch from wherever you
are. This is both an opportunity and a problem
for broadcasters. The reach any programme can
now have is phenomenal but how do you know
who is watching what and when?
Interestingly broadcasters like Sky and Virgin
are ahead of the game in this regard. Although
there was significant resistance from both
operators when the YouView platform was
released because of fears it would eat into their
dominance in the cable and satellite market, they
were in fact already well set up to deliver IPTV via
the set top boxes that already had this built in to
them. These same boxes are also able to capture
and feedback data about what and when
customers are viewing. This same capability can
be used to capture and feedback data about the
content they are viewing via their broadband
connection. It also opens up the possibility of Sky
using the lower cost IP route to deliver niche
content rather than the traditional and much
more expensive satellite route.
So it seems that Sky and Virgin may have their
noses in front when it comes to IPTV but that,
one would suspect, is all set to change - largely
due to the issue of data. The key thing is that this
switch will generate huge amounts of data, huge
amounts of viewing analyses and customer
insights. It will be down to the companies who
can leverage this information before others who
will succeed in the space. Some of the newer
competitors in this space are better placed to do
this than others. Companies like Google have
built an empire on understanding data and this
puts them well ahead of their competitors when it
Turning data into informationSuranjan Som explores and analyses the value of data – described by Channel 4 as the new oil - in today’s multi-channel broadcasting environment
26 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Business intelligence
“Business intelligence was not a priority for broadcasters but as the industry moves to online and multi-platform this has now changed and it is fundamental to their survival.”
comes to making sense out of the huge volumes
of information to them. In five years time it is
likely to be Google, alongside other big players in
the technology space (like Apple), that will have
the biggest power base in the industry.
Making sense of Big Data
Being able to capture, combine and analyse
information is potentially the most critical aspect
in ensuring the survival of the traditional
broadcasters. Companies across many industries
have been trying to get a better handle on their
information for years – it’s what the information
management and business intelligence (BI)
industries have been built on. For broadcasters
however, it was not a priority. Traditionally the
BARB data gave them what they needed to know
about what people were watching. As the industry
has moved online however, the channels, devices
and volumes of data have multiplied. This has
brought BI to the fore for this industry.
Let’s take a look at what is driving the surge in
data. Take, for example, the concept of ‘social
TV’. One person sits down to watch their
favourite programme and they have also
downloaded a social TV application direct to their
TV. Using this they connect through their social
networks to other people also watching the
programme and paste a link through Facebook
and Twitter. Through that link five more people
view the programme, they also ‘like’ it and post it
on their timelines. The programme has now gone
viral across the social network. This is where the
concept of ‘Big Data’ comes into play. Huge
volumes of information are available to those that
can harness it – not just about what people are
watching but who they are, how they
communicate and what they like to share. This is
invaluable to the advertising on which all
commercial broadcasters depend.
The link between data and advertising is
crucial. In the UK around two years ago online
advertising overtook TV advertising. Its growth
suggests that in another two years or so online
advertising will probably overtake print
advertising as well. What broadcasters have to be
able to offer is insight that will enable advertisers
to reach the right people, at the right time and on
the right platform. What they do with the
information, to some extent, is difficult to predict.
There is still considerable debate on the merits of
targeted advertising and how far it is possible to
take it. It may still in many cases be more cost
effective to take an advertising message out to a
wider audience. What the data does do, however,
is enable advertisers to make informed decisions
about their strategy around this.
The Big Data message is not just one that has
to be heeded by the broadcasters themselves. The
type of content we are talking about (video
content) is big. This therefore results in an
infrastructure challenge. Unless network providers
like AOL ensure their infrastructures can cope
with this we may see a re-emergence of the
problems of five years ago – namely bandwidth
and reliability. This presents them with a bit of a
headache and it seems likely that network
providers may seek to charge the broadcasters –
rather than the consumer - for IPTV traffic.
Despite these changes we don’t expect the
traditional linear schedule to go away anytime
soon. The fact is that if you are going to interact
with other people around content you need to be
viewing that content at the same time. This will
have an impact in the future of how people will
continue watching TV. It is similar to having an
MP3 player or listening to the radio. The
majority of people still prefer listening to the
radio, even with all the adverts, as most people
enjoy the social element this offers, likewise it can
be said that people enjoy being given a schedule
rather than make the decisions themselves.
The situation is complex but it is clear that
there is a huge amount of insight into customer
behaviour now available and anyone in this
industry has to stay on top of that information in
order to be competitive. Not all of this data is
available to broadcasters now, though the industry
is already taking significant steps down that path.
What is critical for any company serious about
this market is investment in an infrastructure that
can capture and analyse this data effectively, as
well as being scalable enough that, as more
information becomes available, adding it to the
‘data pot’ is easy.
For broadcasters, true business intelligence is
now fundamental to their survival.
Suranjan Som is information management strategist at IMGroup, a company that provides strategies and services for information management for industries including media and broadcast.
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 27
Business intelligence
This year’s IP&TV World
Forum saw a 10% increase in
attendee numbers to 7,163
visitors, the highest in the
show’s eight year history.
Growth in exhibitors has also
resulted in new space created
in the adjacent hall of London’s Olympia, where
conferences were held to make room for new
exhibitors on both floors of the original hall.
