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Top Story
ITU forms IPTV focus group
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
The International Telecommunications Union, ITU, is creating a focus group on IPTV to advance international standardization for IPTV.
The move, announced April 13, follows an agreement reached at a public meeting April 4-5 of about 120 experts who affirmed the ITU’s role in the coordination of global IPTV standards. The first meeting of the focus group will be held in July.
The announcement is a reaction to an industry call for ITU to push forward and coordinate global standardization effort in the field.
IPTV is a system where a digital television service is delivered to consumers using Internet Protocol over a broadband connection.
The mission of IPTV FG is to coordinate and promote the development of global IPTV standards taking into account the existing work of the ITU study groups as well as other standards development organizations, forums and consortiums. The IPTV FG will:
- Define IPTV
- Review and do gap analysis of existing standards and ongoing works
- Coordinate existing standardization activities
- Harmonize the development of new standards
- Encourage interoperability with existing systems where possible
For more information, visit www.itu.int.
News
AT&T adds Akimbo VOD to Homezone TV service
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
AT&T and Akimbo Systems have agreed to offer the Internet-based Akimbo video-on-demand service to subscribers of AT&T’s Homezone TV service, scheduled to launch later this summer.
AT&T Homezone subscribers will use their converged set-top boxes to access thousands of video programs and movies.
AT&T Homezone, currently in trial in several states, will integrate AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet and AT&T | DISH Network programming to provide video on demand, digital video recording and Internet content, including photos and music, via a new set-top box. AT&T Homezone will be available to customers who purchase both AT&T | DISH Network satellite television and AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet services.
AT&T plans to offer the content available from Akimbo’s library of more than 10,000 television programs and movies-on-demand. Akimbo video-on-demand service offers videos and movies from more than 165 content partners throughout the world. Each week, Akimbo adds more than 150 new mainstream and niche titles in 85 different categories, such as music, sports, independent film, anime, major motion pictures, education, children’s programming and foreign language.
The service will have an online guide that enables AT&T Homezone subscribers to view a comprehensive listing of all Akimbo videos and movies. To help subscribers find videos that match their interests, the on-screen guide features a video search function, full program descriptions and video previews. Customers can also access the guide remotely from an Internet-connected computer to browse and download programs so that new shows are available for viewing when they get home.
For more information, visit www.thenewatt.com and www.akimbo.com.
Studies & Stats
Nearly 17 million Western Europeans to subscribe to IPTV by 2010
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
The number of households subscribing to IPTV services offered by telecom carriers in Western Europe will reach 3.3 million this year and 16.7 million in 2010, according to recent forecasts from Gartner Dataquest.
Despite the robust growth in subscribers, Gartner believes IPTV will struggle over the next five years to become a mainstream revenue opportunity for telecommunications carriers.
Competing against entrenched pay TV and free-to-air terrestrial TV providers, carriers will resort to low-priced services and bundles to drive initial subscriber uptake. As a result, carriers' IPTV revenue in Western Europe during the period will grow from $416 million in 2006 to only $3.7 billion by 2010.
Gartner says France is currently well ahead of other markets in terms of IPTV adoption. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2006, almost half of Western Europe's IPTV subscribers will be based in France — a total of 1.7 million generating revenues of $175 million. By 2010, Gartner expects that the number of subscribers in France will reach nearly 5 million, just under one third of all IPTV subscribers in Western Europe and generating $845 million in total revenue.
The U.K. currently has one of the smallest number of IPTV subscribers in Western Europe, with only 75,000 subscribers predicted in 2006. Although this is set to increase fairly rapidly to reach 1.9 million by 2010 with the introduction of services such as BT's BT Vision this autumn, Gartner predicts that the UK will remain a weaker prospect for IPTV. This is mainly due to the existing pay TV landscape and dominance of Sky TV.
Germany has historically been a challenging market with low potential for pay TV, due to the large number of fairly high quality free-to air-channels. Gartner estimates that only 10 percent of households in Germany today pay for premium TV, a milestone that took 15 years to achieve and was largely driven by consumers' willingness to pay to watch football.
However, the market is on the brink of change as illustrated by recent announcements from Deutsche Telecom, with both Premiere and Microsoft. Gartner estimates that the number of households subscribing to IPTV will reach 47,000 this year and grow to 2.8 million by 2010, generating revenues of $576 million.
