Euromedia May June | Page 13

LG reveals STB strategy

At Liberty Global’ s First Quarter 2016 Results conference, the company revealed its strategy for next-generation set-top box deployment across its markets.

Mike Fries, president and CEO, said that to take advantage of scale, LG was developing faster, cheaper and smarter devices, such as EOS, a project name for its cloud-based set-topbox that it was going to be trialling later in 2016.“ It’ s going to be faster, cheaper, provide more functionality than today’ s Horizon box. We also have a new Wi-Fi router, we call it the connect box, which is now live in all European markets and sets us even farther apart from the competition by providing faster, more reliable in-home signals, and up to 1 gigabit speeds,” he claimed.

In terms of the UK, where Virgin Media has a successful TiVo-based STB deployment, Fries said that EOS was a set-top intended to roll out everywhere at some point, including in the UK market, and that there was a TiVo interim plan, or medium-range plan in the UK.

Tom Mockridge, CEO, Virgin Media, said the operator was committed in the second half of 2016 to deploying EOS in the UK, and would put some TiVo software on it.“ But that will give us a lot more functionality for our customers. We are very confident with the.... relaunch that we have coming through this year, that we’ ve remained very competitive with Sky. So far, we have seen very little impact from the Sky Q, which of course is a very expensive decoder. And we are focused on improving the offering we have there, and EOS is going to be a big part of that.”

Balan Nair, chief technology officer, confirmed that the new box would be 4K.“ It’ s a pretty high-powered box that we’ ll get a refreshed UI on it, in later this year. And then, in the following years, our goal is to get Horizon across all of Europe. And the EOS box, this new 4K box, that’ s going to be the engine for the next generation video for Liberty,” he stated.

EU warned against copyright reform

Audiences across the EU will lose out substantially if the European Commission presses ahead with plans to erode the territorial exploitation of film and television rights, according to a report released at the Cannes Film Festival.

Changes to copyright and other initiatives at the EU level could result in substantially lower levels of investment in TV and film content, with consumer welfare losses worth up to € 9.3 billion a year, as a result of those consumers losing access to content they currently enjoy, being charged more, or being priced out completely. The findings appear in a major new study compiled by economic consultancy Oxera and media consultancy Oliver & Ohlbaum.

The EU proposals- outlined in the European Commission’ s Digital Single Market strategy in 2015 – would erode the established territorial exploitation of TV and film rights in Europe. But the report, The impact of cross-border access to audiovisual content on EU consumers, warns that rather than improving consumer choice, eroding territorial exploitation would lead to an enormous cost to audiences as well as to the European creative economy, threatening cultural diversity both in production and distribution, thus reducing the volume and quality of original content on offer in the EU.

Key findings of the report include: l Up to 48 % less local TV content in certain genres and 37 % less local film production would be produced, with the most marginal / risky content at particular risk of being dropped l All types of content – international, European and independent local productions – would be negatively affected, threatening cultural diversity l Even content that still gets made could suffer from reduced production values, impacting the quality of content available to consumers l Consumers would face higher prices( with some being priced out altogether) or lose access to content they currently enjoy

Freesat OK’ d for live pay sports

UK subscription-free satellite TV service Freesat has been cleared by the BBC Trust to offer live pay sports services delivered via broadband. The decision will help to progress Freesat’ s negotiations with content providers and increases the likelihood that Sky’ s OTT‘ pay-lite’ NOW TV will be available on the platform.

The BBC Trust decision comes as Freesat continues to expand its content offering to bring the most attractive line-up of programming to its customers. With a focus on integrated content delivered via broadcast and

broadband, Freesat already offers more than 200 channels and a number of leading on demand services – such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer.

“ This is a really important development for Freesat which will significantly impact our content offering,” stated Alistair Thom, managing director of Freesat.“ We’ re here to provide a compelling subscription-free TV service, and believe our

“ This is a really viewers should important have the option development for to watch a wide

Freesat which will variety of TV programmes and significantly events without impact our being tied down content offering.” to a contract. We

will continue innovating to provide a brilliant, subscriptionfree service for our ever-growing number of viewers.”

Freesat is jointly-owned by the BBC and ITV, which means the BBC Trust’ s approval is required for the new step of adding live pay sports coverage. The satellite platform is now available in over 1.93m households and is watched by more than 4m viewers every week.

Streaming service Netflix launched on Freesat Humax set-top-boxes in December 2015, and Wuaki. tv launched in April 2016, ensuring customers continue to enjoy a broad selection of content through the connected TV platform.

EUROMEDIA 13