Organisers Informa decided to rebrand the
event as TV Connect for 2013, with thoughts of
the converging TV market in mind, which they
believe should push the show towards further
growth. Broadening of scope was also reflected in
the keynotes, which ranged from NBC and Sony
Network Entertainment to MTV and Twitter,
complimenting more traditional vendors and
service providers like Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson
and Huawei.
IPTV always meant many things to many
people, and was most commonly associated with
closed managed networks, typically telco-based, of
TV delivery. The future now – while still IP
centric – is widely perceived to be one of over the
top and multi-screen delivery, one where
technologies such as adaptive-bit rate streaming,
HTML5 and CDNs rule.
Coming not long after Cisco announced its
$5bn mega acquisition of NDS, its largest in
years, the news nicely set the tone for the event to
follow in that multi-screen and over-the-top indeed
acted as the overarching themes. Verimatrix CEO
Tom Munro made the point that multi-screen was
finally moving away from PowerPoint
presentations to real-world deployments.
As was the case during the Cable Congress on
the cable side, there was a sense among the telco
community that the migration of IP video to
cloud-based infrastructures is better suited for
multi-screen services, and that such broadcasting
in the cloud plays to their strengths as IP service
providers.
As TDG analyst Colin Dixon recently put it:
“It underscores an inevitable fact that all payTV
operators must face: their future is tied to
broadband delivery and the internet. The extent to
which they incorporate IP will determine in many
ways the extent to which they survive in a multi-
screen or quantum universe.”
For operators the issue is no longer if they will
launch on broadband, but how long they can
afford to wait before they do, Dixon argued.
Why payTV providers should go OTT is a
question that cropped up often during the show.
Answers that came in reply ranged from “it’s
cheaper to reach a wider (global) audience that
way” and “user interfaces are better looking” to
“it’s necessary to fight the threat from purely
online players.”
This was posited by Peter White, principal
analyst at Rethink Research,
during a Verimatrix breakfast
briefing on the first morning
of the show, who bluntly made
the point that “‘if your content
is not on a tablet, you’re
dead”. OTT has been painful
“like pulling teeth, and doing
it very slowly”, he noted,
because it involves a change in viewer and
industry habits, but most operators now recognise
they have no choice but to embrace it to strive
and survive.
Is this purely a defensive move? “Just to cut
churn is not reason enough to embark on multi-
platform. There is not enough imagination going
round,” he noted.
In reality, it’s probably a mix of motivations
forcing service providers into this realm,
depending on the specific market environment.
Speaking on the same panel, CTO of Swedish
cable operator Martin Kull hinted that multi-
screen moves were both defensive and offensive.
“We need to be on our toes and launch services to
attract and keep customers. We need to add value
and grow our subscriber base, and we think OTT
and multi-screen can do this. It’s a good business
model for expanding footprint into new
households that aren’t penetrated as yet.”
To do this, Kull said the cableco needs to have
TV and VoD in open networks, and any
broadband connection. “We don’t want TV
delivery silos, we want an integrated and unified
platform for doing that”, which is something that
Com Hem is developing together with Verimatrix
and Ericsson.
Parks Associates analyst Brett Sappington,
incidentally, predicts that 2012 will see significant
amount of such integration, with operators trying
to put disparate technologies into one unified
offering. Much like Com Hem, French telco
Orange is migrating its entire IPTV subscriber
base to a new service that incorporates over-the-
top content and native multi-screen, based on a
joint Viaccess and Orca platform. Taking in
millions of customers, it represents the single
largest migration of its kind.
In terms of content rights, Kull alluded to the
need for flexible CA that can handle different
rights depending on where the customer is, such
IP times are a changingThe IP&TV World Forum is rebranding as TV Connect to reflect a shifting industry landscape. As over-the-top and multi-screen become real-world developments, there was a practical feel in the air as to what this really means for all players involved. Goran Nastic reports
“We are learning along the way and it requires new skill sets for cable operators. It will be very much about Web techno-logies in the future.” Com Hem CTO Martin Kull
28 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Show review
as on-net, off-net, in the home, outside the home
etc), and different device types. Sales provisioning
and support for all these services and networks
should not be underestimated either, he warned.
“We are learning along the way and it requires
new skill sets for cable operators. It will be
very much about Web technologies in the future,”
he said
Some broadcasters, content owners and
operators have started taking a VoD service to
smart TVs, with Turner, MTV, Telstra, FastWeb
and Viasat among those to have deployed on the
platform. Viasat has in a sense started competing
with itself with a pure-OTT offering that goes
against its payTV service (Sky will do the same in
the UK with its upcoming Now TV OTT service).
Operators need to work with content owners to
enable these new business models, which have to
change to keep up with the times. Steve Oetegenn
of Verimatrix noted how streaming services may
need higher rather that less security. Many studios
won’t allow HD movies online, for example, due
to security concerns. He thinks that once the
business models change, then consumer behaviour
will shift to online forms of distribution legally
too, reducing piracy. For now, security and
ensuring consistent high-quality performance
remain challenges, but they are being overcome.
Countries where piracy is highest are also
those that lack advanced consumer services and
broadband, lacking offerings like Netflix and
Hulu, as Irdeto’s Christopher Schouten pointed
out. “If you offer a reasonably priced, attractive
and legitimate service they will probably use that
over piracy,” he argued.
