Recently in Interactive TV Category
Hybrid TV is not new; it's been within the industry's lexicon for many years, the transition should not be a surprise. However, for many executives the shift to hybrid TV has been a quiet revolution. Especially given two of the telco industry's most successful TV deployments, Verizon FiOS (2.9M customers in Q4 2009) and Orange TV (2.1M customers in 2009), are both hybrid TV. The whole of the payTV industry is now taking notice of what this means.
The report is available from Mind Commerce. It brings together work performed on hybrid TV over the passed year through over 200 operator and supplier interviews and online questionnaires, gathering information on deployment experiences, market requirements, competitive landscape, and technology trends. I'd like to thank everyone who helped in creating this report.
Report Structure
This 114 page report including 57 figures examines the current status of hybrid TV and Over The Top (OTT) TV with the following sections:
The report is available from Mind Commerce. It brings together work performed on hybrid TV over the passed year through over 200 operator and supplier interviews and online questionnaires, gathering information on deployment experiences, market requirements, competitive landscape, and technology trends. I'd like to thank everyone who helped in creating this report.
Report Structure
This 114 page report including 57 figures examines the current status of hybrid TV and Over The Top (OTT) TV with the following sections:
- Introduction: providing definitions and a brief global round up of hybrid TV activities, including standardization.
- Understanding the TV ecosystem: an important section for all readers from the telco industry. Neither IPTV nor hybrid TV can be treated as an isolated industry; they're the delivery pipes for the much larger, complex and well established TV industry.
- Deployments and learning: reviewing hybrid TV deployments and the lessons learnt.
- Drivers for and business case of hybrid TV: based on market research in understanding why operators are moving to hybrid TV.
- Interactive services and STB (Set Top Box) applications: understanding an important category of services enabled by hybrid TV.
- OTT market status: examining this complex and rapidly changing Internet TV market.
- Hybrid TV suppliers: reviewing both solution providers and STB suppliers.
- Operator rankings and requirements: based on market research of operators' perceptions of suppliers and their requirements for hybrid TV solutions.
- Future of hybrid TV and recommendations for members of the ecosystem.
- PayTV operators (telcos, cable operators, satellite TV, and terrestrial TV) providing insight into the factors behind hybrid TV's success, and recommendations in retaining value in the evolution of the TV industry.
- PayTV and telco equipment providers: understanding the emerging hybrid TV opportunity and operators' requirements.
- STB application developers: helping understand where to focus in building STB applications.
- Investors: where the investment opportunities reside in the emerging Hybrid TV landscape.
Early IPTV deployments showed customers expect firstly a broadcast TV experience. The on-demand experience is secondary. Hence the entry level IPTV bouquet (set of channels) must include the region's 'standard' broadcast quality package.
Hybrid TV is where an IPTV connection and either a digital terrestrial, cable or satellite connection are delivered to the STB (Set Top Box); providing a full broadcast package and a rich on-demand service.
Examples of Hybrid TV services include:
The purpose of the Hybrid TV questionnaire is to gather requirements, opinions and experiences on Hybrid TV. Please click here to take the survey, I'll share the findings on my weblog.
Hybrid TV is where an IPTV connection and either a digital terrestrial, cable or satellite connection are delivered to the STB (Set Top Box); providing a full broadcast package and a rich on-demand service.
Examples of Hybrid TV services include:
- BT Vision which uses FreeView (digital terrestrial TV) for the broadcast channels, other operators following this model include Fastweb, Telecom Italia, JazzTel and Telefonica.
- Canal+ Le Cube whose satellite STB also includes an internet connect for video content (though more internet TV that IPTV (no managed IP access) I'll let is pass as Hybrid TV.
- Verizon FiOS which uses MoCA (Multimedia over Coax) for the delivery of VoD and widgets, rather than over the digital cable multiplex.
The purpose of the Hybrid TV questionnaire is to gather requirements, opinions and experiences on Hybrid TV. Please click here to take the survey, I'll share the findings on my weblog.
The Broadband World Forum is the main telecommunication industry's event for broadband, drawing thousands of attendees from more than 100 operator companies and all the top broadband vendors. Keynotes at the event came from industry leaders such as Hans Vestberg, CEO Ericsson, Jean-Phillip Vanot, SVP of Innovation and Marketing for Orange, and Mika Vehviläinen, COO of NSN. The plenary sessions packed out and main theater at CNIT in Paris, and at the same time the exhibition floor was packed.
