Componentised TV Services

Written by Ian Nock on January 31, 2012 — 1 Comment

A little under a month ago I started (but didn’t finish) a blog post about how the launch of Netflix in the UK (and the ready availability already of Lovefilm) created a special situation for the UK, caused by the quality of the Freeview/FreeSat platform. This situation was that it was perfectly possible to hand craft a decent linear, PVR and Premium content service without going anywhere near a Pay TV provider like BSkyB or Virgin. The threat of these component services towards BSkyB was palpable, with BSkyB’s advantage only being the availability of Premium Sports content and a limited number of channels only available on that platform like Sky One.

Various people have complained about the lack of content on Netflix and even Lovefilm but the content available compares fairly well to what is on Sky Movies and for the really premium content you could end up buying a DVD copy of the movie you want for almost the same price as the VoD version.

To me, I could get a very decent TV and Premium package for £250 (for the HD Freeview+ box with iPlayer) and £10 per month (if I took Netflix and Lovefilm at the same time via my ‘Connected TV’). This is the future, componentised TV services where you find and add the components to your package.

We can now see BSkyB’s response to that through the combined announcement of allowing non-Sky Broadband customers access to Sky Active+ and the announcement of the launch of an OTT service targeted at those customers who do not have a Sky TV Satellite subscription. This is initially a defensive measure but very clearly it moves to being an offensive measure to acquire more customers than they can reach via dishes (because so many people either do not want or cannot have the dish), and also a setup for Sky TV not caring about the delivery mechanism for its TV and dropping the association with Satellites. All they would need to do now is allow access to this OTT service from a Freeview STB (Picnic anyone?).

This is the key issue that should be taken away from all of this, the important thing for customers is content, not the way it is received. Sky are taking action here to ensure that all the obstacles to people paying for their (Sky’s) content are removed.

As for Youview, when and if it launches, this very clearly puts them at the back of the pack with very little to distinguish them in this setup.

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Ubuntu TV… nice

Written by Ian Nock on January 11, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Saw these post online showing the Ubuntu UI and I must say that the Unity UI stinks as a PC UI but as a TV UI it is sure pretty. I hope someone will post some video of it so we can see if its flow is as nice as the static shots.

It’s still just a proof of concept, which is a bit of a disappointment, but Ubuntu TV was here at CES making its public debut.

via Ubuntu TV eyes-on — Engadget.

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Ultraviolet could actually work

Written by Ian Nock on January 11, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Ultraviolet has been working steadily from concept to practice and it has had a number of problems, mostly around usability… something that its main competitor (Apple Fairplay) does not suffer from.

Now though, it has reached an important point in its attempt to hit the big time and it is not the signing up of additional hardware and software vendors. The big time has been reached by signing up one of the largest video retailers in the world – Amazon;

Amazon and Samsung announced that they are adding some more weight behind the initiative. Amazon, for one, is joining the initiative and will soon enable digital purchases through its streaming video service.

via Amazon, Samsung throw UltraViolet a lifeline — Online Video News.

This is the type of backer that it needs to get out there and actually become mainstream and become the replacement for DVD and Blu-ray that consumers need. I just hope that more focus on usability is applied to make the use of content bought and kept in Ultraviolet lockers as transparent as Apple’s Fairplay.

 

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Google TV and 3D TV

Written by Ian Nock on January 6, 2012 — Leave a Comment

The pre-CES announcements are coming thick and fast, and particularly interesting are the announcements around Google TV. Google are announcing that they have engaged with multiple parties in the delivery of Google TV integrated into TV sets, particularly LG and Samsung. Samsung was understood to be getting involved already last year, so they are not a surprise to now be involved.

Now cast your mind back to Le Web in December, and the following;

“By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions that you see in stores will have Google TV embedded in them,” Schmidt said.

And now you can see the root of his comment, that they have done the deals to get Google TV embedded with products from way over 50% of the TV market.