All in all, the war to win payTV hearts and
minds will go on in Europe, with Rethink
forecasting that in a market of 200 million payTV
homes across the region, OTT will reach 87
million, mainly through tablets, which is identified
as the key land-grab battleground.
While OTT can help gain some share, the
reality is that there aren’t many low hanging fruits
any more in terms of new subscribers, and the
name of the game is more about retaining
customers, especially the higher value ones that
are expensive to lose. This is why most operators
(and content owners such as HBO through HBO
Go) see multi-screen as an essential future of their
portfolio despite not knowing how to monetise
this offering yet.
Monetisation is an issue that crept up again
and again as it is clear there are no de facto
answers as yet. There is some anecdotal evidence
of consumer willingness to pay. Irdeto’s own
Media 3.0 survey shows that in Spain and Italy
consumers are willing to pay EUR5 a month for
multi screen. “We have to elevate consumers from
the ‘freemium’ model we have created as an
industry while there is still time.”
ITV, the UK’s main commercial broadcaster is
working with Irdeto in trialling different payment
options, effectively trying to find out if consumers
are willing to pay for content over and above its
existing catch up content (incidentally, 20% of
ITV Player on-demand viewing now takes place
on mobile devices).
There are also arguments in favour of targeted/
addressable advertising, but for now though,
churn reduction is the main business driver
behind deploying OTT/multi-screen services.
Multi-screen allows service providers to keep
the higher end customers, stopping the erosion of
business value altogether. If revenues don’t go up,
at least they are not going down, noted Ericsson’s
Simon Frost. “Content is still king but
convenience is queen.”
Fragmentation is another challenge. “Most
platforms use modern Web technologies but
doesn’t mean you can take the same app and use
it to work on any device. Technology
fragmentation is bigger than we thought, and I
don’t believe in standardisation any time soon. I
believe everyone has to deal with this problem
rather than hoping something comes out in the
future,” said Michael Lantz, CEO of Accedo,
whose company has extensive experience in the
connected TV space.
Common standards such as HTML5 and
DASH to ease broadcaster and operators’ plight,
but most service providers are “terrified” when
they realise the scope of the challenge when
transitioning to multiple platforms, admitted
Alcatel-Lucent’s Jim Guillet.
For a start, OTT, social TV and the second
screen are a whole new world away from the
structured set-top box model.
On the network side, implementation needs to
be evolutionary. Start by taking the back office
and content management into the cloud. Keep
popular content at the edge, closer to the home,
he says. ALU, for its part ,has a range of
partnerships, including the likes of Microsoft,
Apple and thePlatform, to help with the
migration, and purchased Velocix in the CDN
space which it sees as central in managing
opportunities in IP video.
Of the company’s 60+ IPTV installs, Guillet
claims that every one wants to - and will - go
down the multi-screen route.
Motorola, incidentally, will continue to
enhance and expand its Medios multi-screen
portfolio with multiple CDNs as a key part of that
offering, highlighting this type of network’s
importance as more video is streamed over
broadband pipes.
The technology, which wasn’t there a couple of
years ago, is here now. Business models haven’t
caught up yet. They probably will, but this will be
the really hard part.
30 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Of the new companies that made an appearance at the show were Comigo, an Israeli start-up founded by the co-inventor of the USB stick, Dov Moran. The company promises a “unique UX across devices” mixed in with personalisation and social TV capability such as Facebook integration and the ability of friends to promote content virally. It is hoping to tackle the market which is in a “state of chaos” as everyone fights for a slice of the pie. The main targets are hybrid IPTV/OTT operators in Europe, for which it offers a solution that combines software for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, a set-top box, and a server application. The set-top box smart TV solution will be integrated into the Android OS.
Show review
“We have to elevate con-sumers from the ‘freemium’ model we have created as an industry while there is still time.”
In the past few years we have seen TVs
becoming more like PC monitors. PC
monitors becoming more like TVs is a
process well underway. On one hand TVs
have been designed with increasingly
complex graphical user interfaces, while
on the other PC monitors have seen their
size and resolution improve to make them more
suitable for watching video content.
The two devices are converging. If early indica-
tions are anything to go by, it seems that 2012 will
be the year in which this convergence is taken to a
new level, and the connected TV becomes a main-
stream reality. We’re already seeing users spend-
ing, on average, ten times more time watching
content on connected TVs than they do on PCs,
so it is little surprise that Strategy Analytics has
forecast that 1.6 billion connected TVs will be
installed worldwide by 2014.
As TVs become increasingly connected to the
internet, to smartphone and tablets, and to games
consoles among other devices - the medium will
become more interactive. This interactivity will
bring a completely new element to the way in
which we consume content, one which will need
to be considered closely by everyone in the con-
tent chain, from TV show producers, right
through to advertisers.
A new TV ecosystem
There are three ways in which the TV ecosystem
is changing; through content, the connection of
other devices to TV and how we physically react
to these devices. These changes will not only have
a profound impact on the way television and
internet content is consumed, but they will have
an equally important impact on the world of
advertising, offering brands a revolutionary new
way to introduce consumers to their products
and identity.
Firstly, the new TV experience will mean
that broadcast content, video content, internet
content and personal content is all seamlessly
blended together, and this means that the TV
ecosystem will need to become more integrated,
collaborative and interactive than ever before.