One of the highlights at the event for me was HomeCamera, who I reviewed on this weblog as a start-up to watch, won the InfoVision Award. Its great to see innovative services being recognized by the IEC at the same level as the big names such as Huawei and NSN. This was a key theme of the conference, across all the keynotes was the importance of enabling open innovation from third parties to maintain an operator's relevance as a service provider to customers, not just a pipe provider.
Following this theme I ran a session "Stimulating Service Innovation through the Application Developer Community: Open Innovation". On the panel were:
The panel covered the ecosystem of operator, middleware and developers, so we could achieve an adequate breadth of views. The panel is also a mix of voice 2.0, web 2.0 and TV 2.0 developers. There is much to be gained by mobile and broadband operators looking at how the TV guys package their content, and for the TV guys to see the challenges operators face in creating development communities and application stores. The session was purely discussion, no slideware. An interactive session with the audience. I only asked the opening question, the audience and the panel did the rest.
To set the scene I reviewed some of the challenges operators face given their decade long search to work with developers. I reviewed the critical result of a developer survey I ran earlier this year were 50% of developers who had engaged with operators have given up, its described in the slides I gave at the Cable Labs conference. Another example is Fonolo, at the 4GWE conference the CEO made a statement I hear too often; "We tried working with operators, it was too hard, we gave up and now go direct." BTW, Fonolo, is one of Time Magazine's Top 50 websites, I reviewed Fonolo as a start-up to watch last year. I tried (and failed) to help Fonolo get into operators; the general reaction from operators was "Cool, I love it. But I'm not sure because...." I was hoping for the reaction, "Cool, I love it. Let's get it in the App Store and see what customers think." Its not just processes, a cultural change is required in being open to innovation; rather than risk avoidance.
I opened with the question, "If you could have one wish to make working with an operator easier, what would that wish be?" Some of the issues raised included:
From that, the discussion moved onto the challenges of:
In the time available we were only another to scratch the surface of the topic, we did not have a chance to cover:
After the session the organizers came in and asked us to move onto the next sessions as the discussion was continuing long passed the end of the panel session.
In a later article I'll review some of the sessions I attended in the Conference agenda which included more than 250 speakers in over 50 breakout sessions, keynote addresses, plenary panels, and workshops. Sessions such as 'Demystifying SaaS/ Cloud Computing: The Myths versus the Facts' with presenters from Amazon, Salesforce.com, Amdocs, BT, and IDC proved very interesting.
One of the highlights at the event for me was HomeCamera, who I reviewed on this weblog as a start-up to watch, won the InfoVision Award. Its great to see innovative services being recognized by the IEC at the same level as the big names such as Huawei and NSN. This was a key theme of the conference, across all the keynotes was the importance of enabling open innovation from third parties to maintain an operator's relevance as a service provider to customers, not just a pipe provider.
Following this theme I ran a session "Stimulating Service Innovation through the Application Developer Community: Open Innovation". On the panel were:
- Varun Arora, CEO HomeCamera;
- Christophe Francois, VP Mobile Multimedia Products and Services, Orange Partner;
- Sean O'Sullivan, CTO Dial2do;
- James Steadman, Senior Director, Product Management Oracle; and
- Ian Valentine, CEO, Miniweb.
The panel covered the ecosystem of operator, middleware and developers, so we could achieve an adequate breadth of views. The panel is also a mix of voice 2.0, web 2.0 and TV 2.0 developers. There is much to be gained by mobile and broadband operators looking at how the TV guys package their content, and for the TV guys to see the challenges operators face in creating development communities and application stores. The session was purely discussion, no slideware. An interactive session with the audience. I only asked the opening question, the audience and the panel did the rest.
To set the scene I reviewed some of the challenges operators face given their decade long search to work with developers. I reviewed the critical result of a developer survey I ran earlier this year were 50% of developers who had engaged with operators have given up, its described in the slides I gave at the Cable Labs conference. Another example is Fonolo, at the 4GWE conference the CEO made a statement I hear too often; "We tried working with operators, it was too hard, we gave up and now go direct." BTW, Fonolo, is one of Time Magazine's Top 50 websites, I reviewed Fonolo as a start-up to watch last year. I tried (and failed) to help Fonolo get into operators; the general reaction from operators was "Cool, I love it. But I'm not sure because...." I was hoping for the reaction, "Cool, I love it. Let's get it in the App Store and see what customers think." Its not just processes, a cultural change is required in being open to innovation; rather than risk avoidance.
