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what is required for high quality video, the
responsibility for quality will reside with the
content providers and what bitrates they
encode their video at, though content
providers may limit quality in order to
minimise costs.
Irdeto: With an established presence in
consumers’ homes and the extension of their
services to home networking and other related
services in the age of the Internet of Things,
operators naturally become the gatekeepers to
the home. With this comes the responsibility
to not only deliver the highest quality content
possible but also to secure their customers
from the new threats these devices bring to
their homes. Operators have the responsibility
to identify weaknesses and potential malicious
behaviour and have the technical capability to
isolate home security elements from other
Internet components in order to secure and
protect a person’s identity across devices both
in and out of the home. As devices become
ever more interconnected, it is vital that payTV operators are able safeguard their
customers’ information and as a result,
continue to be a trusted brand and add value
for their end users.
NAGRA: The pay-TV/Broadband operator is
ultimately responsible for the QoS of the datapipe to the home if they take a subscription for
it. This is an important question to address
especially as broadcast and Internet merge
and situations arise where services are not
managed by the same provider. As CE
manufacturers upgrade TV sets, other
unmanaged OTT devices connect apps that are
suddenly unsupported or changed and access
to OTT services can disappear, or are different
compared to the initial configuration at
purchase. This complex issue isn’t in the
hands of the transmission pipe provider and is
something that the needs addressing to ensure
consumer rights are protected.
Netgem: The gateway is typically controlled
by the telco as the Internet Service Provider,
but we have also been working closely with a
number of our telco customers to ensure
Quality of Experience through both the
technology choices (e.g., QoS in place with
SFR in France on the Netgem platform) or
optimised experience (e.g., local caching of
‘Replay’ content on STB hard-drive leveraging
DTT on EE TV).
Red Bee Media: The gateway can play a
useful role in optimising QoS for video traffic
on contended broadband connections, but the
trends towards HTTP based ABR delivery of
video places ultimate responsibility on the end
device. When the device and the network
operate in concert, the best outcomes for the
viewer become possible.
Roku: Can we still speak of one gateway to
22 EUROMEDIA
the home? There are various companies in the
value chain that influence the quality of your
TV experience: mobile providers, broadband
providers, cable/satellite operators, streaming
services, streaming device manufacturers, TV
manufacturers etc. Consumers have so many
different ways to access the content they love.
Stream it on demand, watch a live broadcast,
DVR it for later. Everyone in the value chain
exerts some control, and all have
responsibility for ensuring a quality
experience.
Rovi: In the Pay-TV world, the controller of
the gateway into the home has generally been
the company that is providing the access to the
video signal. However, this is changing and
one could say the person who controls access
is the company that provides the broadband
pipe.
In many cases this company will offer
multiple services, often being the single
provider of triple-, quad- or even quint-play
serv