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Archive for the 'TV-over-Internet' Category

Microsoft and Tesco partner for UK launch of downloadable ‘virtual DVDs’

September 9, 2009 by Barry Flynn

We kick off our IBC blogging today with a story about a tie-up between UK supermarket giant Tesco and Microsoft in the UK, who announced this morning that they jointly plan to offer a service this autumn which would allow DVD and Blu-ray quality ‘virtual DVD’ copies of movies to be downloaded for replay on PCs and Macs.The new service, built on Microsoft Silverlight technology, will include interactive features and other add-ons which the partners claim will offer a viewing experience that “goes beyond other digital playback products in the marketplace.”

The basic idea itself is not entirely new, in that it only applies to Tesco customers purchasing certain home video titles from their stores. So in addition to watching them through their DVD players on the TV screen, they will also be able to download a digital copy to a PC elsewhere in the home.

What is new, arguably, is making the DVD ‘bonus’ features available in this way on downloadable content, closing the gap between what is available on a physical disk and a virtual copy. The other significant aspect of the deal is simply that it involves Tesco - one of the UK’s home video sell-through giants. They have enough market power to firmly embed such a service in the UK market, providing it appeals to their customers.

One might also suggest that - if what is being offered is really ‘Blu-ray’ quality in some cases (which will involve quite a lengthy download!) - the (unidentified) Hollywood majors backing the venture appear pretty confident about using a software-based DRM system such as Microsoft’s to protect digital versions of HD premium movie content.

Microsoft hopes to extend this Silverlight-based concept to other markets in due course.

At IBC, Connected TV will be meeting Gabriele Di Piazza, senior director for the Media & Entertainment business in the Communications Sector at Microsoft, to quiz him about the new service and other recent developments.

We plan to post live from the show.

Posted in Broadband and TV-over-Internet. 0 Comments

TV or Videogame? 1 vs 100 on Xbox Live Offers Lifeline To Appointment Viewing

July 21, 2009 by David Mercer

It’s what Interactive TV always should have been. Endemol’s smash hit quiz show, 1 vs 100, is now available as a scheduled, interactive show to Gold members of Xbox Live in the UK. Although in beta phase, the service appears to be working well. I suffered one connection dropout during Friday evening’s show, but otherwise was able to participate fully, first as a member of “The Crowd”, and later as one of the hundred members of “The Mob”. Unfortunately, or perhaps not, I was not selected as “The One”.

My personal background: I’m not a quiz show fan. I used to keep up with “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” in its early years, and I enjoy satirical “quiz shows” like “Have I Got News For You”, but they hardly count as the same genre. I do not go out of my way to find shows in which I can answer the questions, and had not even heard of “1 vs 100” until Microsoft told the press about its launch on Xbox Live.

Some years ago, when red button services were first being rolled out across the UK’s digital TV services, early attempts were made to add interactive audience participation to quiz shows, including “Millionaire”. It was an obvious genre to target, with audiences already sitting at home shouting out answers to questions in frustration at the presumed ignorance of the on-stage participants. But the limitations of the technology, not least through the absence of broadband connectivity, meant that these early attempts were soon abandoned.

It’s ironic, but perhaps not surprising, that it has taken a games console, rather than a digital television platform, to demonstrate what interactive television could eventually become. Tens of thousands of people are now participating, live and in real time, in the same scheduled “programme”, responding to questions through their games controller, seeing themselves (well, their avator at least) on the screen, and accumulating points in competition with their remotely connected opponents.

The operation of the Xbox Live show is clearly heavily automated, and a few kinks need to be ironed out: the various warning notices and texts were barely legible on my museum piece of a 32” CRT TV, for example. I hope Microsoft is not assuming that every single 360-owner has their console HDMI-wired to a 1080p-capable 50” LCD. The pauses between “rounds” and their accompanying messages can also prove a little tiresome. But generally this is an extremely impressive implementation, as with so many things on the Xbox Live platform. Considering this is a beta test, we can only imagine what further refinements will be made as the show evolves.