I opened with the question, "If you could have one wish to make working with an operator easier, what would that wish be?" Some of the issues raised included:
- Fair revenue share, with 70/30 being one limit, but operators taking increaing share for additional services such as marketing;
- Speed: short time to get to market, Apple claims the fastest time from code for customer, Microsoft claims 10 days, Verizon Developer Community aims for 14 days;
- Simplicity in the processes for getting in front of the customer. Most operators hide their customers away from developers, leading to developer frustration. An operator's core value is delivering a large engaged audience to developers; and
- Let customers decide, operators have proven poor in consumer service selection, let's face it they're mostly grey-haired or balding 40/50s males; its not an ideal demographic for 'picking' services.
From that, the discussion moved onto the challenges of:
- Visibility, given Facebook's >350k apps and iPhone's >65k apps; what can operators do to help developers promote their apps;
- Marketing, the importance of the operator to actively market applications;
- Device fragmentation, a critical technology issue for operators to mitigate;
- Value and relevance of customer info, such as phone activity, SMS history, in network / out network, etc; and
- Similarities between TV and Mobile industries in the emerging app ecosystem with many insights on packaging provided by the TV industry from Ian Valentine of Miniweb.
In the time available we were only another to scratch the surface of the topic, we did not have a chance to cover:
- Charging for APIs (Application Program Interface);
- Charging for testing;
- Enterprise stores;
- Operator in competition with developers, as some operators plan to build their own apps/widgets;
- Store within a store concept, e.g. an Orange store in Nokia Ovi store; and
- Operator collaboration to avoid re-certification, e.g. say Telenor approves an app, why is that not good enough for other operators.
After the session the organizers came in and asked us to move onto the next sessions as the discussion was continuing long passed the end of the panel session.
In a later article I'll review some of the sessions I attended in the Conference agenda which included more than 250 speakers in over 50 breakout sessions, keynote addresses, plenary panels, and workshops. Sessions such as 'Demystifying SaaS/ Cloud Computing: The Myths versus the Facts' with presenters from Amazon, Salesforce.com, Amdocs, BT, and IDC proved very interesting.
IPTV has been a long time in coming. Back in 1991/1992 at BT Labs I helped build one of the first VoD systems over DSL with Gavin Young's team. Nearly 20 years later, most of the major telcos have rolled out IPTV, e.g. China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, and AT&T. Global IPTV customer numbers are at around 35M, and expected to grow to 90-100M by 2013.
This growth, is in the face of wholesale market consolidation. Operators are consolidating as small operators are increasingly uneconomic, no longer less profitable. Vendor solutions are consolidating. Industry segments are consolidating with the convergence of cable, broadband, mobile and IPTV. And vendors in this space are consolidating with the following being acquired over the passed few years: Orca, Myrio, Kesenna, Thales, Tanberg, Scientific Atlanta, C-Cor, nCube, plus more on the way...
Yet we're on the verge of an explosion in IPTV service innovation, mostly originating from the web, with:
Given all the consolidation in the telco IPTV space, were is the innovation going to come from? Does the telco IPTV industry risk loosing out to the innovation engine of the web?
If you're in anyway involved in IPTV, I'd be grateful if you'd take the time to complete this IPTV Survey; if you enter your email at the end I'll send through a copy of the results. Thanks in anticipation of your help.
This growth, is in the face of wholesale market consolidation. Operators are consolidating as small operators are increasingly uneconomic, no longer less profitable. Vendor solutions are consolidating. Industry segments are consolidating with the convergence of cable, broadband, mobile and IPTV. And vendors in this space are consolidating with the following being acquired over the passed few years: Orca, Myrio, Kesenna, Thales, Tanberg, Scientific Atlanta, C-Cor, nCube, plus more on the way...
Yet we're on the verge of an explosion in IPTV service innovation, mostly originating from the web, with:
- WebTV - watching all the free stuff from the web on TV.
- Interactive / targeted advertising
- Personalization
- Social TV: viewing, recommending, chat
- Search & recommendations
- App stores
- BYOB (Bring Your Own set top Box) - using the Wii, xbox, or PS3
Given all the consolidation in the telco IPTV space, were is the innovation going to come from? Does the telco IPTV industry risk loosing out to the innovation engine of the web?
