Connected TV

ANGACOM 2017: Making the cut: how pay-TV operators can thrive in a cordless generation

Posted on by Robert Guest

Millennials and Generation Z’s will soon be the dominant age bracket, but these tech savvy consumers are already reshaping the pay-TV landscape. After years of steady growth and being relatively unchallenged, pay-TV operators in mature markets, such as Europe and North America, are facing the chop as younger audiences cut the cord.

Originally, the cord-cutting phenomenon was confined to the United States. However, in recent years it has crossed the Atlantic and the snip of the scissors is starting to resonate across Europe, with the hardest hit being the Benelux and Scandinavian markets as well as some areas in Central and Eastern Europe.

Case in point: Germany

Western Europe appears to be bucking the trend and Germany’s pay-TV market, in particular, has seen steady growth. Germany is one of the largest TV markets with the largest and best-financed public broadcasting system in the world. Since 2012, its pay-TV market has grown 30% and last year alone the number of subscribers increased to 7.8 million.

Of course, just because Germany’s pay-TV market is currently flourishing, it doesn’t mean operators should avoid looking for new ways to enhance their services to attract and retain subscribers. We will be attending ANGACOM in Cologne to discuss how German operators can retain a competitive edge in a market that is competing with an unprecedented number of service providers, by focusing on the following three points:

  1. Getting to know the end-users’ needs better
    Consumers are using more sources than ever before to access content and this is creating an abundance of data, around 2.5 billion GB a day.  Operators need to harness this data to identify consumer’s habits and tailor their services accordingly. Besides the portfolio optimization, effectively utilising this data, operators can retain a competitive edge by driving personalisation and recommendation, which will ultimately enhance the consumer experience. For example, a fan of Orange is the New Black is more likely to be interested in Stranger Things rather than a period drama. However, by supporting the full range of public, private and premium content sources operators can offer easily more than “safe” options in order to let subscribers discover new content.
  2. Providing easy access to both personal content and external sources
    In the TV Everywhere age, it is crucial that operators enable media distribution on all devices and between all screens. The proliferation of personal devices, such as smartphones, laptops and tablets, means consumers expect content to be available anytime, anywhere and on any device. Furthermore, end-users love to access content “right-away” without the need of remembering where to which content is available. Operators and content brands can cooperate to enable a one-stop solution for content consumption, applying a shop-in-shop system for the accordingly integrated brands as well as lowering the costs to reach the end-users. Thus, creating one solution to access all types of content from private to premium is key.
  3. Not compromising on security
    Whilst operators need to provide consumers with seamless access to all types of content, they must also fulfil the latest studio obligations on security and content protection.

Enabling easy distribution of content across all devices of a service including e.g. place-shifting functionality and maintaining the necessary level of security is the key to providing such services without headaches. In 2014, we launched ACCESS Twine™ to address this growing requirement and to be able to apply multiple Digital Rights Management and Conditional Access technologies within one single solution. Last year, we also extended our partnership with Verimatrix to ensure that there is a future-proof solution that caters to all media sources and all devices without requiring operators to invest in costly solutions for each.

Whilst the cord-cutting phenomenon is a concern for pay-TV operators, there are steps that can be taken to recapture the eyes of the cordless generation. By using the right technology, operators can enhance their services and ensure they remain competitive in a rapidly changing TV landscape.

Connected CarConnected TV

CES 2017: taking connectivity to the next stage

Posted on by ACCESS Europe

Beyond the myriad of smartphones, fridges, drones and robots, CES offers an annual reminder as to why technology is such a fantastic area of business: by combining creativity with efficiency, we can provide new services that improve our everyday lives in a heartbeat. Yet, it’s important to remember that each of these fabulous new products have required months of development, testing and design to be shown on the Las Vegas show floor – and of course, better connectivity, which has become the crux of technological innovation. Reflecting on this, we are proud to see the level of innovation that we have witnessed in automotive and video at the show:

TV: shinier displays and better integrated solutions
In our CES Preview blog, we reminisced about the evolution of TV over the past 50 years. The days of the black and white, one-channel screen are long gone. Instead, our digital lives are coming to a screen near you, thanks to greater connectivity, sharper contrasts and better forms of integration.

