IPTV in Focus

By Ian Valentine, founder and chief architect, Miniweb Interactive.

Internet video, interoperability and community services are the new list of imperatives driving the IPTV industry’s increasing desire to differentiate from traditional Pay-TV operators, but to achieve this they must join forces with the hybrid TV device revolution. Next on the list is the necessity to provide targeted advertising and the desire to offer consumers easy access to paid for ‘over-the-top’ video services which IPTV operators would like to deliver over their managed networks and internet directly. IPTV operators face problems with differentiation from satellite and cable offerings, and although often stronger on Video On Demand (VoD), have failed to meet expectations for interactive revenues. Interactive ecosystems have not previously emerged around IPTV operators mainly due to the fragmented approaches of the solution providers in this space, who have often implemented incompatible interactive environments, making it difficult and expensive for content owners, broadcasters and advertisers to deliver effective services. With the ever increasing reach and speed of broadband connections to the home, there is an increasing demand for broadcast/broadband hybrids rather than pure IPTV devices. Many of these devices will be connected to unmanaged internet connections, and receive their linear TV signals through terrestrial, satellite or cable broadcast networks. Whether an IP enabled TV device is a hybrid broadcast or a full IPTV device, the increasing numbers will fuel service development, so long as there is service interoperability. The growth of IP enabled TV devices could very well turn out to be the saviour of interactive revenues for the fragmented IPTV industry, as well as providing many other benefits, such as access to internet video aggregators and community functions. This article looks at the impact of Hybrid TV devices on the IPTV industry and examines the benefits for IPTV operators of embracing some of the principles and standards currently being deployed in the hybrid market.

Interactive ecosystems
Being IP based does not mean that interactivity is a uniform solution for IPTV operators. In fact, a lack of open standards and the proliferation of proprietary browser extensions and middleware solutions is hampering the IPTV industry just as much as traditional Pay-TV operators. This adds to the cost and time taken to launch services unique to each operator and is a barrier for content providers wishing to make their content available to multiple different network platforms. However, there is an easy solution: ecosystems are rapidly evolving which have multi device capability, such as the Yahoo! widget standard, and the Miniweb TVML authoring model, which deliver cross network and multi-device support for interactive content owners. The ITU recently recommended the use of ETSI standard TVML (TS 102 322) as an interactive TV authoring format capable of delivering interoperability across multiple flavours of HTML/JS used in IPTV operator deployments. Unique services can now be cost-effectively designed, built, tested and deployed via a multi-operator, standards-based services platform. This means IPTV operators can deploy services already authored and content owners can gain access to TV viewers across multiple networks with a single development and test effort. IPTV operators actually have a natural advantage in launching unique competitive services as they have quality of service on their IP channel, and can possibly push and promote services easier than hybrid operators. Standards-based interactivity and internet VoD services are a key area where IPTV can punch above its weight: with Ethernet enabled STBs and TVs, IPTV operators will find true internet/TV convergence increasingly playing to their strengths.

A shared, multi-operator services platform
To make this a commercial reality, operators need to work with a bridging interactive and internet video services platform, one that can utilise IP delivery and is more affordable and truly interoperable, and can add additional content and cross platform services to their proposition. IPTV operators can benefit from content already created and working on the service platform, as well as a wide range of additional internet video content, social networking and community services that need to work across multiple operators. Broadcasters and advertisers work across multiple operators and devices, and can drive significant usage of interactive services and on-demand video content. By linking broadcast and on-demand programming with broadband delivered internet video and enhanced interactive services, the TV industry can provide consumers with a deeper and richer experience than traditional IPTV that relies solely on the walled garden model. This multi-platform model is increasingly becoming the future of television and has important implications for the Pay-TV, broadcast and advertising industries. But which technology approaches will best enable this? Lack of interoperability across different TV networks and the high cost of service development and delivery have held back traditional interactive TV. When delivered using fragmented technologies, interactive TV is very expensive and while walled garden interactive TV works well in certain niche categories (like betting), its potential is ultimately limited. It is essential that the cost of service development for enhanced interactivity aimed at broadband-connected television devices is dramatically lower, and the scope of deployment is higher, which can be achieved by IPTV operators joining larger, multi-operator ecosystems.