If you're in anyway involved in IPTV, I'd be grateful if you'd take the time to complete this IPTV Survey; if you enter your email at the end I'll send through a copy of the results. Thanks in anticipation of your help.
Telco IPTV market status / performance varies greatly by country, because of differences in broadband / PayTV penetration and the telco's access to competitive national content. Generalizations are difficult to draw. Some countries have had rocky starts while others have been relatively trouble free. Free and France Telecom are both now over 1.5 million IPTV customers, China Telecom and Verizon (its technically digital cable) are now over 2M customers, and even poor old BT and Deutsche Telekom are finally around the 500k customer mark. In mature markets with high broadband and PayTV penetration the key has been matching the existing packages of the satellite and cable providers, making it easy for customers to compare products: content packaging and price are key. This has been the key lesson for many telco IPTV service launches; content is king (witness the battles for sports events) and price is how customers decide.
In China where PayTV is dominated by analog cable China Telecom and Netcom simply offer more channels (70 compared to 50) and VoD content. In France where IPTV has been available since 2004 there is fierce competition with the Satellite providers over content. And increasingly VOD (Video On Demand), remote DVR (Digital Video Recorder), stop and play on live events, managing voicemail from the TV, etc. are used by the IPTV providers to differentiate - yet Satellite dominates with over 50% of the PayTV market, simply because the bulk of the market does not yet use interactive services. In the US the deciding factor is the number of HD channels and sports content.
In many high penetration broadband / PayTV markets the first phase of 'content packaging and pricing' has run its course, the market is educated on IPTV. Now we are entering the second phase where accessing content on your own terms is coming into play, e.g. VoD, DVR and catchupTV. And we're even seeing deals being cut where web based content is made available over IPTV. But all this is easily managed by the existing middleware and VoD systems. So why all the focus on IMS?
Scenarios quoted cover: CallerID TV pop-ups (BSkyB did that over a decade ago to mute customer interest, and most phones have CallerID built in); VoIP (BT's selection of a softswitch architecture rather than IMS for its 21CN last year was a significant nail in that coffin); and FMC (Fixed mobile Convergence) video. I understand the benefit of FMC data (getting it off the mobile network and onto the fixed when I'm at home or in the office as its much faster and cheaper), I'm still dubious on FMC voice if its a charged for service (as is the market). When scenarios such as watching a movie on TV then switching over to watching on a mobile as you leave the house are very niche (only a geek could create such a use case), and again can be managed through existing platforms and static QoS (Quality of Service) without the need for IP session control with standardized dynamic QoS (IMS). Given mobile operators have shown indifference to IMS, is it simple another case of technology-led sales rather than customer-led sales?
Bottom-line: IPTV doesn't need IMS at the moment because it doesn't matter to customers, rather the video related services of VoD, DVR, catchupTV, and related service innovation matters, e.g. adding web based content (search becomes even more important), stop and play on live events, local content, service management from the TV, bundling of on-demand content as customers' viewing habits change, user generated TV (e.g. local schools' channels), STB games (using the STB as a app platform), and the list goes on.
In China where PayTV is dominated by analog cable China Telecom and Netcom simply offer more channels (70 compared to 50) and VoD content. In France where IPTV has been available since 2004 there is fierce competition with the Satellite providers over content. And increasingly VOD (Video On Demand), remote DVR (Digital Video Recorder), stop and play on live events, managing voicemail from the TV, etc. are used by the IPTV providers to differentiate - yet Satellite dominates with over 50% of the PayTV market, simply because the bulk of the market does not yet use interactive services. In the US the deciding factor is the number of HD channels and sports content.
In many high penetration broadband / PayTV markets the first phase of 'content packaging and pricing' has run its course, the market is educated on IPTV. Now we are entering the second phase where accessing content on your own terms is coming into play, e.g. VoD, DVR and catchupTV. And we're even seeing deals being cut where web based content is made available over IPTV. But all this is easily managed by the existing middleware and VoD systems. So why all the focus on IMS?