Our main focus at CES was on new services such as NVidia’s The Shield, an Android-powered TV box supporting YouTube in 4K, Netflix in HDR and access to Google Play movies, Amazon Video and games streaming.

As strong believers in the idea that content sources need to be made accessible to consumers in an easy, centralised way, we are very excited about this new advance in aggregated media libraries. Our mission is to enable operators to offer best in class experiences across multiple devices and content sources through products like ACCESS Twine™, regardless of the hardware and infrastructure to deliver this content to the consumer.

Operators that want to ensure that consumers stay within their branded environment for all their media needs will need to combine quality content catalogues with content aggregation and data collection for analytics features within their apps. By using solutions that also support secure media re-distribution across all platforms and HTML5 powered experiences for HbbTV and other current standards, operators can deliver immersive experiences to subscribers on the beautiful displays showcased at CES.

Automotive: concept cars galore
Since the advent of connectivity in the car, CES has been the place to go to discover first hand the latest announcements, concept cars and products in the automotive space, an industry that is reported to weigh about 25% of all activity at CES. While the traditional players showed their innovations, like e.g. BMW’s BMWi Inside Future gave visitors to the show a glance at the future of its autonomous fleet, Mercedes’ EQ’s 24-inch display confirmed that connectivity and User Experience were at the core of its future ambitions.  Besides that, upcoming players showed their new products and concepts. A particularly prominent one is Faraday Future, which was founded in 2014 to rival Tesla. At CES, Faraday Futures presented its FF91 electric vehicle, slated to ship in 2018.

What we found particularly interesting however is the combination of consumer electronics and the automotive industry going one step further with the integration of Amazon’s cloud-based voice service, Alexa, inside Ford’s SYNC 3-enabled cars. This integration will provide advanced features like weathering updates, locking or starting the car remotely. Others, like BMW, Nissan and Toyota, are investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to better assist drivers as we transit from our current, driver-centric industry to the far away driverless future.

CES was also a perfect opportunity for us to reunite with other members of the GENIVI Alliance, and to showcase our solutions for the automotive sector: ACCESS Twine™ Car and our HTML5-based NetFront™ Browser family. These solutions enable car infotainment to support media distribution for Head-Units, Rear-Seat Entertainment and Bring-Your-Own-Devices as well as HTML5 based browsing and applications. Centralized control, general usage data creation and complementary cloud components to manage users, devices, content metadata and usage data enable easy service integrations. This provides manufacturers and Tier 1s with readily available solutions to enrich custom in-vehicle infotainment systems.

If you’ve missed us at the show but would like to know more about our solutions, please contact automotive@access-company.com (Automotive) or tv@access-company.com (Video). Alternatively, head to our website for more information.

Connected CarConnected TV

CES 2017: 50 years of automotive and TV innovation

Posted on by ACCESS Europe

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is turning 50 in 2017, which gives us a perfect opportunity to look back on how the automotive and video worlds have evolved.

TV: from one channel to TV Everywhere

Younger readers of our blog might not remember it, but back in the 1970s, watching TV was a lot less diverse than today. Germany was divided into two separate countries with radically different TV cultures and the rest of Europe consisted almost entirely of public broadcasters, with British TV airing just three channels: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Today, each consumer can access a plethora of channels from a number of sources (cable, IP, Over-The-Top, satellite, terrestrial) and across an incredibly wide range of topics such as sports, news, reality TV and TV series.

In addition, the rise of new video sources like YouTube and the move that social media platforms are turning into smaller scale broadcasters is providing viewers with access to even more content. This in turn has led to the requirement for good quality Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs) and search engine, as well as a need for better user experience solutions.

While this may come as a surprise to many, even though there wasn’t much variety in the content people had access to back in the 1970s, the Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) was born in that era. An incredibly viral video last year showed that children today have no clue how this device works anymore, which demonstrates that we are indeed in a completely digital era for consumption, storage and security. Today, viewers use the cloud to store their content, restart a programme exactly where they left it off and appreciate lifelike details using Ultra HD and High Dynamic Range (HDR) ready TVs.

