Videonet - news, blogs and analysis for the pay-tv industry

• 25-Jun-2010 by John Moulding
• The Pay TV operator multi-screen challenge
• Convergence TV

One of the most important tasks for any television platform operator over the next few years is to start delivering their video services to consumers on every screen, inside and outside the home. Everywhere they look there are online media aggregators and CE vendors who want to provide alternative entertainment offers on a range of connected devices, including PCs, personal media players, phones and increasingly, the television itself. They need to ensure they remain the primary source of high quality video entertainment for subscribers and avoid letting powerful online and CE brands build consumer loyalty on one screen and then transfer it to another.

Multiroom TV and multiroom DVR services enable platform operators to compete more effectively with Pay TV rivals. But it is surely true that if people have access to their subscription channels and recordings in the study and bedroom, they are less likely to turn to over-the-top video services on their PC, as well. So even these ‘traditional’ offers are going to help in the forthcoming battle between the Pay TV industry and the CE/online industry. But if platform operators can also compete on the PC, tablet and PMP, they really start to strengthen their position against rival OTT offers.

The question of how to deliver Pay TV services to multiple CE screens is therefore provoking a lot of thought in the TV industry. It seems there are two potential solutions, which look like alternatives but could co-exist, both of which have strong support.

The first is to deliver Pay TV content into a powerful home media gateway/server device that has the processing power to transcode video from its original format into the different forms needed for PCs and various mobile and portable devices. This media server also has to facilitate content protection around the home, which could mean handing over the content from the original Conditional Access to a suitable DRM for the final target device. The second option is for platform operators to harness (or create) their own online video platforms and deliver their content (including subscription TV) over-the-top themselves to every capable connected CE device.

Videonet has been investigating the two options and the support for them, and this is the basis of our ‘Any screen, Anywhere’ report, which you can read in our June e-zine. One of the people who contributed is Tom Lookabaugh, Chief Technology Officer at Entropic Communications, a semiconductor company focused on connected home entertainment. Here are his views on the two delivery models.

Q: Do you think the dominant architecture for whole home video sharing will be to have a gateway/server device and for video to be distributed from this to 'client' devices, like PCs or Portable Media Players?

A: This will certainly be a popular architectural choice. But it’s too early to figure whether it will be dominant and that may not even be that interesting a question, in the sense that home network architectures are likely to be flexible enough (if built around reliable, high capacity network layers like MoCA, as we expect) that they will accommodate storage in multiple locations: the cloud, the gateway, a NAS, device attached, and device internal. All these modes are likely to exist and the popularity of any particular mode may rise and fall over time.

Q: Intelligent video processing is needed in the home to 'forward' video to multiple devices, like transcoding the video that arrives off a Pay TV network into forms that can be consumed by CE devices, and the handover from the original CA to proprietary or standards DRM solutions. Where is this likely to happen?

A: Some operators expect to perform this kind of processing in a gateway. This allows them to repurpose signals that are currently serving their legacy devices; the signals can be transcoded and transcrypted for distribution to CE devices. Video processing could be advantageous if the CE devices cannot handle the current signals. For example, a 1080P high-def stream in MPEG -2 at 20 Mbps might be beyond the processing capability of a smartphone-style receiver on many fronts: format (it might want H.264 or something else), resolution (it might not be able to handle frames that large), and bit rate (you might be limited in the input rate that can be buffered and processed).

Q: Is it possible that Pay TV operators could avoid these complications (and potential costs) by ensuring all their content is available as over-the-top IP video that can be moved to multiple devices as requested, without being processed in a home gateway?

A: This is the other option. The important trade-off is that, in this model, content needs to be stored and transmitted in several varieties (at a cost in central storage and in duplicated transmission), but there is less investment in gateway and less need to keep the gateway current with evolving end device capabilities.

Q: Is a server/gateway/storage based DLNA whole home network the best way to deliver multi-screen experiences in the customer home?

A: While this particular combination does seem pretty powerful and interesting, it is by no means the only possible choice and we suspect that several models will be in play simultaneously and possibly indefinitely. Variations are likely along the axes of storage location, user experience management (GUI, content discovery, management, etc.), security, sourcing and syncing of content, and so on. A strong underlying network component – a combination of MoCA and Wi-Fi – will allow these to coexist and evolve.

Q: Can you suggest any advantages/disadvantages of the two approaches?

A: I think both models have their champions and that even their champions are keeping an eye on evolution of the other model.

Our free ‘Any screen, Anywhere’ report looks at the ‘cloud’ versus home network centric multi-screen delivery models and considers some of the challenges and benefits of each. You can view the report here.

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