Scenarios quoted cover: CallerID TV pop-ups (BSkyB did that over a decade ago to mute customer interest, and most phones have CallerID built in); VoIP (BT's selection of a softswitch architecture rather than IMS for its 21CN last year was a significant nail in that coffin); and FMC (Fixed mobile Convergence) video. I understand the benefit of FMC data (getting it off the mobile network and onto the fixed when I'm at home or in the office as its much faster and cheaper), I'm still dubious on FMC voice if its a charged for service (as is the market). When scenarios such as watching a movie on TV then switching over to watching on a mobile as you leave the house are very niche (only a geek could create such a use case), and again can be managed through existing platforms and static QoS (Quality of Service) without the need for IP session control with standardized dynamic QoS (IMS). Given mobile operators have shown indifference to IMS, is it simple another case of technology-led sales rather than customer-led sales?
Bottom-line: IPTV doesn't need IMS at the moment because it doesn't matter to customers, rather the video related services of VoD, DVR, catchupTV, and related service innovation matters, e.g. adding web based content (search becomes even more important), stop and play on live events, local content, service management from the TV, bundling of on-demand content as customers' viewing habits change, user generated TV (e.g. local schools' channels), STB games (using the STB as a app platform), and the list goes on.
The previous weblog article described the learning offered by Canoe Ventures to the mobile industry in working successfully with other industries. For the non-Cable (mobile) folks this article provides a little more depth on what the cable acronyms mean, how they fit together, and some analogies to the mobile industry to aid understanding.
Tru2way was formerly known as the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP), that's the last time I'm going to mention OCAP. Tru2way has a number of capabilities including allowing digital TVs to connect to cable without requiring a set-top box, just like those old unsuccessful cableCARDs. But of relevance in the comparison to the mobile industry is it provides a Java platform on the STB (Set Top Box) to run applications. Similar to the J2ME MIDP 2.0 (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition Mobile Information Device Profile) specification on mobile phones, but with much more processing power and a standardized screen.
EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) is designed for older / cheaper STBs with limited processing power and memory, such as the Motorola DCT-2000 set top. An ETV (Enhanced TV) user agent is downloaded to the STB. The ETV app is inserted into the digital TV bit stream (MPEG-2 transport stream) of the channel being watched, when the user agent receives the ETV application it decodes and display the clickable object on the TV screen. It enables polling, instant weather and traffic, and other simple point-and-click features - a bit like WAP-push (Wireless Application Protocol) just much more visually pleasing. Verizon FiOS users can experience this using the widget button on their remote to see local traffic and weather. EBIF is a subset of tru2way, so tru2way STBs will also run ETV applications.
Using Comcast as an example, only 15% of their STBs will be able to support tru2way by the end of 2009; while over 90% of STBs will be able to support EBIF. Hence Canoe Ventures is initially focused upon EBIF.
Tru2way was formerly known as the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP), that's the last time I'm going to mention OCAP. Tru2way has a number of capabilities including allowing digital TVs to connect to cable without requiring a set-top box, just like those old unsuccessful cableCARDs. But of relevance in the comparison to the mobile industry is it provides a Java platform on the STB (Set Top Box) to run applications. Similar to the J2ME MIDP 2.0 (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition Mobile Information Device Profile) specification on mobile phones, but with much more processing power and a standardized screen.
EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) is designed for older / cheaper STBs with limited processing power and memory, such as the Motorola DCT-2000 set top. An ETV (Enhanced TV) user agent is downloaded to the STB. The ETV app is inserted into the digital TV bit stream (MPEG-2 transport stream) of the channel being watched, when the user agent receives the ETV application it decodes and display the clickable object on the TV screen. It enables polling, instant weather and traffic, and other simple point-and-click features - a bit like WAP-push (Wireless Application Protocol) just much more visually pleasing. Verizon FiOS users can experience this using the widget button on their remote to see local traffic and weather. EBIF is a subset of tru2way, so tru2way STBs will also run ETV applications.
Using Comcast as an example, only 15% of their STBs will be able to support tru2way by the end of 2009; while over 90% of STBs will be able to support EBIF. Hence Canoe Ventures is initially focused upon EBIF.
In the Mobile World Congress Summary weblog entry I made reference to the Cable industries targeted advertising initiative, Canoe Ventures.
Canoe Ventures is backed by most of the US cablecos, including Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, Charter, Bright House, and Time Warner. Its purpose is to make cable's advanced advertising applications easier to buy and use, and on making the results easier to measure. N.B. this is a quite customer focused mission; not one mention of technology or esoteric audience qualifiers. The head of Canoe is David Verklin, the former CEO of Aegis Media Americas. N.B. they brought in an ad-man, so the organization understands what the customer (advertising industry) needs.