For more information, visit www.gartner.com.
400 million to subscribe to broadband service worldwide by 2010
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
The number of broadband subscribers worldwide will double over the next five years, reaching 413 million people by the end of 2010, according to high-tech market research firm In-Stat.
Several reasons contribute to the growth, but heading the list are the increasing availability of broadband services and the proliferation of new applications that rely on high-speed connections, according to In-Stat analyst Mike Paxton. Gradually falling service prices and triple play bundling play a role as well, he said.
A recent In-Stat research report, "The Broadband Boom Continues: Worldwide Subscribers Pass 200 Million," found:
- DSL remains the leading broadband access technology. On a worldwide basis, it currently accounts for 69 percent of all broadband subscribers;
- Based on current worldwide broadband growth rates, 3.7 million new subscribers will sign up for broadband services each month this year. In the United States, 670,000 new subscribers every month are projected to sign up.
- In late February 2006, the total number of worldwide broadband subscribers passed 200 million.
For more information, visit www.in-stat.com.
The latest happenings from around the world of IPTV
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
Veoh secures strategic financing; Eisner joins board of directors
Veoh Networks has completed a major strategic financing round, raising $12.5 million in a Series B venture capital financing. Additionally, Michael Eisner, former chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, and Todd Dagres, managing partner of Spark Capital, will join the Veoh Networks board of directors.
New investors Spark Capital, Time Warner and Eisner's The Tornante Company joined existing investor Shelter Capital Partners in the financing.
Veoh Networks delivers broadcast-quality entertainment and informational content via the Internet.
For more information, visit www.veoh.com.
MRG ranks Tut System tops among headend vendors
Multimedia Research Group has ranked Tut Systems No. 1 among video headend vendors for IPTV channels deployed. Tut Systems earned a top ranking in more than one segment. The company took top honors in the Global, North American and Rest of World markets.
The March 2006 “IPTV Tracking Service — Market Leaders Report” from MRG identified IPTV systems and software companies leading globally and in each of four IPTV geographic markets. The report measured market position using estimates of the number of IPTV channels being provided by the video headend companies' products. Tut Systems Ranked No.1 globally and in two of the four geographic territories with more than 14,000 channels of video deployed over broadband networks.
For more information, visit www.tutsys.com.
Telefonica, Lucent strike IPTV deal
Lucent Technologies and Telefonica Group have reached an agreement under which Lucent will support Telefonica’s IPTV service rollouts worldwide.
Under the agreement, Lucent will assume responsibility for the future development and deployment of Telefonica’s Imagenio IPTV middleware platform, including the ongoing introduction of new features and capabilities; Lucent also will market the platform to the broader, global service provider community.
To support the effort, Lucent will establish IPTV research and development centers — linked to Bell Labs — in Madrid and Aragon, Spain.
For more information, visit www.telefonica.es and www.lucent.com.
IPTV brings students, scientists, religious together for Earth Day
More than 16,000 high school and college science classrooms across the United States participated in a live, two-way IPTV video/chat broadcast with scientist and religious leaders April 21, Earth Day, on the topic of global warming.
The IPTV application used the “PowerTV” IPTV network of Chantilly, VA, -based Communications Technology.
For more information, visit www.comtechnologies.com.
AOL offers Chinese programming
The broadband division of Shanghai Media Group has begun providing AOL with video programming for distribution via its Chinese language Web site.
Sound Off
IPTV offers chance to redefine old roles
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
IPTV not only offers a new distribution avenue for program providers like television stations and networks, it holds the potential to reshuffle the deck in the way revenue is generated and viewers are served.
Interactivity holds the key for allowing marketers to target their commercials to viewers in ways previously unimaginable. It’s a good thing, says Sun Microsystems executive director Andy Sheldon, because fledgling IPTV operators should be able to sell that service at a premium if they play their cards right.
According to Sheldon, new approaches to advertising and revenue don’t stop there. IPTV offers a fresh start of content providers and system operators to redefine their relationship and share revenue, he says. IPTV Update spoke with Sheldon to learn more about how he sees the future of IPTV.
IPTV Update: You were quoted in a recent magazine article saying that IPTV is about merchandizing to somebody who is watching television, not just about television delivery and a lot more than just a cable guide system. Could you elaborate on the unique advantages of IPTV in this regard?
