The TV Everywhere experience is hitting the road

It’s an absolutely fascinating time for the automotive industry. The global market is worth over $200 billion, and there’s now an amazing opportunity to provide cutting edge in-car entertainment experiences. Already, connected and autonomous cars and electric vehicles are joining traditional cars on the road. With greater connectivity and, in some cases, more free time for drivers, we believe that there is a need for more cutting edge entertainment experiences to be made available to road users.

We created our Twine for Car ™ solution to make our vision of the future a reality. It is an OEM white label solution which has the ability to combine the user’s own content library with an international content catalogue and adjust the experience to each journey and user. Twine for Car is a result of ACCESS’ extensive experience of being at the forefront of technological innovation in the connected entertainment world. To date, our technology has been deployed on 1.5 billion devices, including over 30 million cars worldwide.

Twine for Car is an end-to-end platform, which is a first for the automotive world, but it is a familiar delivery mechanism in the media and entertainment industry, which is where a lot of ACCESS’ experience comes from. We have a unique opportunity to provide not just a technology platform but also the content aggregation platform to provide that solution for the car companies. With Twine for Car, we’re providing a solution that helps offer a range of in-car entertainment applications and services.

We ensure that passengers can OEM’s entertainment platform and watch personalised entertainment that adjusts to the length of their journey via screens in the rear seats. This includes when parents take their children to school, and they want to keep them quiet in the back. With an in-car entertainment system, children can watch family-friendly cartoons in the backseat. The passenger in the front seat can also enjoy the same type of content via the dashboard.

These revolutionary in-vehicle infotainment experiences are a direct result of our partnerships with a number of pioneers in the automotive space. Faurecia, a leading automotive technology company, is one of our most recently announced collaborations. Our partnership will see Twine for Car integrated into Faurecia’s innovative cockpit intelligence platform, which is an intuitive and fully connected experience for road users. We held the very first joint demonstrations with Faurecia at Auto Shanghai 2019, and we look forward to continuing our work with them as consumer demand for next-generation in-car experiences continues to grow.

It goes without saying that cutting edge in-car entertainment systems benefit consumers, but they also provide OEMs and the content industry with a number of competitive advantages. OEMs can design a brand offering that is only available in their vehicles and both enhances and extends their relationship with their customers. This ensures that they can boost revenues through advertising and distribution agreements with media and entertainment companies. For the content industry, the car is a new revenue stream. It enables new advertising models and new consumer experiences so broadcasters and content suppliers incentivizing them to take their content onto the roads and become a part of a true TV Everywhere experience.

People are already watching entertainment in the car via 4G, and soon 5G, as well as via in-car WIFI. But soon consumers will be able to enjoy a hyper-personalized in-car entertainment experience that combines the lean-back experience of TV and car manufacturers will have deeper relationships with road users as they protect and enhance their brand.

Turning the Car into a Tailored Entertainment Hub at NAB Show 2019

Since the start of the year, it’s become clear that the automotive and entertainment worlds are getting much closer together – so much so that the main business conference for the media & entertainment industry, NAB Show (April 8 – 11, Las Vegas, NV), is dedicating a full theatre to the In-vehicle Experience in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. To celebrate the inauguration of the In-Vehicle Experience, we will be sponsoring it alongside our partner the GENIVI Alliance and Audi.

In addition, we will be hosting a panel discussion entitled‘Turning the car into a tailored entertainment hub’ on April 8 at 2:00 pm PT. I will be joined by Evan Stalter, Digital Product Manager at BYTON and David Couret, Technical Director at France24. Together, we will debate the discrepancies between the rise of in-car connectivity and the current state of in-car services, and discuss the opportunities of multimedia in-car infotainment as a fully personalized, tailored experience that adjusts content to each viewer and the duration of the journey. To register for the session, please contact us and we’ll add you to the list of attendees.