We are very excited to see that our product portfolio is at the intersection of these technologies, enabling broadcasters and operators to offer state-of-the-art experiences across multiple devices and content sources. ACCESS Twine™ provides content aggregation & data collection for analytics features that can be easily integrated within operator-powered apps to ensure that consumers stay within the operator’s branded environment for all their media needs. Our solution also facilitates secure media re-distribution across all platforms, including support for state-of-the-art end-to-end DRM and DLNA® VidiPath™. Our NetFront™ Browser family also enables a seamless HTML5 powered experience across all screens – from smartphones and tablets through to the next generation TV screens. ACCESS’ solutions include WebKit-based NetFront™ Browser NX and Chromium-based NetFront™ Browser BE, both available as HbbTV editions.

Automotive: 50 years preparing for the driverless car?

‘The Car’, a thriller about a rogue driverless car committing murders in a remote area of the US, was released back in 1977. While the evil machine trope wasn’t new in any way, it shows how far back we started thinking that our cars would drive themselves one day. Cars today may be smart, capable of parking themselves and towing each other, but the days of the fully autonomous, driverless car are still a few years away as the industry solves fundamental challenges of security and passenger experience.

The automotive revolution is moving up a gear and we’re proud to be an active player in one of the most exciting areas of technology today, such as In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI). We are now preparing for the next wave of technology innovation that will be presented on the show floor and discussed in a number of tracks, including Automotive and personal mobility, Connect2Car and Vehicle Technology.

We have been involved in the movement towards more connectivity and entertainment in the car for a number of years, working with OEMs and Tier 1s alike to build the in-vehicle infotainment experiences of the future. Using standards-based proprietary solutions, we are opening the door to seamless solutions that can be accessed directly via the head unit or the driver’s own mobile device plugged into the car for a truly personal feel.

As members of the GENIVI Alliance, we will be showcasing how ACCESS Twine™ for automotive and our HTML5-based NetFront™ Browser family enable car infotainment to support 2- and 3-way media sharing for Head-Units, Rear-Seat Entertainment and Bring-Your-Own-Devices, HTML5 based browsing, control, applications and media re-distribution playback together with usage data creation and cloud components for easy service integrations.

We hope you are as excited about what the future holds for TV Everywhere and IVI as we are, and we look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas! To register to meet with us at the GENIVI Networking Reception at CES 2017, contact automotive@access-company.com.

Connected Car

Three key trends for the connected car

Posted on by Robert Guest

We recently attended the GENIVI All Members Meeting and the TU Automotive conference which reinforced the fact that the automotive sector is an absolute hub of innovation. As connectivity continues to become more and more important, three key trends stood out as critical for the automotive market in 2017.

 

1.    Solutions that evolve with the times

The mobile era has transformed consumer expectations, and has created an appetite for new features to be added on an on-going basis, which means that there is a pressure to “unlock” the in-car infotainment environment as well as a requirement to reduce time for the introduction of new functionality. This is putting increasing pressure on OEMs and Tier 1s to keep up with rapidly evolving technologies while simultaneously reducing costs.  By outsourcing, OEMS and Tier 1s can reduce operational costs and provide consumers with systems that are scalable and robust.

Our software has been deployed in over 1.5 billion devices ranging from cars, smartphones and tablets through to game consoles and smart TVs, which means that we are well placed to support OEMs and Tier 1s by providing solutions that enhance the in-car infotainment experience.

 

2.    Increased support for Industry Standards

OEMs and Tier 1s are striving to maintain a meaningful relationship with their customers and differentiating their cars through the power and ease-of-use of the in-car infotainment solutions. This has resulted in manufacturers taking their own road to the connected car by utilising their own proprietary software, such as BMW Drive, GM OnStar, and Ford Sync. At TU Automotive we saw manufacturers resolving the fragmentation caused by this approach by combining proprietary software with open source software. We see support for all relevant industry standards as critical in promoting the seamless interoperability between devices that consumers expect.

At ACCESS, we pride ourselves on being a pioneer in infotainment system development and consultancy. Working closely with relevant standards organizations, in technology, media and automotive, such as the GENIVI Alliance and the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) ensures that we can provide globally deployable solutions.

