Solutions for Pay TV Operators
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Introduction In the era of cord-cutting and the streaming wars, Pay TV operators face intense competition for subscribers. They must reach more devices than ever before, with a user experience that stands out from the crowd - for all the right reasons! Enhanced features like network PVR and Catch-up TV are now so common in the marketplace that they are becoming must-have features for any serious pay TV operator. At the same time, consumers expect the flexibility to switch seamlessly between watching content in their living room via the set-top box (STB) and watching it on any of their favorite, other devices - from laptops, mobiles and tablets while they’re “on the go”, to streaming media devices, smart TVs and games consoles when they move to a different room. Operators who can’t deliver these essential capabilities find themselves rapidly falling behind. When other service providers offer a better user experience or can be accessed on a wider choice of devices, the cord cutting risk rises dramatically. Unfortunately, the need to reach new devices and offer new features comes as operators are also under pressure to trim costs. How can they balance consumer demand with their own financial and operational targets? To deliver these fully-featured user experiences, operators need flexible, future-proof technology strategies with sensible pricing. Multi-screen, multi-vendor, major headache Traditionally, running a pay TV service has involved putting together solutions from multiple technology vendors with many months (or years) of planning, development, integration and testing. There’s a tortuous, ever-growing project plan and an expanding price tag to match. Most operators have to pay an expensive systems integrator to put together their solution: from ingestion of video and metadata, transcoding content protection and delivery, to middleware, UI and STB hardware. Many operators have then duplicated this end-to-end workflow with an entirely different set of vendors to reach consumers on other devices like mobiles, tablets and laptops, Smart Tvs, games consoles and streaming media devices. In some cases there’s even manual duplication of content management effort by expensive editorial staff. 2 of 21 On the financial side, combining multiple vendors also increases the budgetary complexity as each has their own pricing model. Capital expenditure costs for hardware, software and systems integration fees can be higher than new and growing operators can handle. Meanwhile the typical CDN vendor model of a charge per GB of content uploaded or streamed is often matched by a transcoding cost per live-channel or VOD asset. It becomes hard for operators to predict how costs will rise as their content library and consumer engagement increases. No matter how much they need to add new features like network PVR, and front-end applications for many devices, operators must think twice before committing to a multi-year, multi million-Euro, high-risk development project with multiple vendors. Ongoing complexity, ongoing cost Of course, the challenges don’t end when your service is finally live. You’ll either need to keep paying your systems integrator for support - or transition to an in-house support team. When it comes to the user experience, you’ll need a team that ensures your apps keep pace with every operating system update from iOS, Android etc, and shifting codec and security requirements for devices like Smart TVs. You’ll also need a budget and a plan for any future adjustments to branding or features. We’re also seeing unprecedented consolidation in the pay TV sector. As providers merge, the complexity of a multi-vendor backend can rise at an exponential rate. Two backends become four and then six as new groups of subscribers are added to the fold. This increases the costs and timelines to roll-out new features or branding, or result in separate product offerings for different parts of the customer base. Operators who’ve been in this situation will know only too well that migrating subscribers from an acquired subsidiary’s separate technology platforms into a single tech stack can also have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. It allows them to eliminate multiple support contracts, reduce their vendor-management overheads and rationalize their cost structure. What operators really need is a robust, scalable, affordable solution which is maintainable over time. 24i believes the answer is to de-risk your multi-channel operations by selecting our pre-integrated end-to-end solution for pay TV operators. 3 of 21 24i’s express route to multi-channel success One vendor, one price, every platform 24i’s products support every part of your end-to-end pay TV operation - from ingest, transcoding, encryption and storage to nPVR delivery and user experience - on every kind of device. With a single vendor for all your multi-screen user interfaces, it’s easier to ensure uniformity of brand, features and approach. Meanwhile deploying a unified backend is far less costly and risky than most integration projects. It brings efficiency to content management workflows and means your subscriber management system only talks to one set of APIs. You won’t need separate middleware or an external systems integrator. With 24i, there’s a single, financially stable company to manage and contract with. There may be compromises on a few “nice-to-have” features that are offered by individual specialist suppliers, but the “must-haves” like catch-up TV and network PVR are fully covered, and the advantages in terms of predictable costs and timelines are enormous. Don’t just take our word for it. Delta Fiber in the Netherlands has used our Smart Video product (see below for more details) since 2015, powering their STB pay TV service including, since 2017, Amino devices: “A lot of the time, TV solutions are a chain of different vendors. The benefit of having 24i as the main contractor is that it's easier from an operational and development perspective. I need to talk to one or two parties rather than five or six in order to get a feature developed and launched or to investigate and solve operational issues." Bart Smeels Manager of Platforms and System Management at DELTA Fiber 4 of 21 Flexible, modular, scalable We have pre-configured our products, Smart Video and Smart Apps, to meet the requirements of most pay TV operators and to offer the fastest deployment at the lowest risk and best value price point. But we can also add or remove certain modules to fit your precise requirements on both managed and unmanaged devices. As you’ll see in the high-level description of these products on the following pages, they cover everything you need to support a pay TV business model. Whether you need an iPhone app, a custom Android TV launcher or a lightweight Java app to bring new services to your legacy STBs, our decade of experience designing and developing user interfaces for pay TV operators and OTT content providers ensures we can meet your needs. Your choice of STB Our systems are fully hardware agnostic, so you won’t find yourself locked in to working with a single STB supplier now or in the future. 24i will work with the vendor of your choice. It’s all part of our flexible, modular approach that means you can easily change one part of your infrastructure or add more capabilities as you upgrade your service, expand to new devices, or respond to the changing market. Having said that, if you choose to work with STB hardware from our sister company, Amino Communications, we can supply the pre-integrated STBs alongside the 24i solutions, giving you a truly end-to-end pay TV solution from a single vendor. We’ll even provide day-to-day technical management of the whole platform on your behalf, if that’s what you need. 5 of 21 Here’s a selection of the STBs we have worked with already and the platforms/standards we support: STB vendors STB platforms and standards Pragmatic pricing In contrast to the multiple pricing models that need to be combined when you work with multiple vendors, 24i offers its solutions to pay TV operators on a simple and affordable basis: a modest set up fee and then a price per subscriber per month. Whether you’re operating 20 channels or 200, the price per subscriber is the same. As you add extra modules of our solution, there’s a modest increase in the price per subscriber. This approach offers operators predictability on costs that makes budgeting for the future a much simpler process. The price you pay only grows with your subscriber base. 6 of 21 Summary: The Benefits of the 24i Approach Choose 24i to de-risk and simplify your multi-channel TV service to reach all devices with the same, premium user experience at a price point that makes sense. New features will delight your customers, driving up your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and reducing churn. Meanwhile you get the maximum return for your investment, and by offloading day to day hassle to 24i, you can focus on improving your customer offering. Launch Fast Get to market faster, stay ahead of the competition. Reduce Costs Consolidate your multi-vendor operations into a single end-to-end solution for a lower total cost of ownership and a predictable price per subscriber, no matter how many channels you operate. De-Risk Projects Eliminate the element of surprise with a pre-integrated solution. Simplify Operations Reduce your operational overheads dramatically with our TV platform as a Service offering. Clients like Youfone run their entire pay TV service with just one member of in-house staff.