Fragmentation
The industry is very quickly moving from the ‘any colour as long as it’s red’ situation, to a brave new world of interactive technology choice. We are seeing the growth of ‘widgetised’ TV on a worldwide basis or an embedded browser approach, and in the UK the interactive waters are presently muddied even further by the industry’s concerns over the BBC’s Project Canvas initiative. The large amount of interactive choice now facing the operator will inevitably lead to a fragmented approach with operators choosing different routes. This will continue to hold back the development of the truly interoperable ecosystem of interactive content for TV which broadcasters and advertisers so dearly need. What the industry needs is to be able to use a web-style ‘author once run everywhere’ model of interactivity, but this will no longer be adopted by uniform set-top box interactive technologies; we need to look at the edge of the network as the point of standardisation, and shared, multi-operator service platforms as the means to deliver interactive services written once to the different operator environments. This can be done by transcoding at the edge of each operator network into their particular interactive technology flavour. To do this efficiently, operators need to recognise that they must all support the concept of a shared services platform, that brings them content and cross-platform services such as community, social networking, and internet video search and discovery. Without this sort of approach, IPTV operators run the danger of falling further behind the web in terms of rich interactivity and on-demand entertainment.

Internet video – friend or foe?
Consumer demand for internet video is such that IPTV operators would be foolish to ignore it. We believe that a big opportunity for IPTV operators and others in the TV chain is to harness internet video to provide a better user experience than a PC, and couple it with a standardised way to deliver interactivity and content owner branding and services. IPTV network operators need to differentiate their offerings, and these new differentiated services will come with the use of internet content and a shared, multi-operator service platform. By linking up multiple operators to a shared internet video services platform and content gateway, the following next generation features become available:

• A viewer on one operator device sends a community recommendation to a ‘TV Buddy’ that is on another operator network. Both networks have access to play the VoD asset that is recommended and the friend can choose to purchase it.
•A viewer on one network creates a playlist of internet video, and shares it with his TV Buddies, which includes some premium rate content. The premium rate content is purchased by each TV Buddy, and each operator gets additional transaction revenue.
• A linear TV advertiser advertises an interactive link to a destination (a TV Site) hosted on the public internet. Viewers from multiple operators respond and each get to interact with the TV site via their respective set-top boxes.

Community services, and additional viewing time from internet video, delivered in the context of a true TV environment have the capability to deliver additional usage and revenues.

How Miniweb can help
Miniweb was founded to overcome problems of previous generation interactive services and to enable the multi-operator delivery of internet video content and interactive, revenue generating services. Miniweb’s platform delivers a converged TV and internet video proposition that enables interactivity and targeted, web-style advertising on the TV. This open, standards-based, managed platform makes it quick, easy and cost effective to design, build and publish interactive destinations for the TV across multiple types of TV device. It allows the discovery and viewing on TV of any internet video from multiple video aggregators. The platform provides interoperability across a range of TV devices ensuring that interactive content only needs to be authored once.

A multi-operator, open standards-based interactive platform:
• Creates a global ecosystem attractive to content owners, advertisers and broadcasters
• Drives viewer usage and monetisation via interactive products and services
•Provides additional revenue for device manufacturers and network operators
• Facilitates discovery of interactive content via recommendations, search, and channel menus.

Miniweb has also integrated a sophisticated internet video search and recommendations engine to offer IPTV operators powerful video search functionality. For example, this enables the Services Platform to recommend specific catch-up TV or VoD content based directly on the viewing context of their audience, or to enable devices serviced by the platform to gain access to multi-aggregator internet video search capabilities. This is enhanced by the personalisation, community and localisation capabilities.

Advertising – the Holy Grail?
Everyone thinks it is inevitable that at some stage, web-style click-through advertising, deep internet searches and transactional content will come to the broadband-connected TV. But without a multi-operator service platform it’s hard to see how these interactive acorns can take root, let alone grow into mighty revenue generating oaks. The lesson from industry in general is that new technologies rarely replace old ones, but augment them. Until recently, the industry has been focused around either broadband or broadcast, but the natural conclusion is that viewing devices with a broadcast tuner and IP capability is the sweet spot. These devices are in high growth, and IPTV operators stand to benefit by hooking up with them via a shared services platform. Multi operator interactivity will be fundamental to any television service as broadband and managed television networks converge. Interactivity will not only be an enhancement to programming, but a fundamental part of service delivery. As an example, we all enjoy receiving links to fun content from our friends, so why not on the TV. Community functions on the TV, sending, sharing and publishing links to clips, and even playlists will be fundamental to video content and consumption. This is particularly important for the IPTV industry, which can stand out from traditional Pay-TV competitors by deploying standards-based interactive platforms to make next-generation interactive TV work both creatively and economically.
www.miniweb.tv.