-
10-Jun-2010
by John Moulding
-
Motorola preparing for ‘cloud’ based future
-
Convergence TV
Motorola is preparing for a future where Pay TV platform operators become divorced from their physical networks and operate as media and service providers from the ‘cloud’, delivering IP-based video to consumers on every device, wherever they are, using Internet technologies.
Buddy Snow, Senior Director BHS Global Product Marketing for Motorola Mobile Devices & Business, believes that ‘TV Everywhere’ type services mark the start of a trend for service providers to reach consumers anywhere. This means making content available beyond the traditional walled garden environment on a set-top box. TV Everywhere type services allow subscribers to see the content they pay for online on the PC, at the very least, but increasingly will include access via connected TV devices like set-top boxes and connected TV sets.
Motorola believes service providers must reach consumers over any network, on any device, using whatever DRM (Digital Rights Management) system is necessary in order to thrive in what it is calling the ‘Internet Era of TV’. Snow believes Pay TV operators need to become the guardians of the ‘Digital You’ for each of their subscribers, which means managing their content needs in the context of what they are doing and where they are at any given time.
Pay TV operators must give their subscribers access to the content they want and help them find content they are interested in from the enormous choice that is available via managed networks and over-the-top. This means understanding what consumers like. They also need to support community activities, like interacting with social networks, including video sharing, recommendations and discussions about content. And it means personalisation of the consumer experience.
“Service providers will get paid not to pull multichannel video into the home but to manage the ‘Digital You’,” Snow declares. “So if you are walking around with a mobile device in your pocket that is always connected and always with you, this is a local manifestation of the ‘Digital You’. The system that manages that knows your rights to content like music videos and your likes and dislikes that have been measured and updated, and is able to make predictions and react to whatever is going on.”
The big vision is that Pay TV is not just about delivering television any more, but about managing the ‘Digital You’. The foundation for this is support for multi-screen content delivery and also linking the services you can access between networks and devices. A simple example of that is the ability to ‘bookmark’ a VOD session on the TV at home and resume that on the mobile phone at a different time and location.
Motorola has developed a multi-screen service management software suite, called Motorola Medios, to support the evolution from managed walled garden Pay TV to hybrid web and walled-garden services that start to free service providers from the geographic limitations of their existing networks. The company says this relies on open systems and standards-based interfaces wherever possible, enabling integration with existing customer-developed and/or third-party systems already deployed in service provider networks.
“What truly sets Motorola Medios apart is the separation of the metadata and control layers and the flexibility provided by this open systems architecting,” claims the company. “Building and developing services at the metadata and control layers of the service provider’s network, using web-like development environments, enables the support of a variety of devices and operation over multiple access networks.”
The Motorola Medios multi-screen service management software suite is architected to support multiple DRM systems. And by transitioning away from broadcast metadata, Motorola Medios is said to allow service providers to deliver personalized and context-aware content to subscribers on multiple device types.
In our June magazine we will be publishing a special supplement looking at how Pay TV operators can deliver content to consumers on every device. This considers the role of the intelligent home gateway in transforming video to the right format, resolution and DRM for use on CE devices, and it looks at whether service providers will increasingly use over-the-top delivery, with web video technologies, to achieve multi-screen delivery inside the home as well as outside it.
About the author
John Moulding joined Videonet as editor at the start of 2010, having spent over 10 years writing about digital TV and the various technologies that have simultaneously disrupted and enriched the television business. With Videonet he is focused on the unstoppable march towards multiplatform, connected and personalized television. John was editor of Cable & Satellite International (now CSI) for six years before helping launch New Video Technology, and helped develop the IPTV World Series conference programmes from 2006-07. At home, he takes a Sky triple-play bundle, watches around one-third of content time-shifted, enjoys BBC iPlayer on television through the Wii, and eagerly awaits the arrival of YouTube on his own TV (the killer TV application for late on a Friday night). He is still loyal to channels - but can also remember when TV shut down after lunch.
Want to add a comment?
Register at Videonet for free and you will be able to add comments on all our Blog & Analysis items.
Back to previous page