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OTT coming to Europe over the Horizon
This week at IBC there was some skin placed on the bones of the UPC Horizon box, something which now has so much hype about it, it could never possibly live up to the expectations observers have placed on it. It may however live up to those placed on it by UPC and its parent Liberty Global.
Whatever the actual benefits, it was a subject that visitors at IBC could hardly get away from, what with UPC CEO Mike Fries keynoting on the subject.
Most European operators have been unable to articulate a genuine strategy for sending video over the internet, and they are looking to this announcement for clues especially as European cable has its own problems, mostly that its ARPUs are too low to pay for the huge digital network upgrades that it so desperately needs. More than 50% of European cable is analog.
When UPC finally announces pricing we expect TV Everywhere benefits to be limited to digital households and the Horizon box to take just the top 10% cream of the UPC customers. That might mean it takes a couple of years to approach half a million shipments. But if it changes the direction of analog customers, it will have been worth it.
UPC Netherlands today has 47% of its 1.9 million customers still on analog lines, and its' very next ports of call are its operations at UnityMedia in Germany and Cablecom in Switzerland, which are 64% and 66% analog. Make no mistake, the device was planned as a digitization accelerator.
Liberty Global has added to the technology partners involved since last year's initial announcement and these now include the original four, Samsung who makes the final box, Intel with the CE4100 chip inside, NDs who has brought the entire project together and delivered middleware and the Snowflake UI and Nagra's conditional access, plus newcomers ioko now part of part of Kit Digital which built the service platform, thePlatform (part of Comcast) which supplied the content management system and Metrological Media Innovations, which has supplied the App Store software.
The Horizon box will offer broadcast content, plus web content on what UPC calls an open Apps platform (we wonder what will happen if a rival wants to offer a paid video service over the web as an App?) but primarily this will be made up of a 3,000 strong VoD offering - whether paid or not UPC was unclear, so we suspect both. An SDK will come shortly so that others can join those 60 first up Apps.
The box providers cloud based search and recommendation and we assume the recommendation engine, since it hasn't come from a partner, is part of the Snowflake project from NDS. There are separate copies of the Apps for tablets and smartphones, and these can also operate as a remote control. Horizon connects around the home with a MoCA connection (chips from Entropic) and Celeno video optimized WiFi and the outputs are DLNA certified.
To people around the world the most important step has been to get content to play on an iPad, and in this implementation that comes from a content portal in the web, so could have been achieved quite simply with off the shelf offerings, geo coordinated so that paid content can only be consumed in the home. We know that NDS has been working on a mechanism so that the iPad is TV channel aware, knows what you are watching and offers you additional content to the iPad. To us this means that the content that you can actually consume on the smaller portable devices is unlikely to be anything like the same as the TV, and perhaps only VoD and no channels. Some of the Apps support the major social networks.
At present Unity Media is offering an MHP based set top, which allowed broadcast and broadband to be converged, taking an MHP software stack from Alticast, on a device designed by EchoStar. We know this project has not yet been cancelled at Unity and wonder if perhaps UPC is keeping a foot in both camps in case the uptake of its Horizon box is slower than it hoped for, something that will largely depend on price and of course reliability. The same can be said of Telenet, Liberty Global's service in Belgium. Here MHP is already used. Telenet has 2.25 million subscribers and 1 million remain analog, so it would have been a great candidate for the Horizon box.
For a full version of this story go to www.rethinkresearch.biz.
Bron: https://www.rethink-wireless.com/2011/09/16/ott-coming-europe-horizon-page1
This week at IBC there was some skin placed on the bones of the UPC Horizon box, something which now has so much hype about it, it could never possibly live up to the expectations observers have placed on it. It may however live up to those placed on it by UPC and its parent Liberty Global.
Whatever the actual benefits, it was a subject that visitors at IBC could hardly get away from, what with UPC CEO Mike Fries keynoting on the subject.
Most European operators have been unable to articulate a genuine strategy for sending video over the internet, and they are looking to this announcement for clues especially as European cable has its own problems, mostly that its ARPUs are too low to pay for the huge digital network upgrades that it so desperately needs. More than 50% of European cable is analog.
When UPC finally announces pricing we expect TV Everywhere benefits to be limited to digital households and the Horizon box to take just the top 10% cream of the UPC customers. That might mean it takes a couple of years to approach half a million shipments. But if it changes the direction of analog customers, it will have been worth it.
UPC Netherlands today has 47% of its 1.9 million customers still on analog lines, and its' very next ports of call are its operations at UnityMedia in Germany and Cablecom in Switzerland, which are 64% and 66% analog. Make no mistake, the device was planned as a digitization accelerator.
Liberty Global has added to the technology partners involved since last year's initial announcement and these now include the original four, Samsung who makes the final box, Intel with the CE4100 chip inside, NDs who has brought the entire project together and delivered middleware and the Snowflake UI and Nagra's conditional access, plus newcomers ioko now part of part of Kit Digital which built the service platform, thePlatform (part of Comcast) which supplied the content management system and Metrological Media Innovations, which has supplied the App Store software.
The Horizon box will offer broadcast content, plus web content on what UPC calls an open Apps platform (we wonder what will happen if a rival wants to offer a paid video service over the web as an App?) but primarily this will be made up of a 3,000 strong VoD offering - whether paid or not UPC was unclear, so we suspect both. An SDK will come shortly so that others can join those 60 first up Apps.
The box providers cloud based search and recommendation and we assume the recommendation engine, since it hasn't come from a partner, is part of the Snowflake project from NDS. There are separate copies of the Apps for tablets and smartphones, and these can also operate as a remote control. Horizon connects around the home with a MoCA connection (chips from Entropic) and Celeno video optimized WiFi and the outputs are DLNA certified.
To people around the world the most important step has been to get content to play on an iPad, and in this implementation that comes from a content portal in the web, so could have been achieved quite simply with off the shelf offerings, geo coordinated so that paid content can only be consumed in the home. We know that NDS has been working on a mechanism so that the iPad is TV channel aware, knows what you are watching and offers you additional content to the iPad. To us this means that the content that you can actually consume on the smaller portable devices is unlikely to be anything like the same as the TV, and perhaps only VoD and no channels. Some of the Apps support the major social networks.
At present Unity Media is offering an MHP based set top, which allowed broadcast and broadband to be converged, taking an MHP software stack from Alticast, on a device designed by EchoStar. We know this project has not yet been cancelled at Unity and wonder if perhaps UPC is keeping a foot in both camps in case the uptake of its Horizon box is slower than it hoped for, something that will largely depend on price and of course reliability. The same can be said of Telenet, Liberty Global's service in Belgium. Here MHP is already used. Telenet has 2.25 million subscribers and 1 million remain analog, so it would have been a great candidate for the Horizon box.
For a full version of this story go to www.rethinkresearch.biz.
Bron: https://www.rethink-wireless.com/2011/09/16/ott-coming-europe-horizon-page1
