Multiscreen Fever Spreads Far and Wide

Cable Show Demos Feature Video Flung Across an Array of Devices

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 6/13/2011 12:01:00 AM

Watching TV on the huge flat screen — so passé!
The hot trend many technology suppliers have scrambled to embrace is delivering video and video advertising across a plethora of different tablets, mobile phones and other Internet-connected gadgets.
At this week’s Cable Show, the mania will reach full throttle with vendors slated to stage a wide range of demonstrations and product introductions in this area.
“Cable operators are not really cable TV operators anymore,” Andrew Rowe, head of software product management for Ericsson’s Solution Area TV, said. “Their focus has really expanded beyond the TV set.”
Ericsson will show its Media Delivery Management System, positioned as a next-generation, video-on-demand and TV platform, built from the ground up for multiscreen environments.
The system, a successor to the vendor’s OpenStream VOD back office, is currently in several proof-ofconcept trials with customers, Rowe said. Ericsson expects to ship the new product in the third quarter.
Nagra will be among the vendors showing off a multiscreen advertising system. Using OpenTV’s Participate product integrated with This Technology’s SpotBuilder, Nagra will show how a non-linear video stream containing one 30-second spot can provide a synchronized advertising experience on an iPad.
“By creating linkages to that second-screen experience, you can look at information in a more in-depth fashion rather than the old model of interactive TV advertising,” Paul Woidke, senior vice president and general manager of advanced advertising for Nagra Americas, said.

TV COMPANIONS
Why is everyone ga-ga over gadgets? One reason: Research shows people frequently use tablets and smartphones while watching TV.
According to a recent Nielsen survey, about 70% of tablet owners and 68% of smartphone owners surveyed said they use their devices while watching TV — the largest of the categories asked about in the survey.
SeaChange International is diving headlong into the multiscreen space. It plans to show off its Nitro video-navigation and social-media user interface software at the Cable Show.
Nitro is built on the open HTML5 specification and supports applications such as multiroom digital video recorder, virtual channels, TV listings, bookmarking, search and recommendation, and handheld-as-a-remote capability. Nitro “makes it as easy as possible for consumers to enjoy that video how, when and where they choose,” SeaChange general manager of in-home solutions Shiva Patibanda said.
SeaChange said a “major” cable operator plans an initial deployment of Nitro for later this year, but didn’t identify the MSO.
Meanwhile, BigBand Networks will show a multiscreen, advanced advertising solution, splicing ads into video served to traditional cable set-tops as well as an iPad, a Roku Internet set-top and a TiVo DVR.
The vendor will demo its Advertising Splicing Blade on the Media Services Platform MSP2800 processing system. Big- Band will serve both traditional zoned ads, as well as ads targeted to specific devices.
“We are showing the platform has the ability to serve both the legacy platform and extend advertising to next-generation devices,” Jay Chambers, vice president and chief architect for cable in the office of the CTO at BigBand, said.
BigBand also will team up with Clearleap to show a common user interface and back-office across multiple devices. The solution combines BigBand’s vIP Pass system — designed to offload Internet protocol video traffic from a cable-modem termination system — with Clearleap’s Stream On Demand system, letting operators stream managed video content to connected TVs, Blu-ray Disc players or other devices in a subscriber’s home.
Interactive TV developer Itaas also is pairing up with Clearleap. The duo will show streaming video content delivered by Clearleap’s Web-based VOD platform to an Itaas-developed iPad app; the video can be paused and resumed on a Roku box connected to the TV.
In a similar vein, digital media services firm Avail-TVN is announcing that it will deploy Elemental Technologies’ videoprocessing solutions in its super headend facility in Burbank, Calif., to deliver more than 100 linear television channels to connected devices.
“Consumers are changing the way they consume video and this is driving innovation across the digital-media services value chain,” Avail-TVN chief operating officer Jon Romm said.

DEVICE ACTIVATION
Sigma Systems, a vendor of operations support systems for service providers, is looking to get its hands around the device explosion with its new IP Video Services Accelerator Solution.
That product, an add-on to the Sigma Service Management Platform, lets MSOs provision video services to non-set-top platforms from a central system. “If you have five or six different devices in a subscribers’ home, that’s not going to scale in the long term,” Sigma Systems vice president of marketing Preston Gilmer said.
The Sigma Systems IP Video Services Accelerator supports devices and client software from Cisco Systems, Motorola, NDS, Nagravision, TiVo, Arris/Moxi and Microsoft Mediaroom. Currently it lacks support for the iPad or other tablets and smartphones, but Gilmer said those devices are on the road map.
The IP Video Services Accelerator solution has been selected by two North American MSOs to deliver a provisioning solution for enhanced entertainment services, including integration with products from TiVo and NDS.
ActiveVideo Networks, for its part, will show how applications written on its CloudTV interactive platform — originally aimed at cable set-tops — can also be delivered to an iPad and a Philips Blu-ray Disc player. Apps in the demo include VOD, HSN Shop by Remote and teaser channel for HBO that lets nonsubscribers watch free full-length episodes and then click a button to sign up.
“We’re taking those same applications that our customers or developers created, and showing them with the same look and feel on other devices,” ActiveVideo senior vice president of marketing and content relations Edgar Villalpando said. “This falls directly into cable’s wheelhouse.”