Andy Sheldon: Discovery Channel spent 20 years figuring out how to get a consumer to tune in at a certain day or time. Promoting the program is key; as consumers, our brand affinity is with the program first, then with the channel and rarely with the company that delivers us television. We rush home to watch the San Diego Padres game or “Seinfeld”, not the service provider's service.
Right now, there is almost no opportunity for content owners to create a branded user environment in order to build affinity to their programming. This is going to be an important component in the future.
Beyond program content, there are so many things that can be sold as part of a brand. Watch a video on demand; get a recipe from Emeril Lagasse and have a text message of the ingredients sent to your cell phone. Those are simple things that conventional distribution channels don’t do.
Imagine when consumers can purchase a screen saver for Shark Week while watching the program. This kind of merchandising associated with a program’s brand is key to bridging the gap to successful TV merchandising to target consumers.
As an IPTV service provider, you will likely be paying more for content then your incumbent competitors due to a lower bargaining power, i.e., fewer subscribers. To gain market share, you’ll probably be offering your service for less money than your competitors. This is why it is even more important to develop a sound business model around the merchandising of content.
IPTVU: PVRs, cable VOD and IPTV are transforming TV viewing from appointment television to anytime television. What demands does this shift place on those companies involved with media distribution and management, and how has Sun responded?
AS: I think that the PVR is the single most important application since the wireless remote. It has fundamentally changed television, but there is a significant down side. While the consumer thinks it is great, advertisers don’t. Studies show that 70 percent of consumers think a PVR’s most valuable attribute is its ability to skip ads. So something has to be done in that space.
Sun has been working to fundamentally change the economics of TV distribution. There has been no product announcement yet, but later this year we will be rolling out a series of innovations in IP-based video delivery.
For IPTV operators, one of the highest costs is consumer premises equipment, particularly when they need to put a PVR into multiple rooms in a household. A PVR has a hard drive that contributes about $50 to its cost. Being able to move that storage into the network reduces the cost of consumer premise equipment and also creates an opportunity for service providers to offer even more differentiated services to consumers. There’s stickiness to the system. As consumers, we don’t delete things. You store it until you reach your capacity. It is an obvious opportunity for an IPTV operator to offer another 40 hours of storage for $5 per month. “Just click here.” The operator also can offer things beyond TV, such as secure storage. Using identity management combined with Sun’s digital rights initiative DReamM, service providers will be able to offer their subscribers to “Store you computer data, photos, and music securely on our network”.
IPTVU: How do you think IPTV can play to the desires of content producers to maximize their revenue?
AS: First by creating a branded environment and a method of merchandizing and splitting incremental revenue with the operator for eyeballs. Second is in the area of advertising.
Advertising is potentially the next killer app for the service provider. One of the things we are looking at is ‘upstream revenue’ where the service provider receives revenue from the advertising via their content provider. With a TV channel, you could position a network to provide geographic targeting, interactivity, and commercial telescoping of ads, i.e., going from the programmed 30 second commercials to a two minute video stored on the VOD or PVR subsystem. These are all value-added features for advertisers. Advertisers will pay more for incrementally more valuable ways to create a meaningful relationship with their target audience. In the advertising fulfillment model, the service provider splits this incremental revenue with the programmer partner that delivered the content.
For programmers, it reinforces the relationship between them and the advertiser and, through the service provider network creates a direct relationship with consumers for their marketers through their sponsorship of the programming.
IPTVU: You’ve previously identified a different advertising model for IPTV when compared to cable in which profiling and direct response become critical elements in the ad buy. Could you elaborate?
AS: The industry needs a unicast model to stream personalized programming and targeted ads to specific set top boxes –in other words combining identity management with content distribution. We are not talking about using personal data but rather a way of defining a more specific profile of people who live within a zip code area. Provide a more valuable ad to the consumer, and they’re more likely to interact. And if they do, they’re more likely to add permission to deliver even more valuable information. To enable this, you need an underlying operating system or middleware. Sun advocates open industry standards such as OCAP and MHP. Both standards are based on Sun’s Java technology platform. Embedding identity, security and a permission-based marketing model to client-side software will enable these new advanced advertising paradigms.
