If there were any dominant themes at his year’s IBC, then undoubtedly they included a multi-platform strategy and specifically an iPhone solution. Quite a few companies could tick one of the boxes: Harmonic would claim to be at the forefront of both.

It was at IBC 2008 that Harmonic first announced its entry into the world of mobile video (NB not TV) and promised to set the pace. A year later it can well be argued that Harmonic is as good as its word. Looking back to September 2008, Harmonic was of the opinion even then that the ability to deliver any video content to any device, in real time or on demand, had become in a short space of time a critical requirement for video service providers to remain competitive. “In addition to delivering a high quality Internet video experience on the PC, we believe that the ability to bring Internet content to the TV and deliver high quality mobile video are important value-add services for our customers,' said Thierry Fautier, Harmonic’s Director of Telco Solutions. Fast-forward twelve months and Harmonic revealed further plans as to how it can support its customers' efforts to take advantage of the mobile element of a multi-platform media offering. This included new products and new strategies which maybe just as important. In product terms, the company announced enhancements to its MediaPrism software suite for multi-screen video delivery. Deployed in mobile video service trials with multiple operators, MediaPrism is claimed to encompass a wider range of functionality than other multi-screen solutions for the management and delivery of video to PCs and mobile smartphones. It included MediaPrism Workflow Manager, which is designed to control content as it is ingested, transformed, cached and streamed out to a variety of receiving devices. Importantly, or even crucially, the solution includes an iPhone3.0-compatible video/ad server that supports HTTP streaming, format conversion, and targeted ad insertion for multi-screen applications.

MediaPrism
“The MediaPrism convergence suite i designed to leverage service providers’ existing infrastructure while enabling new mobile and Internet video services that offer an ‘anytime, anywhere’ user experience and bring incremental revenue potential to the operator,” explained Fautier at IBC 2009. “All elements of the MediaPrism suite [are designed to provide] a complete solution that is easy to deploy and delivers a high quality video service to numerous devices, including the iPhone, smartphones, PCs, cable/IPTV set-top boxes and other IP-enabled devices.” But there was a lot more than just products on Fautier’s mind. In an address to those interested in mobile video at an IBC Business briefing, he outlined what he felt would be the winning strategies, that is to say successful business models, for mobile video which he defined as the extension of IPTV to an Internet connected device in any location. Even though he believed that modern lifestyles and consumer uptake of the iPhone and similar mobile devices for multimedia usage had created demand for video content in all types of formats, Fautier stated clearly that networks supporting live streamed mobile TV created high elements of infrastructure cost for operators. In fact, he said, it had become clear that streaming conventional broadcast television to mobile devices was actually a sub-optimal business model. There was no getting away from this. Furthermore the industry had to accept that having a pay element for end users would ultimately result in low penetration. Fautier argued that content could be delivered on demand and augmented by a wide range of other popular video then this convenience and choice produces true value for the consumer. What he foresaw as the optimum and most cost-effective strategy for IPTV operators, if not telcos, was a model based on the ability for users to side-load content in a near DVR manner using Wi-Fi networks.

Content on demand
Such a catch up Wi-Fi mobile video option—NB that both the iPhone and iPod Touch have this built-in—means that operators can leverage their IPTV investment widely and cost-effectively to a very broad range of mobile devices. And the user doesn’t have to depend on costly and possibly over-stretched 3G networks. In other words they can develop a multi screen service including all the content protection, automation of content delivery and network quality of service (QoS) you get with IPTV networks that Harmonic has managed over a number of years. Essentially, said Fautier, the operators get to open revenue streams with a unique selling point: your content, where you want, when you want. In a candid briefing with C2M, the Director of Telco Solutions was clear as to what had to be done. “When looking at streaming, we can do much better with time shifting,” Fautier told C2M. “Let’s not fool ourselves; we can’t fix the network if we don’t have intelligent devices. There have missteps: the technology and thinking was not right before. The iPhone [offers a] way to create an ecosystem, and about time.” But he added that the near future would also see Google, Microsoft and Nokia as key players in a smartphone market that could likely comprise over 600 million devices by 2012. And this would be a market that in his opinion the arrival of 4G networks would not radically alter.

Leading the revolution
Harmonic would be at the vanguard of the revolution, asserted Fautier. The next twelve months would see tangible proof of the companies’ mobile video ambition of being the leading provider of true multi-platform video delivery platforms including transcoding, management, delivery and distribution. Harmonic would, he predicted, by IBC 2010 have announced formal partnerships—inevitably with companies in the DRM, middleware and content delivery network markets—and would have built up a viable multi-platform ecosystem. Now that would indeed be setting the pace.