It will soon be common for television viewers
to be able to post blogs, send tweets or update
their Facebook profiles without the need to turn
off the television programme
they are watching. The way
viewers find programmes will
also change fundamentally,
with the preferences you set
and your friends’ recomme-
ndations from social networks replacing the
programme guide.
Secondly, existing devices will be co-opted
into the connected TV ecosystem to provide
consumers with the method of interactivity
that best suits them. As surfing the internet on
your TV becomes possible, the smartphone or the
tablet will become an extension of the television.
With connected TV, viewers will vote, access rich
content, blog, tweet and access a plethora of
applications all via their TV sets, but through the
devices that they feel comfortable with.
Lastly, the way we physically interact with
these devices will change to help enable this
application convergence. Samsung has developed
gesture recognition technologies for connected
TVs meaning that the days of remote controls will
soon be long gone. Viewers will control their TVs
purely by use of hand gestures, in the same way
Microsoft Kinect has changed the way players
interact with Xbox 360 games. The rumoured
Apple TV, meanwhile, might well run on voice
recognition, based on the Siri software currently
used for the iPhone 4S.
These improved user interfaces will mean that
the connected TV will live up to its promise of
being a true multi-application platform. Users will
be able to intuitively and seamlessly use
simultaneous applications on the devices in a way
that has not been possible before.
A game changer for brands
Advertising on CTV is a completely new advertis-
ing environment. It offers brands an opportunity
to reverse the decline seen in traditional television
advertising. Forrester Research, the analyst house,
has predicted that online advertising spend will
overtake that of TV by 2016 and provides the
chance to create a multichannel brand presence,
enabling marketers to deliver advertising opportu-
nities which are both targeted and effective.
Almost everything on the boxShirlene Chandrapal discusses what effect connected TVs will have on how advertisers can communicate with their audiences
Connected TV
“The way we physi-cally interact with CTVs will change to help enable this appli-cation convergence, including gesture recognition techn-ologies and voice recognition UIs.”
32 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Broadcasters will be able to track viewer
reaction to content in real-time and learn more
about audience behaviour from social networking
interaction. The result is that brands will have to
work harder to target their demographic and keep
audiences engaged; after all, while we may watch
the same TV shows, we may not see the same
advertisements. Viewers will also become
increasingly distracted from traditional linear
television because of the almost-endless range of
media offered by connected TVs and
recommendations from other viewers will be
more and more important to them.
The real game-changer for brands
however, will be the use of online video
advertising formats. Feedback from
smartclip’s customers suggests that the
uptake of online video ads is encourag-
ing, with similar usage patterns to tradi-
tional TV and general internet use.
Online video holds the potential for a
more direct and genuine customer rela-
tionship through the integration of social
media. With engaging content and CTV’s
bigger screen, brand aware-
ness will increase.
With interactive
content you know that
people are actively watching the TV so awareness
and involvement is increased compared to
traditional TV. This brings with it many benefits
to advertisers, content producers and brands
alike, but also creates numerous challenges
which can only be addressed if organisations can
deliver a clear and consistent message across
multiple platforms.
In addition to this, competition will become
fierce as brands compete with more video on the
internet. Ads will need to be engaging and worth
watching so brands will become more creative.
Techniques such as gamification – where
game elements are included in marketing
campaigns to make them ‘stickier’ –
and incentives will generate ROI,
with ideas such as pop-up shops and
competitions gaining popularity.
The added value of interactive
video ads will be adopted by
consumers, as the use of HTML5
creates an easy-to-use interface for
video content which is easier to
engage with than on linear TV. By
delivering ad content
that is truly social,
fun or informative
to consume and
engagingly presented, brands will be able to more
effectively win over new customers. The
connected TV provides just the toolkit for brands
to achieve this.
We have a vision of the Connected TV as
sitting at the centre of a unified communications
and entertainment hub. From voice and gesture
command technology, personalised content
discovery to tailored advertising experiences
based on preferences, TV is becoming
increasingly interactive.
Manufacturers are beginning to think about
how TV interacts with other devices, for example
using a tablet or mobile as a remote control. It
will provide the common factor that unites social
media with broadcast technology, and mobile
devices with the fixed-line environment. The
profound effect this will have on the way people
consume and interact with content is only just
becoming clear.
The next few years will no doubt provide a
range of further innovations that will build on the
connected TV concept and lead to a completely
new viewing experience for the future.
Shirlene Chandrapal is vice president of connected TV at smartclip
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 33
Connected TV
With the final
digital
switchover
(DSO) to
complete in
under six
months
time, much of the digital television industry’s
focus is now on the future uses of radio spectrum
(the invisible electromagnetic waves that carry
voice, video and data transmissions through the
air) released by turning off the analogue signal.
Radio spectrum is used to connect wireless
devices such as mobile phones, laptops, tablets,
game consoles and, increasingly, enable them to
communicate with each other.
As a result of significant growth in demand
for wireless applications and services over the last
few years, most of the spectrum in the UK is now
in use. Therefore it is important that the industry
ensures the available spectrum is used as
efficiently as possible.
The Digital TV Group (DTG) is currently
working with industry to explore two major uses
of the spectrum: Long Term Evolution (LTE) –
the fourth generation mobile telephony data
network referred to and known by some as 4G,
and TV whites spaces – wireless
networks built
to use TV frequencies that can be used to improve
broadband performance. The latter will see the
introduction of white space or ‘smart’ devices
such as in-home appliances and energy monitors
or enable rural broadband delivery by choosing
unused frequencies available in the area to
maximise efficient use of the spectrum.