For example, you see an ad for a product you are interested in on TV; you could be prompted to set a reminder to buy the product when you’re next in the store. Using identity management in the set-top box lined to identity management running on your cell phone and the active RFID technology employed in the store for inventory checking, your cell phone could be notified of the reminder when you’re next in the store. Using MMS, you could receive a coupon discount for the product and use this at the checkout which in turn will provide feedback to the marketer of the effectiveness of their campaign.
Tell us what you think! IPTVU invites response from our readers. Please submit your comments to editor@broadcastengineering.com. We'll follow up with your comments in an upcoming issue.
New Products & Technology
Intelsat unveils Ampiage
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
Intelsat has introduced Ampiage, a new satellite-based, open-architecture, content delivery and management service for North American multiple system operators (MSOs) seeking to upgrade to MPEG-4 and telcos looking to enter the IPTV market.
Ampiage packages the acquisition, aggregation, encoding, encapsulation and encryption of licensed TV programming from content providers and has the ability to redistribute it in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 format to cable and telecom service providers. This allows MSOs and telcos either to establish or enhance their digital programming lineups quickly and with low capital investment.
Ampiage centralizes the aggregation of national TV programmer content and offers hundreds of video and audio channels in full digital quality. This enables telcos to efficiently bundle an attractive standard- and high-definition programming package with their voice and broadband services without incurring a significant upgrade cost.
For more information, visit www.intelsat.com/special/ampiage/index.asp.
Envivio introduces two MPEG-4 decoders for SD, HD content
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
 The 4View D1 and D5 systems are well-suited for broadcasters and network operators taking advantage of the low bit rate and high quality compression of MPEG-4. |
Envivio has introduced its first professional decoder for high definition content and a new decoder supporting mobile and standard definition (SD) content.
The D1 and D5 decoders join the 4View Broadcast series. The 4View D1 and D5 systems provide real-time decoding and confidence monitoring of content as it passes from production through distribution and is repurposed for delivery over mobile, IPTV, enterprise and broadcast networks.
The 4View D1 and D5 systems are well-suited for broadcasters and network operators taking advantage of the low bit rate and high quality compression of MPEG-4.
For more information, visit www.envivio.com.
JDSU enhances DTS-200, DTS-330
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
 The SimulTrak module provides Ethernet layer statistics that a network operator can use to troubleshoot IP layer issues. |
JDSU introduced the JDSU SimulTrak module, a gigabit Ethernet (GbE) interface module for its DTS-200 and DTS-330, which allows the devices to perform simultaneous analysis and monitoring of up to 256 MPEG transport streams contained within a gigabit Ethernet pipe.
The SimulTrak module also provides Ethernet layer statistics that a network operator can use to troubleshoot IP layer issues. Since digital content traversing through a system operator's internal network is converging to an IP routed multicast/unicast system, this ability to identify routing problems is critical.
JDSU also has added to the DTS product line the ability to conduct test analysis of digital program insertion data.
For more information, visit www.jdsu.com.
DG2L rolls out hybrid Neuron 2000 set-top box
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
DG2L Technologies introduced the Neuron 2000 1080i high-definition, hybrid set-top-box supporting Internet Protocol (IP) standards, DVB and ATSC broadcast services with H.264 AVC compression support at NAB2006.
The Neuron 2000 enables broadcasters and network operators to leverage both traditional one-way broadcast as well as two-way interactive IP delivery.
The Neuron 2000 is the second in a series of DG2L's line of Neuron set-top-boxes based on the MPEG-4 compression standard. The new hybrid box also supports advanced interactive television services, such as personal video recording.
For more information, visit www.dg2l.com.
Optibase shows MPEG-4 H.264 HD IPTV encoding
Apr 25, 2006 8:00 AM
Optibase demonstrated live encoding of MPEG-4 AVC HD video at NAB2006.
Visitors saw a demo of MPEG-4 HD encoding that provided efficient HD bandwidth uses without compromising quality and with no need for infrastructure upgrades. The demo was based on Optibase's technology designed specifically for broadband video networks.
Optibase also showed the interoperability of its digital video encoding solutions with set-top boxes from several developers. Interoperability lets telcos deploy advanced MPEG-4 AVC IPTV services flexibly, with the option to choose the STB most suited to their needs.
For more information, visit www.optibase.com.