We have also been hard at work ensuring that we are at the forefront of all developments in in-car infotainment. Over the past few weeks, we have been certified by the German Media Authority as an Official Media Platform – making us the very first automotive services company to be recognized with the same rights as video streaming companies such as Amazon Prime or Netflix. 

We have also secured new partnerships, with 7digital to provide the latest digital radio services in the car; and with Irdeto to guarantee that all premium content, services and data made available in the car are fully secure. These new partnerships enable us to extend the reach and offering of our ACCESS Twine™ for Car solution, which was revamped at the start of the year to accelerate the in-car infotainment revolution. Our unique solution combines a white-labelled content streaming service with an infotainment services platform, enabling carmakers to brand and personalize each journey. 

The industry is definitely gearing up for more entertainment inside vehicles, and we’re proud to be at the heart of this revolution. Drop me a note if you would like to meet in Las Vegas. And for those of you who won’t be headed to the US for NAB Show, fear not: Sven Eckoldt, our Global Product Director, will be in Europe for MIPTV (April 8 – 11, Cannes, France), while one week later, the ACCESS team will be making the journey to Asia for Auto Shanghai (April 18 – 25, Shanghai, China). Drop a note to automotive@access-company.com to arrange a meeting with us at an event near you this spring!



TU-Automotive Detroit: collaboration in the driver’s seat

Last month, all of the car industry’s major players congregated at TU-Automotive Detroit, the world’s biggest conference and exhibition for autonomous and connected cars, to showcase the latest technological innovations and discuss where the industry is heading and how we can get there.

On the show floor, there were more than 150 booths offering live product demonstrations on everything from cybersecurity through to payments. Yet the one major trend that stood out at the show was the huge amount of collaboration between technology service providers, OEMs and Tier 1s. A good example is Hyundai’s partnership with Xevo, an automotive telematics provider. At the show, the two companies showed a new solution that enables payments to be made straight from the car’s screen, which opens the door to new services available in connected cars.

We have always strongly believed in collaboration and bringing the best solutions and expertise together – and it is absolutely crucial in infotainment service innovation.

Today’s consumers live in the multiscreen era and enjoy intuitive services that provide tailored recommendations that can be accessed at any time and from any device and location. As the multiscreen landscape continues to evolve, the vehicle will become part of the wider multiscreen ecosystem rather than an isolated environment. Consumers will be able to press play on one device with one particular type of content and continue that same experience within the car moments later.

However, in order for this to happen, it will require knowledge both of the consumer’s viewing habits, but also of the journey (taking the kids to school, going to work, being stuck in traffic or driving for hours for the holidays). This specialist skill set requires better collaboration between the automotive and content industries, which are slated to converge once driverless cars become commercially accessible to the public. For the content industry, the potential for monetisation is enormous: studios could offer exclusive content to passengers inside the car, while broadcasters and content distributors can strike deals with manufacturers to extend their pay TV services outside of the home and build a stronger relationship with their subscribers.

To bridge the gap between the content and automotive industries, we created ACCESS Twine™ for Car, our new solution that enables passengers to combine their own multimedia library with the manufacturer’s catalogue, and adjusts the experience to each journey and user, tailored to the specific demography and duration of the ride. With ACCESS Twine for Car, we are enabling drivers to enjoy specific audio centric content or news on demand, while passengers can watch videos, play games, listen to music or read eBooks from the comfort of their seat.

TU Automotive Detroit is always a great opportunity to meet with our partners, customers and industry friends to discuss the future of the car industry and which key trends are emerging. This year, we were pleased to see a greater focus on collaboration and we look forward to working with manufacturers and Tier 1s, as well as studios and content owners, to bring premium multimedia and entertainment services to the car.

Driving towards the future of in-vehicle entertainment

By 2020, the global in-vehicle infotainment market will reach $52.billion, with personalised entertainment experiences playing a big part in its growth. Consumers are already well accustomed to hyper-personalised services on their mobile devices, which know what type of content they want to watch – from a branded catalogue through to personal content – on a certain device at a specific time.