Impact on D-Book – and beyond
The DTG’s RF working group is currently looking
at co-existence with DTT and is investigating the
current sensitivity and selectivity requirements in
the D-Book RF chapter to determine whether
improvements in receiver performance can be
made to optimise the coexistence of TV. This may
result in a modified D-Book chapter and
subsequent changes in the conformance regime if
deemed necessary.
We have also joined the Cambridge TV White
Spaces Consortium, which has just completed a
trial to assess the potential of TV white spaces to
deliver cost-efficient broadband access to rural
communities and offload wireless data demand in
cities. The DTG has provided the consortium
with advice and information about industry
coordination, interoperability and coexistence
with DTT. The trial found that TV white spaces
can be successfully utilised to help satisfy the
demand for wireless connectivity. The consortium
members are now recommending that Ofcom
complete its development
of the enabling
regulatory framework
in a manner that
protects licensees from
harmful interference
and encourages
innovation and
deployment.
It is imperative that
any future mobile
network does not
interfere with current
broadcast equipment.
With this in mind, the DTG’s test
house: DTG Testing recently
conducted tests on its receiver
collection to ascertain how
consumer receiver equipment
will respond to LTE. The
results will be used to inform public bodies
responsible for spectrum allocation of any impact
on terrestrial television broadcasts, alert
manufacturers to potential issues with the RF
tuner elements of their products - giving them
opportunity to design and implement appropriate
protection, and specify target protection values in
future revisions of the D-Book.
2013 will see the reorganisation to complete
the clearance of the 800 MHz band for LTE. A
recent World Radiocommunication Conference
(WRC) proposed assigning in the 700MHz band
for co-primary mobile use. If the conference in
2015 agrees that harmonisation for mobile use,
this would mean a significant European re-plan or
frequency allocations and has therefore had an
impact on Ofcom’s 600MHz auction plans and
their Future UHF consultation.
With the introduction of new spectrum uses,
the requirements for interoperability to protect
and serve the consumer are just as important as
ever. As technology inevitably develops further,
the DTG will continue to bring the relevant
organisations together to enable the seamless
delivery of digital technology to consumers across
the UK.
A question of spectrumWith the analogue shutdown in the UK almost complete, the DTG is now turning its attention to the upcoming issue of LTE spectrum and TV white spaces
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.
34 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
In today’s broadband reality, people expect
their devices and services to become
connected in a blink of the eye, a push of
the button, or a click of the mouse. We
don’t want to wait, yet in order to provide
instant service connections, our
broadband devices must always be
working in the background. And that background
work – powering on the integrated circuits,
interfaces and displays, monitoring data traffic,
preparing for user input – consumes expensive
electricity.
Tackling the challenge of delivering responsive
services while avoiding wasted power is a major
topic within the work of the HGI (Home Gateway
Initiative), a global consortium of service
providers and manufacturers who are connecting
homes (determining the ways that broadband data
is delivered to homes) and enabling services
(ensuring that the broadband services meet the
real requirements of people in their homes).
HGI’s energy efficiency work has been
structured in three phases. The first two deal with
making the broadband equipment deployed in
customers’ home more efficient. The third phase
goes further, to enable users to proactively
manage their whole-home energy consumption. In
this article, we explain how all this comes together
and why the service providers are committed to
energy efficiency in the home environment.
Motivation
Let’s start by looking at the reasons why
broadband service providers and device
manufacturers care about saving energy, both
within their networks and in particular, in their
customers’ homes. After all, the consumers pay
the energy costs in their own homes, so why
should this be of concern to broadband providers?
Firstly, telecom network providers are often
near the top of the list of single companies
consuming the most electricity and therefore
their “good citizen” behaviour is closely
monitored by governments and regulators.
Voluntary codes of conduct and mandatory
regulations are strong constraints on their own
networks as well as in regard to the equipment
they deploy to customers’ homes. HGI has helped
its member companies to provide helpful input as
these regulations have evolved.
In their own networks, service providers are
saving energy and costs by upgrading equipment.
But service providers’ networks typically generate
less than 2% of the national CO2 footprint,
whereas homes produce about 15% (although
only a piece of that is for infotainment).
Steps that are taken to
assist consumers to reduce
energy consumption in both
broadband, and in other areas,
may therefore have higher
paybacks overall. Service
providers are also turning home energy efficiency
into a competitive differentiator, by helping the
consumer to save power. Consumers have a
choice between broadband providers and
acting proactively is in the service providers’
best interests.
And not only consumers benefit by energy
efficient design aimed at the connected home. A
regular trickle of background (“keep alive”) traffic
associated with the home network passes between
the Home Gateway (HG) and the service provider
routers and access network equipment, resulting
in energy costs in the provider networks too. The
amount of background traffic will potentially
increase as new cloud-based services (software
and media-storage all in the internet) are rolled-
out. So the thoughtful design of home services
can help reduce costs for both consumers and
service providers.
Phase 1
In Phase 1, the HGI has worked to reduce the
power consumed by the home gateway. The HG is
the box that provides in-home broadband service.
It connects your home network devices and gad-
gets to the fibre, DSL, cable, or wireless network.
The HG is an always-on device and reducing its
power consumption is an important step.