So Canoe can work among disparate MSOs and cable systems, its platform uses the Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) and tru2way, and defines a common way to collect and report audience data. Focusing on CableLabs's EBIF enables coverage of most set-tops in the market today, including those used by Verizon FiOS. Canoe is initially focused on a product called 'Creative Versioning,' which will use the cable industry's architecture and ad zones in an effort to make targeted ads more relevant to their viewers. They've defined two templates, based on EBIF: One for voting and polling, and one for "request for information" applications.
Imagine these scenarios, you're watching the game show and as the presenter asks you to vote and some cute buttons appear at the bottom of the screen, and from the remote you place your vote. Or an advert for a national pizza chain comes on, at the bottom of the screen appears a button with 'place your order with your local pizza place now' which again is activated with the remote. All designed for easy viewing on the 10 ft viewing experience. But most importantly on the back-end; the system makes it easy to target and measure within how advertisers do business today.
Canoe is focused squarely on serving the cable industry at this point. But EBIF is relevant to both the satellite TV and telco TV service providers. In fact, Verizon is a leader in EBIF, recently announcing its Verizon FiOS Widget Bazaar based on EBIF.
The critical characteristics in Canoe are:
For both the advertising challenge and the third party developer challenge facing the mobile and broader telco industry, Canoe provides a clear case study how another industry is tackling the problem. But as a note of caution, Comcast's cable ad business accounts for 5 percent (and falling) of the MSO's total revenue. Don't expect these JVs to have a dramatic change on the existing business model.
Canoe Ventures is backed by most of the US cablecos, including Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, Charter, Bright House, and Time Warner. Its purpose is to make cable's advanced advertising applications easier to buy and use, and on making the results easier to measure. N.B. this is a quite customer focused mission; not one mention of technology or esoteric audience qualifiers. The head of Canoe is David Verklin, the former CEO of Aegis Media Americas. N.B. they brought in an ad-man, so the organization understands what the customer (advertising industry) needs.
So Canoe can work among disparate MSOs and cable systems, its platform uses the Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) and tru2way, and defines a common way to collect and report audience data. Focusing on CableLabs's EBIF enables coverage of most set-tops in the market today, including those used by Verizon FiOS. Canoe is initially focused on a product called 'Creative Versioning,' which will use the cable industry's architecture and ad zones in an effort to make targeted ads more relevant to their viewers. They've defined two templates, based on EBIF: One for voting and polling, and one for "request for information" applications.
Imagine these scenarios, you're watching the game show and as the presenter asks you to vote and some cute buttons appear at the bottom of the screen, and from the remote you place your vote. Or an advert for a national pizza chain comes on, at the bottom of the screen appears a button with 'place your order with your local pizza place now' which again is activated with the remote. All designed for easy viewing on the 10 ft viewing experience. But most importantly on the back-end; the system makes it easy to target and measure within how advertisers do business today.
Canoe is focused squarely on serving the cable industry at this point. But EBIF is relevant to both the satellite TV and telco TV service providers. In fact, Verizon is a leader in EBIF, recently announcing its Verizon FiOS Widget Bazaar based on EBIF.
The critical characteristics in Canoe are:
- Industry acts in co-ordination, not multiple independent operator activities.
- They create a JV, so competitive issues between operators are removed
- It's led by someone from the customer's industry, so its focuses on what matters to the customer (advertisers).
- Its starts small, with incremental improvements that are easy to understand, and then quietly quantifies and tests them out before bringing them to market.
For both the advertising challenge and the third party developer challenge facing the mobile and broader telco industry, Canoe provides a clear case study how another industry is tackling the problem. But as a note of caution, Comcast's cable ad business accounts for 5 percent (and falling) of the MSO's total revenue. Don't expect these JVs to have a dramatic change on the existing business model.
With the launch of services such as FiOS from Verizon and U-Verse from AT&T, TV services in the US are finally entering the 21st Century, where widgets are now available on the TV such as local weather and traffic; it's slowly becoming interactive. As anyone from the UK will attest Sky, a satellite TV service provider, has been offering interactive programming since 2001 with the launch of the "Red Button." That is a simple red button on the TV remote that launches a mico-browser on the STB, which communicates over the dial-up telephone line for voting and getting more information on a topic (e.g. Sky News). This concept was then extended to the Sky Key, a short-code that advertisers could use so people could go directly to the advertiser's site. Over dial-up, in my experience, anything more that voting was not an ideal user experience. But with STBs (Set Top Box) finally going broadband, things have got interesting, and Miniweb is ideally positioned to create a new category in interactive TV.