However that does not mean that customers will be buying TVs that contain Google TV – its usefulness is not proven even amongst the tech community, without going anywhere near ordinary consumers. Its biggest issue is still the same, what content can you access? where are the content deals? where is the content security support? Until they solve those issues then Google TV will, in my view, stay a novelty. It shares its problems with Connected TV sets overall to be honest, but those are somewhat further down the line to securing deals to have content from Netflix, Acetrax and Lovefilm on them generally. I look forward to the coming months to see how this will shape out.

And in keeping with its importance, we come to 3D TV… a postscript to real news. As we saw at the last IBC, 3D is notable by its huge absence, 3D is largely absent from CES. There is a lot to be said about it but in my view it comes down to this… 3D does not give a sufficient advantage to viewing content which people wish to view as it did not for cinema in the 1950s. Anyway, roll on the full CES next week and let us see what else comes out.

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Carrier IQ and STBs

Written by Ian Nock on December 5, 2011 — Leave a Comment

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The furore around Carrier IQ’s diagnostic and usage logging on mobile phones is a salutory lesson for the TV operator industry about logging too much information and not informing the viewer sufficiently. What! I hear you say, usage is tracked on my STB? Of course it is tracked particularly on IPTV and OTT services, as you would see if you read the contract or AUP that you signed up for when you got the service. This is a very useful part of the service for the operator, that allows it to generate business intelligence about its service, the UI, the channels that are watched, the usage of trickplay etc, which as is my view of Carrier IQ, is not inherently bad in itself.

So where are the lessons? The first is making it more transparent and allowing it to be turned off…. If you don’t offer an Opt-Out then you surely are tempting the ire of your viewers. Operators should offer this option but rarely do.

The second is in the implementation, where many solutions track everything on the box right down to individual keypresses and UI state (yes, logging whether you are watching X-Factor or something less salubrious), and then post the whole thing up to the backend over unencrypted or poorly secured connectivity along with personally identifiable information. The backend solution is then responsible for anonymising the data. Solution providers for these solutions should offer the anonymisation and filtering down to the target data BEFORE it leaves the STB but many, if not most, do not.

Don’t get me wrong, these service providers almost certainly comply with the laws of their lands but once awareness of just how much information is tracked leaks out then they may experience their ‘Carrier IQ’ moment. So before TV services experience this, usage analysis and tracking solution providers and operators should clean up their acts before legislators and customers get involved, and way before operators deploy data centric services such as recommendations and personalisation.

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Steve Jobs – So long and thanks for all the fish

Written by Ian Nock on October 6, 2011 — Leave a Comment

There is going to be a lot said about Steve Jobs in the coming days, but I would just say two things.

1. Jobsian – an approach to product development that was singularly successful and others aspire to.

2. Watch his 2005 Stanford commencement address and be inspired.

 

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Blackarrow Consulting at IBC2011

Written by Ian Nock on September 9, 2011 — Leave a Comment

IBC has rolled round again and we will be enjoying the delights of the RAI – hot dogs and Coke Lite that are almost as expensive as Inkjet Printer Ink (that is the most expensive thing by volume on the planet I understand) – for the 14th year in a row, over the coming days starting today – 9th September and going through to the end. As for many it will be a hard work expo with quite a bit of networking with the aim of not expiring under the green bottles, and hitting those 9am and 10am meetings feeling refreshed (and not damp under rain). The weather forecast is mixed from warm days to rainy days… Amsterdam is always a little different.

The word on the street is that we will see ‘Cloud’ everywhere, whether it is content delivery or production, and quite a number of hybrid broadcast/IPTV and OTT solutions. We shall see really what that brings, and whether there is good business, poor business or pure hype.

If you want to meet up at all then feel free to tweet me at @iannock, and follow me there as I tweet the occasional on-the-spot experience from the show.

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Evolution End

Written by Ian Nock on August 31, 2011 — Leave a Comment

Last summer I blogged about the differing approaches that Apple and Google have taken with respect to the development of their respective phone (and now tablet) platforms. In the post, I postulated that iOS4 could be the last time that Apple enjoyed an advantage over Google Android, and that the multiple path development approach taken by Google would cause it to overtake Apple in features. In some respects I can say Yes – Google is now ahead of Apple. My latest phone is the excellent Samsung SII which is thinner, lighter and more powerful than any iPhone available today, with all of the useability issues that were experienced in earlier Android phones a distant memory (like limited app space, poor memory management, short battery life). This device runs the 2.3.3 version of the Android OS and it is as nimble as it is light.