HGI started collaborating with government
agencies in Europe in 2008 on an improved Code
of Conduct (CoC) for good energy behaviour in
broadband equipment in the home. Early versions
of the CoC covered only a fraction of the HG
market. Between 2008 and 2010, HGI helped
introduce new approaches for the CoC (versions
3 and 4). These brought in realistic, modular
power targets which clarified power limits applied
to each HG feature while in idle mode
(“standby”) and while active. The total HG power
limit is the sum of the modular values, depending
on which feature is needed in that particular HG.
Because the new approach assigns power budgets
Green thinkingDr. Lindsay Frost and Oliver Lamparter from the Home Gateway Initiative discuss energy-saving steps for broadband services
Energy efficiency
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 35
Function idle-state on-state
2011/2012 2013/2014 2011/2012 2013/2014
central functions + ADSL WAN interface
2.6 2.4 3.8 3.4
4 Fast Ethernet ports 4x0.3 = 1.2 4x0.2 = 0.8 4x0.4 = 1.6 4x0.4 = 1.6
single radio IEEE 802.11b/g Wi-Fi interface (23 dBm EIRP)
0.7 0.7 2 1.5
USB ports 2x0.25 = 0.5 2x0.1 = 0.2 2x0.25 = 0.5 2x0.1 = 0.2
Total equipment 5.0W 4.1W 7.9W 6.7W
Figure 1: European Broadband Code-of-Conduct v4 (ADSL, 4 port, Wi-Fi b/g example)
36 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
Energy efficiency
Gaming console
POTS phone
WAN
Internet
DECT Phone
TabletLaptop
Smartphone
Television
PC
HOME GATEWAY
Figure 2: Home network devices considered in HGI analysis of use cases
to a range of features (e.g. PowerLine and wireless
interfaces, Ethernet, etc), the viability of the CoC
was greatly increased.
The CoC is strongly supported by HGI : 85%
of HGI founding members, and a majority of HGI
operators have committed to abide by it.
Figure 1 shows the CoC targets for the example
of an ADSL HGW with four Fast Ethernet ports,
a single 802.11b/g Wi-Fi radio interface and two
USB ports. The limits were set at about 8 Watts
while on, and 5 Watts in idle mode, reducing by
about 20% in both cases for next year’s products.
HGI went a big step further, by designing
voluntary tests of HGW features, including the
CoC energy limits. In the latet results from the
3rd annual test event in November 2011 80% of
the tested HGs passed the energy tests.
In parallel to the work on the CoC, HGI
was active in promoting best practice energy
design of modules in the HGW, for xDSL,
WLAN, Ethernet, and even the attached AC-DC
converter power-supplies. which are ubiquitous for
all home equipment.
The AC-DC converter power supplies previously
wasted nearly the same energy as was passed
through to the devices, but in the mid-2000s
manufacturers began to change over to more
efficient switching circuits. These are about 90%
efficient at “full load” but can be inefficient at low
load (ie, whenever the actual home equipment is
in idle mode). In early 2010, HGI created strong
requirements on converter power supplies, which
were then adapted and published by ETSI.
Six months later, HGI published an extensive
vision on how to conserve energy in the HG
and attached devices, including practical use cases
and maximum allowed delays to full activity
(typically 1-3 seconds). To summarise, HGI’s
Phase 1 work has encouraged energy savings in
the HG and the power supplies through setting
practical and modular power targets,
recommendations on best practice, and industry
test events to measure compliance.
Phase 2
Phase 1 dealt with HG power consumption, but
what about the other network-connected devices
such as the Set Top Box, PVR, VoIP, media
storage, and the like? Figure 2 shows the variety
of devices in many homes. Based on the best-
practise methods in the HG, a power efficient
approach would allow those devices to remain in
low power idle mode except when they must
perform service. HGI’s Phase 2 approach will
maximise the time that home networked devices
can remain in idle mode.
HGI’s approach assumes that those devices
may know when to “go to sleep” (usually after a
period without active service demand) but may
not always know when to wake up. For example, a
user may wish to trigger a recording or playback
action on a PVR from outside the room or while
away. HGI is analysing how the HG can be used
to “trigger” such devices to switch on when
needed. This takes advantage of the fact that the
HG will normally remain active enough to detect
signalling and service triggers, even when
connected devices do not.
One part of that solution is so-called Wake-
on-LAN, which allows devices connected to
the Ethernet, but in idle mode, to detect
special “wake up” data packets, then rapidly
switch on to handle the full voice or video stream.
It is so far mainly implemented on enterprise
equipment and some notebooks. HGI wants to
extend the Wake-on-LAN idea to devices in
home networks.
Fortunately, consumer networked devices
have a market life-cycle of just a few years, so
technical changes can have a rapid impact on
total energy consumption.
Phase 3
A substantial improvement for total savings in
energy and costs in the home is just beginning: a
whole-home energy management service that
enables consumers to schedule, monitor, and
control the energy used. Managing the services
which account for about 80% of home electricity
usage, like lighting, heating, cooling, and major
appliances, offers potential for savings. Once
consumers have awareness of energy costs and
the tools to manage energy use, savings can
quickly follow.
HGI is defining just such a service in Phase 3
of its work, and taking steps to enable its
deployment. Like the Phase 2 service, the Phase 3
service takes advantage of the HG as a control
and connection hub within the home, as well as
the capability of the HG to provide application
software. Phase 3 may also take advantage of the
deployment within the home of smart meters.
