coverstory_cover story 20/08/2014 11:27 Page 6
S3: Customers are extremely intolerant of
anything that affects the availability and
responsiveness of their TV viewing QoE. The
content and services available on an
Operator’s platform needs to be made
available through flexible APIs that enable
both in-house and third party applications to
easily connect to the platform to consume
content and metadata about available
content. By adopting this ‘mash-up’ friendly
approach, we will see a variety of applications
being developed to enable subscribers to
navigate efficiently across the ever expanding
line up of available content.
SoftAtHome: We have developed a solution
- Universal Player – which can play
automatically any kind of content whatever
its source: Broadcast, Unicast RTSP,
Multicast, OTT HTTP adaptive streaming
(Dash, Smooth streaming and HLS).
Viaccess-Orca: We provide Content Service
Providers and operators with an integrated
platform, enabling them to manage, and
protect any type of content, i.e., free or paid,
live or VOD; content can be delivered over
of alignment between these solutions. We are
following the needs of the market.
Broadpeak: We will probably see a variety
of solutions since companies like Netflix and
YouTube (via Google) have built their own
CDN. However, it is always the operator,
controlling the last mile and the home
gateway, who is required to carry the content
down to the subscriber.
Amino: The transition to IP for home
content delivery is pretty much unstoppable.
Cable and satellite operators are now firmly
fixed on making the move – albeit some more
quickly than others. There have been
numerous reports underlining the
accelerating take up in video consumption
across multiple devices and IP is the natural
– indeed the only – medium to long term
delivery solution. Within the home, Wi-fi
routers are obviously well embedded for
content discovery and distribution and in
turn channelling information for home
content and control for distribution via IP to
mobiles.
Entone: Some level of networking
any network (broadcast, IP).
Euromedia: Is one network solution likely
to emerge to carry all the rich media and
value added services around the home?
ABOX42: There are multiple solutions
available in the market, but if we look at
current market developments, the most
flexible solution seems to be the cloud based
approach – meaning a central head-end
solution is serving multiple devices,
independent from their location.
AirTies: There will be several platforms
competing and co-existing in the home.
Consumers will probably not hesitate to use
several to their best advantage, changing
between platforms regularly. These platforms
will range from traditional pay-TV to Netflix,
or an open OTT service like Apple TV, or
even YouTube hosting additional premium
content. OTT will gradually become the
dominant network providing content to
households.
Albis: There are various solutions for inhome networking in use. So far there is a lack
diversification will be required to meet the
needs of a wide range of home networking
scenarios. With the introduction of 802.11ac
‘Video Grade’ wireless technologies, wireless
is a viable, cost-effective technology for the
connected home with many ancillary benefits
that make it an attractive technology.
However, different geographies have
different requirements due to issues ranging
from construction materials to security
requirements of content providers. Therefore,
we don’t see a single technology becoming
the world standard anytime soon and we
expect to continue support for a range of
technologies.
Farncombe: WiFi is the most likely candidate
to enable this, given that many devices do not
have any other network interfaces, and the
combination of video compression efficiency
with WiFi bandwidth increase is opening the
door to using WiFi as the primary video
delivery network inside the home.
Freesat: There are and will continue to be
multiple home networking technologies. The
Sector ripe for further
consolidation
According to analyst firm ABI
Research, the market focus of the
leading set-top box vendors won’t
meet the needs of modern
operators who are looking at
extending their services over
multiple networks.
The firm notes that the STB
market has generally maintained
historical leadership positions based
on a cable, satellite or IPTV focus. Of
the top five set-top box vendors –
ARRIS, Cisco, Technicolor, Pace and
EchoStar – most are heavily weighted
to one sector, or, in some cases,
have robust proportions serving two
of the three sectors.
“This mature, yet fragmented
market, in which the top five vendors
account for about 37 per cent of
revenues, is ripe for further
consolidation. We continue to believe
that integration of historically
separate cable and IPTV providers
with satellite set-top OEMs would
bear fruit in the increasingly