Miniweb is a spin-out from Sky, they created the microbrowser and the TV Key platforms, and have now created a broadband interactive TV platform and standard based (WTVML) browser that can run on most set-top boxes. This potentially makes the viewing experience of 382 million TV households worldwide, as rich as the internet, but with the ease of use of the TV. Miniweb's proposition is to create a new digital entertainment experience through the TV by enabling an Interactive TV experience that combines TV viewing, on-line services and interactive advertising. This generates revenue by connecting TV eyeballs through their products, relevant advertising, contextual links to content and broadcaster driven enhanced TV. It's a business model analogous to that of Google. What Google does for Internet advertisers, Miniweb wants to do on the TV.
The immediate question that comes to mind is to point out that the Wii and PS3 both include web browsers, so why won't customers just use the existing web browsers on their TVs, especially given the growth of HDTV. Here is where it's important to examine the user experience. When someone is watching TV it's an engaging experience. As an analogy, when I'm watching TV and the phone rings it's an inconvenience, whilst when I'm at my PC surfing the web I do not think twice about checking CID (Caller ID) and answering. This is a critical point, TV viewing is engaging, so a context-switch is a significant disruption to the user experience; hence why Miniweb subtly overlays their browser and integrates it with the TV channel and its content.
I've accessed the web using both the Wii and PS3 browsers, and though it's nice to see on a HDTV, the PC it still a much easier user experience. I've experienced the Miniweb platform and it's not the web, its interactive TV, it's a different and new experience that enables me to find out what song is being played on the program I'm watching, find-out the actors name while watching the show, see local traffic reports, find out more about the current news report, book a test-drive from the advert I've just seen, rate programs and share new discoveries with friends, and yes even order a pizza with the press of a couple of buttons on the remote. It's really just making an appropriate experience to the TV and the context in which people watch TV, rather than force-fitting the internet model. Regardless of its commercial success Miniweb is an important experiment for the industry in creating new and innovative interactive experiences to understand how the TV/web experience is going to evolve.
Miniweb is a spin-out from Sky, they created the microbrowser and the TV Key platforms, and have now created a broadband interactive TV platform and standard based (WTVML) browser that can run on most set-top boxes. This potentially makes the viewing experience of 382 million TV households worldwide, as rich as the internet, but with the ease of use of the TV. Miniweb's proposition is to create a new digital entertainment experience through the TV by enabling an Interactive TV experience that combines TV viewing, on-line services and interactive advertising. This generates revenue by connecting TV eyeballs through their products, relevant advertising, contextual links to content and broadcaster driven enhanced TV. It's a business model analogous to that of Google. What Google does for Internet advertisers, Miniweb wants to do on the TV.
The immediate question that comes to mind is to point out that the Wii and PS3 both include web browsers, so why won't customers just use the existing web browsers on their TVs, especially given the growth of HDTV. Here is where it's important to examine the user experience. When someone is watching TV it's an engaging experience. As an analogy, when I'm watching TV and the phone rings it's an inconvenience, whilst when I'm at my PC surfing the web I do not think twice about checking CID (Caller ID) and answering. This is a critical point, TV viewing is engaging, so a context-switch is a significant disruption to the user experience; hence why Miniweb subtly overlays their browser and integrates it with the TV channel and its content.
I've accessed the web using both the Wii and PS3 browsers, and though it's nice to see on a HDTV, the PC it still a much easier user experience. I've experienced the Miniweb platform and it's not the web, its interactive TV, it's a different and new experience that enables me to find out what song is being played on the program I'm watching, find-out the actors name while watching the show, see local traffic reports, find out more about the current news report, book a test-drive from the advert I've just seen, rate programs and share new discoveries with friends, and yes even order a pizza with the press of a couple of buttons on the remote. It's really just making an appropriate experience to the TV and the context in which people watch TV, rather than force-fitting the internet model. Regardless of its commercial success Miniweb is an important experiment for the industry in creating new and innovative interactive experiences to understand how the TV/web experience is going to evolve.