Our excitement over the technology should not cloud the inevitable doubts over business models and commercial viability. That Endemol, one of the world’s most successful independent developers, has signed up as a partner should be taken as a positive sign, although it has no doubt been suitably rewarded for its risk at this early stage. The trick, as always, will now be to get independent advertisers to recognise the value of targeting 70,000 people (a typical number of simultaneous participants in the US version) whose profiles are well known and whose attention is as guaranteed as it ever can be by scheduled programming. No fast forwarding through these ads…

Following the recently announced plan to launch online music on the Xbox, it’s time to reconsider the term “games console”: if Live’s current progress is anything to go by, few other gadgets will deserve the term “home entertainment centre”.

Twitter: twitter.com/DavidMercer_SA

Posted in TV-over-Internet. 0 Comments

Farncombe: Pay-TV shift to two-way networks will mean move away from smartcard-based conditional access systems

May 21, 2009 by Barry Flynn

Farncombe Consulting Group, which hosts this blog, has just published a new White Paper on how the Digital TV Conditional Access sector will be affected by the shift towards broadband-enabled pay-TV networks.

Written by Farncombe’s own highly-experienced group of in-house video security experts, the White Paper assesses the pros and cons of using smartcard-based and cardless systems in different types of pay-TV set-up, ranging from traditional one-way broadcast TV operations to broadband-enabled two-way IP and connected home networks.

The paper concludes that while smartcards continue to remain the solution of choice for protecting one-way systems, cardless-based solutions are preferable for protecting video content in IPTV, ‘over-the-top’ and home networking contexts.

For one-way networks migrating to broadband connectivity, meanwhile, both types of system have their advantages, depending largely on the availability, reliability and quality of the broadband network.

The White Paper’s authors go on to suggest that since the traditional one-way pay-TV world is slowly but surely changing into a two-way one, it is likely that there will be a gradual shift away from smartcard-based systems in favour of cardless ones - led by the digital cable sector.

A PDF of the new White Paper can be obtained from Farncombe by clicking here and filling in a simple registration form.

Posted in Broadband, Digital Cable, Digital Satellite, Digital Terrestrial, IPTV and TV-over-Internet. 0 Comments

IMS Research: 65m homes worldwide able to watch Internet video on TV sets last year

May 13, 2009 by Barry Flynn

Some interesting stats and predictions from Texas-based IMS Research in their new study Market Opportunities for Internet Video to the TV.

IMS reckons that an estimated 65 million households worldwide had the capability of viewing Internet video on their television set at the end of 2008, up 134% on 2007. The ‘vast majority’ of these were doing so via a game console or ‘proprietary device’, notes IMS, but expects that to change in the future: “it is expected that households using a PC to deliver Internet video to the TV set via a media centre PC and a media extender (or digital media adapter) will see an 85% CAGR through 2013 reaching nearly 60 million households by that time,” says the research firm.

Shane Walker, research manager and author of the study, puts that down to projected price-falls in Windows Media Centre devices, media centres in general, and extenders, with media centre costs falling by as much as 15% annually during the next five years.

After 2013, however, the story changes, as more advanced Internet TV functionality is delivered by digital TV set-top boxes. This will cause a drop in demand for media extenders, although IMS believes that for one category - media centres connected to the TV via a device other than an extender - demand will continue to grow, and they will slowly replace DVRs.

On the whole, Connected TV thinks these are reasonable scenarios, although perhaps the role of the hybrid, IP-connected set-top box is not accorded enough importance given current developments in Europe and elsewhere. Hybrid DTT STBs should arrive in the UK in quantity next year, and there are already substantial numbers of STBs in the UK with at least theoretical broadband capability - namely the later BSkyB PVRs and current Freesat boxes.

It is true, however, that the notion of offering the full panoply of Internet-based, over-the-top video services to the TV through a set-top box is fraught with practical and technical difficulties, so if IMS is talking about that type of advanced capability (rather than a walled garden that might, for example, only offer one or two services such as the BBC’s iPlayer), a 2013 timeline may not be that unreasonable.

