The Multiscreen Blog

We launched our multiscreen management platform ACCESS Twine™ at IBC 2014 to help operators address the technological complexity that the multiscreen world has brought to the fore. More devices and content encryption systems become available, proving a challenge for operators looking to launch universal services. This is why we have ensured that ACCESS Twine works with various Conditional Access and Digital Rights Management systems, while supporting industry standards including HTML5, HbbTV, WebKit and the new Blink engine to offer a seamless experience on every screen.

For International CES (6-9 January 2015, Las Vegas Convention Center), we have extended the capabilities of ACCESS Twine, which now offers global search and remote access functionality to help operators provide customers with a solution that enables them to easily find content across multiple sources via a single user interface. This allows subscribers to access the operator content as well as their personal media library on every device.

The new functionality enables operators deploying ACCESS Twine to:

• Offer a single user interface to their subscribers, allowing them to access operator content and personal media securely on any device
• Ensure that consumers access content within the operator environment, improving brand loyalty
• Support advanced next generation advertising models including the possibility to push personalized advertising on every screen and report results

The multiscreen age has seen a wide range of devices brought into the TV mix, and consumers expect to be able to access the content they love on any screen, regardless of wherever it is stored. The ACCESS Twine extension means that operators can allow subscribers to access all of their content seamlessly via a secure TV Everywhere virtual library that brings a whole new level of personalisation to multiscreen.

The CES demonstration, hosted at the ACCESS demo suite in the Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas, will show how ACCESS Twine facilitates video content discovery and playback on mobiles, tablets and operator branded devices such as STBs. The extended solution can be easily integrated with external metadata sources, allowing consumers to find all their content in one place by collating all locally stored libraries on a single platform. The new global search functionality enables operators deploying ACCESS Twine to offer services encompassing traditional broadcast services, IP delivered content and access to personal content, whether recorded on one or more in-home Personal Video Recorders (PVRs), in the cloud via a nPVR, stored on personal Network Attached Storage (NAS) or on tablets and smartphones.

To see the extended ACCESS Twine multiscreen management platform at 2015 International CES, please request a meeting with us.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) projects that Americans will spend $33.76 billion on electronics this holiday season, the highest peak since the CEA began tracking holiday spending in 1994. This confirms the role that consumer electronics play in all our leisure time. This spending is driven by new features and services. However, it comes at a cost in more ways than one, with TV Everywhere and multiscreen leading to complexities and technological fragmentation as multiple content distribution models need to connect with a host of device types.

This multiplicity of devices will be showcased once more at International CES (6-9 January 2015, Las Vegas Convention Center), where we will demonstrate how our solutions enable operators to deliver premium content to any screen inside or outside the home while ensuring the media sharing experience remains resolutely secure. Our demo suite at the Bellagio Hotel will feature:

• ACCESS Twine™: This solution makes it easier for operators to monetize and manage content services with additional consumer facing functionality, enabling users to better enjoy and share content on all devices
• Multimedia Content Sharing for the Connected Car: ACCESS Twine enables car users to access, play and store content in the car. Through its brand agnostic technologies, ACCESS helps automotive OEMs to maintain and strengthen their own brands and relationships with the car owners
• Support for the new DLNA® VidiPath™ guidelines: Integrated with NetFront™ Living Connect 3.1, the added support for the DLNA VidiPath technology on the client and server sides enables secure playback across consumer devices while allowing operators to control the user experience across multiple screens
• YuMe’s multiscreen advertising solution integrated in ACCESS Twine: ACCESS and YuMe can provide operators with advanced digital advertising capabilities, including dynamic ad insertion, granular audience and inventory targeting, and normalization of ad creative across platforms in and outside of the home, including in the connected car
• NetFront™ Browser BE: Built on the Chromium Blink browser engine, this advanced HTML5 browser features high stability on embedded platforms. NetFront Browser BE is an ideal solution for operators looking to deploy new generation hardware platforms and supports the latest HTML5 standards on high performance DTVs, set-top boxes, game consoles and automotive infotainment system.
• Demo of ACCESS software integration with ZapperBox dongle powered by Entropic: The integration of the DLNA VidiPath guidelines with NetFront Living Connect 3.1 will showcase how DLNA VidiPath on HDMI dongles enables operators to quickly deploy VidiPath compliant services. The Zapperbox dongle demonstration will also feature the integration of NetFront Browser BE, as well as on an Android tablet.

If you’d like to discuss how our combination of standards and strong security solutions can help you deploy and maintain efficient multiscreen services inside and outside of the home, please click here.

Ad:tech London took place at the Olympia Conference Hall in London on October 21-22, which enabled us to dive into an examination of the ad led monetization opportunities that multiscreen provides during a fireside chat with our partner YuMe, a leading provider of digital video brand advertising solutions.

The broadcast industry has been built around advertising since the inception of television. Advertising has a well-established ecosystem and is the largest source of revenue for many TV operators. However, the web and the proliferation of multiscreen devices have changed the way many brands now approach advertising. Ad agencies and their clients are increasingly looking to understand subscriber demographics and behaviour, target them accordingly through tailored recommendations and personalized advertising, as well as report on the results.