Some of the service capabilities needed are:
• Visualisation of actual energy and power data,
as well as recent history;
• Adjusting household demand to fit Smart
Grid conditions (Time of Day pricing,
Demand response);
• Sensing the status of equipment, such as
energy currently used;
• Setting equipment states (or example,
scheduling energy-intensive tasks to off-peak
pricing times);
• Providing feedback and alarms on different
events to the user;
• Home Domain overload management
which assist the user to avoid overload
conditions; and
• Optimisation of energy cost based
on tariffs.
Energy providers are providing some
systems already that focus on the use of smart
meter data to provide the customer increased
awareness of power consumed. In some cases, the
smart meter interfaces to a display or to home
automation systems using a wireless (eg, Zigbee,
WiFi, DECT), powerline (HomePlug, G.hn), or
other interface.
HGI is putting its focus on a more integrated
system that uses the HG (or a separate Energy
Gateway that is connected to the HG) as a
central hub to communicate with HAN (Home
Area Network) connected devices, such as smart
appliances, heating systems and others referred
to above. The HEM application, served from the
HG, provides an easy path to integration with
internet-based energy data (for example, relating
to time of day pricing information) as well as
storage and analysis of historic data. The
HG-based HEM application may also be easily
updated by using the OSGi infrastructure of
the HG.
The biggest payoff likely occurs when the HG
based solution is also integrated with the smart
meter. This requires some agreed interface
between the smart meter and HG – such as the
smart meter interfaces discussed above. In these
scenarios, time of day pricing, demand-response,
current energy consumption, and other data may
be passed directly between smart meter and HG.
While there are many organisations developing
specifications for home automation, in fact the
over-abundance of standards is slowing down the
market. HGI is honing the requirements and best
practices to create practical recommendations to
facilitate the deployment by the broadband
service providers of a home energy management
service. HGI has and will continue to liaise and
co-developed this work with our partners in ETSI
M2M, Broadband Forum, DECT Forum, OSGi,
and elsewhere.
One reason to focus on the HG is the efforts
made in recent years by HGI and OSGi to create
a flexible and reliable, secure and robust,
modular software system for the HG. This system
allows secure, automatic software updates and
management of 3rd party services. The system
allows new services to be downloaded “on the
fly”, allowing new energy tariff information or
new controlling software to be installed without
users needing to be aware of complexity.
HGI is working with OSGi closely, and also
following latest developments in BBF and ETSI
M2M, to reach agreement on a single set of
application interfaces towards the confusing
variety of home automation networks. If
successful, this will allow developers everywhere
to target a common platform which interoperates
with most systems on the market.
Energy efficiency
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 37
Figure 3: HGI’s 3-stage approach to saving energy in HGs and in the home
To advertise contact Tiro Bestonso +44 (0)20 7562 2427 [email protected]
BUSINESS DIRECTORY
VISLINK plc is a global business, strategically focussed on providing secure communication technologies to customers in our chosen markets. We have three international business units organised to serve our customers in Broadcast, Surveillance, and the related Services markets. Our world renowned brands of ADVENT, GIGA-WAVE, LINK, MRC and PMR lead the way with award winning products including IP gateways, microwave radio, satellite transmission and wireless cameras.With offices in the UK, USA, Dubai, South Africa and Singapore, and dedicated sales and en-gineering teams, VISLINK has the experience and expertise to deliver the most comprehensive solutions for today’s challenges.
Irdeto empowers companies to protect and monetize their digital assets and maximize return on content with innovative and reliable software technologies end-to-end solution and services. The company’s products include conditional access, digital rights management, business support systems, set-top box software solutions and, through its Cloakware subsidiary, software and datacenter security. More than 400 customers worldwide trust Irdeto to secure delivery of their valuable content across digital broadcast, IP, Mobile, enterprise and government networks. Irdeto solutions currently enable simple to advanced business models on more than one billion devices and applications.
For more information, please visit www.irdeto.com.
NDS Group Ltd. creates the technologies and applications that enable pay-TV operators to securely deliver digital content to TV STBs, DVRs, PCs, mobiles and other multimedia devices. Over 90 of the world’s leading pay-TV platforms rely on NDS solutions to protect and enhance their business. NDS’ VideoGuard® market leading security solutions offer complete protection for TV platform operators. MediaHighway® set-top box software enables a wide range of services including hybrid solutions combing broadcast, cable, IPTV and OTT content. NDS is also a leader in DVR technology and UIs/EPGs that incorporate interactive television applications.
For further information visit www.nds.com.
NDS Group Ltd, One London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4EX Tel +44 (0)178 484 8500 Fax +44 (0)178 484 8600Web: www.nds.com Email: [email protected]
Taurus Avenue 105, 2132 LS HoofddorpThe NetherlandsTel: +31 23 556 22 22 Fax: +31 23 556 22 40 Email: [email protected] Web: www.irdeto.com
Address: 27 Maylands Avenue, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire HP2 7DE, UKPhone: +44 (0)14 42 43 13 00 Fax: +44 (0) 14 42 43 13 01Website: www.vislink.com Email: [email protected]
ATX is a global company that designs and manufactures a broad range of quality cable products from the headend to the home. Our products enable CATV operators to configure their network to offer new and enhanced digital services such as video on demand (VOD), HDTV, high-speed data (Internet), and digital telephony (VoIP). Our products include modular, high-density headend signal management (splitting/ combing) equipment for RF, L-Band and optical, optical transmitters and receivers, RF filters, headend and MDU amplifiers, audio/video deletion/insertion, wireless solutions, fiber nodes/upgrades, monitor/control solutions, pads/EQs, VoIP switches, connectors, drop amplifiers and test signal generators.