We are excited about where the connected car is going in 2017, in January we’ll be kicking off the year by heading to CES to showcase our latest solutions to everyone involved in providing cutting-edge solutions for automotive infotainment.

 

3.    BYOD unlocks the next level of car infotainment

With infotainment becoming a key differentiator in the car buying process OEMs and Tier 1s are concentrating hard on providing consumers with high quality infotainment systems that provide a range of entertainment and multimedia options for passengers and drivers. Consumers have become accustomed to constant connectivity in all walks of life and the car is no different.

Last year, at CES we saw that panoramic screens were a big trend for the connected car, but this year at TU Automotive we noticed increased support for the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) culture.  With an increasing number of consumers viewing mobile devices as an extension of themselves, OEMs and Tier 1s are ensuring that their infotainment systems integrate easily with personal devices, empowering passengers to use their own devices to access maps, music, news and trip specific information.

Connected TV

IBC 2016: Debunking some multiscreen myths

Posted on by Robert Guest

Multiscreen is here to stay, but in which format? According to our discussions at IBC 2016, the road ahead is still unpaved – although we are seeing the first signs of maturity. However, IBC was a perfect opportunity to debunk some multiscreen myths:

The set-top box isn’t dead

Ever since the advent of Over-the-Top (OTT) services, players around the industry have claimed that the era of the set-top was coming to an end. What we have seen at IBC proves that once more, these comments are premature. The set-top is undergoing a revolution, with local features being reassigned to the cloud, but it remains the most controlled environment – and as such, the most reliable and secure one – for operators.
Secure keys are being integrated directly within smart TVs, making control easier, while search and recommendation features are being handled from the cloud. Yet, consumers still see content as personal and save a lot of content to their PVR for future access as it does not expire in the same way as catch up services. This means that operators looking to offer multiscreen still have to take into account the importance of the set-top box as the user’s primary storage space for their personal library and look for ways to add value by providing access from other devices in the home.

Apps are not going to rule our video consumption in the near future

While it is clear that apps are becoming more commonplace, they are not replacing traditional TV viewing. Instead, different devices drive different use cases.  According to audience measurement company Verto Analytics, consumers are mainly watching long-form video on smart TVs and games consoles, while smartphones and PCs are used to access short-form content. This means that, while operators need to have apps in place, such as YouTube on TV, there is no such thing as an app vs operator environment threat in a multiscreen world – instead, they should be viewed as complementary.
Now is the time for operators to look for ways to maximise consumer time spent in their environment, and the best way to do so is to ensure that all content sources can be accessed via a branded environment – be it YouTube, the consumer’s PVR library or any third party source. Consumers want to be able to easily access content; the shorter the journey, the more likely they are to use the operator’s platform. This is why HTML5 and responsive design, which can be leveraged via our NetFront™ Browser family, are now the industry’s standard; while HbbTV, WebKit and Chromium Blink are replacing custom solutions to facilitate integration with a wider range of devices.

High resolution content isn’t limited to large screens … but it needs to be secured

Ultra HD is rolling out and slowly becoming a mass-market proposition, and while it was expected that only large physically sized screens would be appropriate to render it, it is already becoming appropriate for smaller screens as well. Now, operators can look to include UHD within their multiscreen service offerings such as sports and other premium content, all delivered to any device at an appropriate bitrate and resolution.
Even though operators can now extend their offering across the users screens they still need to ensure that all content transported over their platform is fully secure to satisfy the content owners requirements. The adoption of solutions like Verimatrix’ Verspective, now integrated with ACCESS Twine™, can help address this issue by enabling operators to secure, monitor and analyse the security on their systems. This way, operators can ensure that they provide the required level of content protection for each device and network, in a completely transparent way for the consumer.

IBC 2016 confirmed our multiscreen beliefs. It is increasingly clear that operators need to bring their services together for ease of access by consumers and that seamless integration, most commonly enabled by HTML5 browser-based platforms is a key driver for mass adoption of multiscreen. We are now preparing for a future where consumers will be able to access all their content sources through a single, consistent application, watch content anywhere, at any time they like, and do this all securely.
To learn more about our solutions for multiscreen, please head to our website.

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