At ad:tech, Owen Hanks, GM Europe for our advertising partner YuMe, commented: “If this was a one screen conversation, it would be horribly dull. However, the integration with ACCESS allows us to utilize several screens and the technology that YuMe provides offers the ability to reach a specific audience. So this isn’t just about how to reach them when they move from the TV to the PC. This is how we get consumers to see brands outside one or two devices and companies like ACCESS have the ability to offer technology that can reach consumers on 7 or 10 devices.”

This proliferation of devices combined with different methods and ways of consuming content has made the delivery of content to the right screen at the right time and in the right format exponentially more complex. This translates into technological challenges such as content trans-cryption as well as an increased need for granular targeting of user behaviours and demographics on every connected device. PayTV and OTT operators need to be able to offer insight into the devices used to access content, the duration each video has been watched, when subscribers switch from one programme to the next, etc. This requires robust real-time data analytics solutions that can feed the operator’s back end constantly, as well as efficient delivery to a myriad of screens. However, this constant wave of data can be difficult to navigate for operators, who need to be able to digest it in order to improve their services and ensure they offer consumers the content they really crave. In a multiscreen world where information flows freely permanently, it is crucial for operators to rely on robust and flexible technologies that adapt to their needs. Efficient data analytics can help them create personalised content catalogues that fit each viewer’s interests, as well as deliver personalised advertisements as pre- and post-rolls or even ad insertions in the consumer’s PVR content.

To offer a solution that delivers the right advertising message to the right screen at the right time in a multiscreen world, ACCESS and YuMe have collaborated to integrate YuMe’s SDK within ACCESS Twine to provide operators including cable MSOs, Telcos, and satellite TV customers, with advanced digital advertising capabilities. YuMe’s proven multiscreen solution supports ACCESS’ network technology in order to cater to operator’s needs, and enables delivery to every screen in the home through a single platform. YuMe’s efficient data sciences work in tandem with ACCESS Twine to better understand subscriber demographics and behaviour, and target them accordingly.

By integrating standards-based technology, operators can leverage a host of branding opportunities, including interactive banner or video advertisements in the first impression screen or as pre- or post-roll video. It allows operators to gain insight into service usage patterns and develop new revenue streams through data analytics, such as personalized recommendations and targeted advertising. ACCESS Twine enables operators to better analyse the consumer’s viewing habits and allows for targeted suggestions on VoD portals and TV user interfaces, which have been proven to increase customer satisfaction and ARPU.

There are already an average of 4.4 screens per person in the US and 4.8 in the UK and the number of screens used to access video is sure to rise even further in the coming years. This means that it’s increasingly important for operators to deploy solutions that facilitate delivery of content to every platform and to be able to serve targeted advertising to every screen and platform. Solutions like ACCESS Twine enhanced with YuMe’s multiscreen advertising platform enable operators to integrate the best of both worlds directly in their existing framework, ensuring that they will be able to understand their subscribers with clarity and offer personalised content on every platform to maximize the effectiveness and monetization of next generation ad models.

As PayTV services embrace Over-The-Top (OTT) delivery for their premium content, they need to enable access from as many devices as possible, and from as many places as possible. Utilising WebKit, an open source web browser engine with high standards support, has proved an efficient solution to this issue. Combined with the utilisation of HTML5 and Responsive Design, the browser has become integral in enabling consumer multiscreen experiences, and will continue as the industry moves forward. Google’s development of the Chromium Blink browser has led to it speeding up development of some new features to provide a viable alternative on higher performance platforms, including those that support Android as the base operating system.

At IBC, ACCESS launched the newest member of the NetFront™ Browser family – NetFront™ Browser BE. Based on the Chromium Blink engine, it is a natural extension to the solutions already offered by ACCESS, enabling our customers to choose a WebKit or Chromium Blink based browser for high levels of HTML5 standards compliance. This combined with our NetFront Browser 4 “microbrowser” aimed at offering a HTML-based UX for resource-constrained platforms enables us, and more importantly our customers, to have all bases covered.

Adobe’s recent Video Benchmark Report, which analyses online TV trends based on aggregated and anonymous data from over 1,300 media and entertainment sites, has provided conclusive proof of the importance of TV Everywhere. It found that the number of TV Everywhere streams watched per visitor each month increased 133 percent year-on-year, which is potentially great news for the video industry. Given that HTML is the technology of choice for presentation of the online video service UX, device manufacturers must offer support for it as standard. This has placed a focus on ensuring web browsers embedded in consumer devices can cope with these interfaces and enable access to the large volumes of TV Everywhere streams. By supporting both WebKit and Blink, ACCESS is perfectly placed to help operators and device manufacturers deliver true TV Everywhere to the widest range of devices with the best standards compliance.

By extending the NetFront Browser family, ACCESS is uniquely placed in the worldwide TV-centric browser market. By extending our solutions to offer support for worldwide interactive TV standards, such as BML, Ginga, HbbTV and Hybridcast, we can continue to provide best-in class browsers for all markets spanning everything from legacy, small footprint platforms to high-end environments. Operators and CE device manufacturers specifying ACCESS broadcast-centric browsers can be confident that they and their end consumers will be able to continue to enjoy multiscreen experiences on as wide a selection of devices as possible.