Also, the idea that the TV-connected media centre might eventually replace the PVR in this type of environment is not that implausible. By the time you have added a hard drive, IP capability and home networking features to a set-top box, what you have is pretty close to a PC-derived media centre - so why reinvent the wheel? That is likely to be one of the central battlegrounds between traditional pay-TV operators and the ‘over-the-top’ video providers in the coming years.

Posted in Broadband, Digital Satellite, Digital Terrestrial, Research and TV-over-Internet. 0 Comments

The trick-mode trigger: a new paradigm for TV advertising in an on-demand world?

April 1, 2009 by Barry Flynn

As the traditional TV world migrates to an on-demand environment (‘over-the-top’ or otherwise), the evidence so far has been that where viewers are given the opportunity to, they will generally fast-forward through the ad breaks.

Various strategems have been adopted by broadcasters and advertisers to get round consumer resistance to interruptive advertising, generally involving some sort of implied bargain. For instance, the benefit of being able to make up for having missed a popular programme by viewing it in ‘catch-up’ mode is commonly set against the fact that the ads in the catch-up stream can’t be ‘zapped’. Similarly, if you want to watch an on-demand movie without any commercial breaks interrupting the action, it’s often impossible to skip the ‘pre-roll’ ad welded onto the front of it.

Well, on the evidence of three separate exhibitors at last week’s IPTV World Forum, a new paradigm is evolving. It hasn’t got a name, yet, so let’s invent one: ‘trick-mode triggers’ (you heard it here first).

The idea is to exploit the fact that on-demand viewing allows viewers to interrupt their own viewing by using VCR-like ‘trick modes’ such as pause, rewind and (yes) fast-forward - the very feature causing the zapping issue in the first place.

Connected TV has already mentioned the use of the ‘pause’ function in ANT’s Amazon application, which triggers a window showing ‘contextual’ DVDs or books available to purchase at the Amazon store. However, NDS - the private technology firm owned by the Permira Funds and News Corporation - also featured it when demonstrating the latest version of its Infinite TV technology, which Connected TV reviewed after its first showing at last year’s IBC trade-fair in Amsterdam.

Geoff Todd, NDS’s director of sales and new business initiatives, referred to it as ‘on-pause’ advertising. In the example he demonstrated, pressing ‘pause’ during the replay of a cookery programme created a Flash-based wrapper around the video advertising a relevant ingredient. In fact, this type of trick-mode related feature has been implicit in Infinite TV’s targeted advertising platform from inception, although the capability wasn’t emphasised at IBC.

The platform allows the effectiveness of different types of targeted ads (e.g. ‘pre-roll’ versus ‘on-pause’) to be compared, and their subsequent application refined. “[Infinite TV tells you] which kinds of ads have been consumed,” said Todd. “If trick-mode works better, you can pull the pre-roll or mid-roll ad.”

The third example at the show came from set-top box manufacturer ADB, which was showing Stream Group’s Solocoo online TV portal being accessed from one of its hybrid DTT-IP hybrid models.

In the demonstration shown, the trigger wasn’t the result of trick-mode use, but instead arose when the viewer decided to use the familiar left-and-right arrows on the remote control to check what was currently playing on adjacent channels, using the mini-EPG at the bottom of the screen display. At this point, the mini-EPG displayed a YouTube icon, which when the red button was pressed, offered a choice of relevant YouTube video-clips to play back. The relevant factor, however, is that the call-to-action was displayed when the viewer chose to interrupt their own viewing.

As we have noted here before, interruptive advertising may be something of an aberration - one reason viewers dispense with it when they can. But placing advertising or other calls-to-action in the breaks viewers create for themselves as part of their on-demand viewing experience could well prove to be much more acceptable - particularly when the trigger invokes contextual promotional material.

(NB NDS is a sponsor of the Connected TV blog)

Posted in Digital Cable, Digital Satellite, Digital Terrestrial, IPTV and TV-over-Internet. 2 Comments