The idea that such entertainment services in a new automotive tailored portfolio could be available in the car has, until now, always been a vision of the future most typically seen in Hollywood movies. However, today’s cars are all connected and through our newly launched product, ACCESS Twine™ for Car, the pipedream of drivers and passengers being able to enjoy multimedia services while on the road can now be made a reality. Our solution will enable drivers to enjoy specific audio centric content or news on demand, while passengers can use it to watch video, play games, listen to music or read eBooks from the comfort of their seat.

ACCESS Twine for Car has the ability to combine the user’s own library with an international content catalogue and adjust the experience to each journey and user, means tailored to the specific demography and duration of the ride.
It will empower the driver and passengers to plug into their personal entertainment system and alleviate the boredom that typically occurs during long journeys. ACCESS Twine for Car will also help remove the frustration from busy commutes by enabling drivers to adjust content to their daily commute or offer parental controlled short form entertainment for children in the rear-seat on their way to school.

Along with providing drivers and passengers with futuristic in-vehicle entertainment experiences, car manufacturers and automotive suppliers can also benefit from ACCESS Twine for Car. Its ability to seamlessly integrate with built-in devices and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Remote Media Access means car manufacturers can collect and use the data to better understand end-users and deliver better service recommendations, as well as personalised, targeted advertising to optimise and generate new revenue streams and increase customer loyalty.

Key features of ACCESS Twine for Car:

  • Audio & video; live, catch-up and on-de¬mand content
  • Multimedia content types including HTML5 games, eBooks, ePapers, audiobooks and more
  • Indexes content in the cloud for ease of access from any authorised device
  • Offers multi-zone playback
  • Parental control
  • Seamlessly integrates with built-in devices in the car, such as the head unit and rear seat entertainment, and personal devices brought in the car, including smartphones and tablets
  • Supports DRM protected content
  • Independent from broadcast infrastructure

We’re proud to be launching a solution that will bridge the gap between the automotive and content industries and provide numerous benefits to drivers and passengers, as well as to the car manufacturers and suppliers we work so closely with. If you would like to learn more about how ACCESS Twine for Car can help you offer best-in-class car infotainment experiences, please contact automotive@access-company.com.

CES 2018: the year automotive and entertainment collide

In 2017, the automotive industry showed heavy investment in advanced connectivity and this year’s CES has already confirmed that there is more to come. According to the TU-Automotive “Keeping Entertained in the Autonomous Vehicle” report – which features our VP Product Management Robert Guest – “the global in-vehicle entertainment market will reach a total market value of $52.2bn by 2022”, making it one of the most attractive sides of the industry to get involved in.

For us, the show featured a lot of exciting news with these highlights to report on behalf of ACCESS:

The GENIVI showcase reception event (January 9 at the Bellagio Hotel) enabled us to share our vision for the future of connected infotainment services with some of you – and we hope to have more conversations on the topic with you all throughout the year.

Furthermore, during CES we were able to share this vision with multiple OEMs and Tier 1s by discussing how our solutions help them navigate the evolution of auto tech, including:

  • ACCESS Twine™ for Car (Twine4Car) combines secure media distribution technology with our flexible multimedia content service for OEMs, bridging the gap between the automotive and the content industries. It increases the safety, comfort and flexibility in content consumption for drivers and passengers. Through ACCESS Twine™ for Car, we act as the single point of contact for the OEM for all types of content to ease-up the realization of state-of-the-art streaming services for cars.
  • Our high performance NetFront™ Browser, a key component of the ACCESS Twine™ for Car solution which also provides support for standardized HTML5 environments for applications, streaming media and Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs).

Finally, the show was an opportunity for us to provide attendees with our new ebook “Gearing up for an IoT-enabled automotive world”, which you can download from our website.

If you’re still wondering how to tackle the connectivity revolution in the car, get in touch with us.

Still need a bit of time to make up your mind?

DOWNLOAD OUR EBOOK

Looking forward to discussing how we can help you this year.

Copyright © 2023 ACCESS Europe GmbH