Corneliusstr. 22, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland Tel: +49-17-1998-3676Email: [email protected]: www.atxnetworks.com
ADB designs, manufactures and deploys solutions to distribute pay-TV and multimedia services to the connected home, for all types of networks, providing an amazing user experience.
ADB believes in a future where multi-media content will come from multiple sources and seam-lessly move between multiple screens and devices, at the user’s preference. The Company has delivered over 30 million consumer premise devices to a global customer base. ADB’s innova-tions and software expertise have been recognized by numerous industry awards.
Advanced Digital Broadcast S.A. Avenue de Tournay 7, CH-1292 Chambesy, Geneva, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 799 0799 Fax: +41 22 799 0790 Web: www.adbglobal.com
38 May-June 2012 www.csimagazine.com
To advertise contact Tiro Bestonso +44 (0)20 7562 2427 [email protected]
BUSINESS DIRECTORY
The Humax range of award-winning digital TV set-top boxes and recorders for Freeview and Freesat has a product to suit any TV viewer. Feature rich and technologically advanced, yet intuitive and easy to use, the Humax range offers the ultimate way to enjoy multi-channel, subscription-free digital TV, from high definition (HD) and on-demand content, to recording features and multi-media services.
Verimatrix specializes in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-screen digital TV services for more than 500 operators around the globe. The award-winning and independently audited Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) and ViewRight® solutions offer an inno-vative approach for cable, satellite, terrestrial and IPTV operators to cost-effectively extend their networks and enable new business models. As the recognized leader in software-based security solutions for premier service providers, Verimatrix has pioneered the 3-Dimensional Security approach that offers flexible layers of protection techniques to address evolving business needs and revenue threats. Maintaining close relationships with major studios, broadcasters, industry organizations, and its unmatched partner ecosystem enables Verimatrix to provide a unique perspective on digital TV business issues beyond content security as operators seek to deliver compelling new services. www.verimatrix.com
6825 Flanders Drive, San Diego, CA 92121, USATel: +1-858-677-7800 Fax: +1-858-677-7804Web: www.verimatrix.com
Humax Electronics Co., Ltd, The Mille Building (8th Floor), 1000 Great West Road, Brentford, London TW8 9HHWeb: www.humaxdigital.com
Bridge Technologies designs, develops, and manufactures advanced analysis, measurement, and monitoring solutions for the digital media, broadcast and telecommunications industries.
The award-winning VideoBRIDGE series provides an advanced platform for converging TV services employing stream-based IP packets and all other Digital TV interfaces within DVB and ATSC for Cable, Terrestrial and Satellite. Compatible with all major industrial standards such as MPEG-2, h.264/AVC, HTTP based streaming and ETSI TR 101 290, the VideoBRIDGE series offers a complete end-to-end system for the continuous quality assurance of media services.
Sandakerveien 24c, Building D5NO-0473 OsloTel: +47 22 38 51 00 Office Switchboard Tel: +47 22 38 51 01 Office Fax Web: www.bridgetech.tv
Intelsat is the leading provider of fixed satellite services worldwide. Intelsat supplies video, data and voice connectivity for leading media and communications companies, Internet Service Providers and government organizations. Intelsat’s valuable regional video neighborhoods deliver more television channels than any other system. Intelsat’s terrestrial network of eight strategically-located teleports and over 36,000 miles of leased fiber complements a global satel-lite fleet of more than 50 satellites, covering 99% of the world’s population. Intelsat utilizes a fully integrated satellite operations model, enabling global delivery from a single platform. With Intelsat, communications with your customers are closer, by far.3400 International Drive, NW, Washington D.C. 20008 USA
Tel: +1 202 944 6800 Fax: +1 202 944 7898Web: www.intelsat.com
EchoStar Europe is dedicated to enabling digital entertainment providers to optimise revenues by delivering added-value connected device solutions, services and applications. Through a comprehensive product range, including STBs, DVRs, home networking and TV anywhere technology, our solutions enable the provision of state-of-the-art and cost effective entertainment services.
Headquartered in the UK, EchoStar Europe comprises a number of business units and is af-filiated with EchoStar Technologies, a subsidiary of the publicly traded EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS).
Beckside Design Centre, Millennium Business Park, Station Road, Steeton, Keighley BD20 6QW, United Kingdom Tel: +44 1535 659000 Fax: +44 1535 659100Web: www.echostar.com
www.csimagazine.com May-June 2012 39
Beyond Content Protection to Revenue Security™
See us at ANGA Cable 2012 Cologne, Germany • Booth #L19
To secure revenue on your evolving pay-TV network, you need innovation that takes you beyond traditional DVB conditional access.
Verimatrix VCAS™ for DVB represents a new breed of solution that uniquely supports set-top boxes, cardless clients and innovative hybrid devices as part of a comprehensive multi-network, multi-screen revenue security architecture.
www.verimatrix.com/DVB
Real World Security Solutions for Your
DVB Networkerimatrix
