Cablemedia | Page 14

alticast_1 27/02/2015 16:13 Page 1 According to Susan Crouse, director of product management at multi-screen solutions specialist Alticast, broadband pay-TV service providers are well placed to play a key role in ensuring delivery of premium content to user devices in the home. t seems every new report or article popping up these days is about the dynamic nature of the media delivery industry and the myriad offerings that want to shake up the market. Whether it is the announcement from a large corporation delivering hardware for OTT solutions or new media packages I portable devices. These often use HDMI technology and many do not provide a tuner for over-the-air scheduled content. Both the OTT providers and traditional MSOs are taking advantage of this technology shift, whether through an HDMI stick device, a slightly larger ‘puck’ device, or a small hybrid that still contains a tuner. Other devices use mobile CPU technology devices. In these instances, the consumer has the advantage of one contact point for ensuring Quality of Service (QoS). If dependency on WiFi is a concern, there are options. Some devices on the market provide an Ethernet connection to ensure a wired media delivery service and some include a tuner, creating a hybrid solution. These options allow operators to consider a The changing landscape of Consumer Premises Equipment for video service delivery from companies aimed at capturing the elusive millennial market, one thing seems to be consistent: the emergence of IP content delivery as a driving force of change. The chaos in the market is evident, as more companies enter with new IP-based services, which intrinsically have lower delivery costs. The cable and satellite media industry is continuing to look for cost savings in new devices, their deployment, and support. The industry would also like to bring down content costs, but that margin is already very slim. Because of the huge amount of content now delivered via IP to consumer devices, business models are under scrutiny to address the market flux and to maintain the existing customer base or, in the case of millennials and cord cutters, capture new customers. These changes, in turn, are driving the design of devices that provide access to content. While there is a surge in tablet and mobile video viewing, there is also a shift in the market to more compact and even more 14 Cable Media and there are a growing number of market entrants using the Android OS, which has gained widespread adoption in the mobile arena. Another small form factor viewing device is the CI+ CAM, which is compatible with the majority of TVs manufactured for the European market. The latest version of the standard, CI+ v1.4, incorporates IP delivery as well as multi-tuner and transcoding support. The main advantage for an operator deploying the CI+ CAM as an STB replacement, rather than an HDMI module, is that it uses the same framework as the legacy STBs in its network. The CI+ CAM can use the broadcast network for delivery and traditional CA for security, while leveraging the host device, such as a Smart TV, for decoding, thus eliminating the cost of a tuner in the CAM itself. The fact that IP-only devices rely on the WiFi network in the home can be an advantage to MSOs, who often provide Broadband service as well, so they are a central point of service and can determine whether their markets are ready with appropriate bandwidth to deploy IP-only variety of approaches as they look to expand the ecosystem in the home. As media viewing hours are trending away from linear TV watching, aside from live sporting events, operators are providing more and more of their content on-demand via Cloud services including virtual DVR functionality, giving the viewer the flexibility to watch on their own schedule inside or outside the home. This trend is becoming more critical as secondary media delivery services are encroaching on the number of viewing hours from the viewers' primary content provider, or in the case of millennials, when their only viewing is done with secondary catalogues. One barrier for this ‘TV Everywhere’ model has been content rights; many operators need to renegotiate the rights to allow users to watch content at home or on the road. The needle has made a dramatic move in this direction, as many operators have web portals allowing selected channel viewing on Consumer Provided Devices (CPE). A secondary, less obvious barrier is the ability to provide large screen consumption outside the home, as most TV Everywhere viewing is currently limited to computers, ADVANCED TELEVISION