However there is a mixed bag here, as Google changed its approach with 3.0 (Honeycomb) and effectively focused onto a small number (initially only one) of hardware makers to product their tablets and look to follow that approach with Ice Cream Sandwich, the 2.4/4.0 harmonisation release. The pace of improvement has slowed to a crawl for Google such that I would say that they are now only ‘just’ ahead of Apple, and that is also because Apple have struggled to keep up the advance by releases iOS5 on the 12 month cycle – it is now running to a 15 month period before iOS5 creeps out of the gate and ends up on the iDevices. I can only hope that Google finds its ability to innovate strongly in the near future, otherwise iOS5 could eat its lunch and rest the advantage back.

Google has though rested control of the brand back by being more restrictive on modifications to the base OS, and also by filtering out ‘low quality’ devices from the food chain. In other words dealing with the negatives of its parallelised development approach. The only fly in the ointment now for Google is how to sort out the IP/Patents mess, which it is trying to do by purchasing Motorola in some part. However that purchase has its own challenges, which is of deep interest to the TV world – what will it do with the STB side of Moto? Will it divest itself of this along with the phone hardware business, or all the combinations that are possible? Or will it seek to integrate the STB side of Moto with the near death Google TV business?

Time will tell, but it will certainly be an interesting and entertaining year ahead. I feel I will hold back my views until after the joys of IBC 2011 at the end of next week, when more ‘intelligence’ will be available about this and other industry moves, and also the effect of the second dip in the double dip recession may also be discerned. The first dip seen just after IBC2008 was a little painful and I hope the second dip that is now happening will only be felt gently by the TV industry.

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Google TV second coming (in the UK?)

Written by Ian Nock on August 27, 2011 — 1 Comment

Some months ago when Google TV launched in the US, I thought about the possibilities of how this could work in the UK. The UK and the US markets are very different, most notably the lack of overall control that pay TV has on the market in the UK. Now we have the news coming through that Google TV will be coming to the UK.

Hey! Britain! Guess what? You’re getting Google TV!

via Google TV coming to the UK within six months – Engadget.

Since the original launch in the US, the flaws in the Google TV product have been seen clearly and it is not just the lack of content caused by wholesale blocking by the content owners in the US that caused Google TV Version 1 to be a dead duck. The product was clumsy and ill thought out, and pushing the long dead (ill)thoughts about ‘Web TV’ and thus failing as they did.

With the prevalence of the Freeview DTT and Freesat DVB-S platforms in the UK, we hope and believe that there will not be the wholesale blocking of the product as has happened in the US. This will allow the product functionality to shine through we hope and that is where improvements need to be made.

The Honeycomb version of Google TV will need to resolve the issues of usability of the current Google TV products and refocus on video content along with Apps that are TV centric. After all, the reason that most people watch TV is for video, not for the apps. TV apps need to be additive to the video experience and not detract by spreading themselves all over the far screen, making use of the second (close in) screen for that additive experience. If they don’t do a good job then I can only believe that Google TV will become the second Wave… and go the way of Wave and Buzz before it.

I have not seen much of the mock-ups as yet but hopefully that will change at IBC2011 next month. See you there.

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Practical DLNA Fail

Written by Ian Nock on July 15, 2011 — Leave a Comment

As an early adopter, primarily due to my involvement in the business, I have been using home media streaming solutions for many years. I have evolved from my early PCTV solutions, via proprietary PC based server solutions through to what I have in day to day operation today. I have a Windows 7 PC as a Media server combined with a Western Digital NAS device. The PC also acts as the Media client as it is hooked up on the back of my Flat screen TV, providing me with adaptable if a little clumsy access to both in-home and Over The Top services. It works, sort of. That is not working in the way ordinary people need it to work – straight away with a nice swish UI.

humax_hdr_fox_t2This is a set of features that the industry is now pushing out there through Connected TV and enhanced STBs, mostly with DLNA Digital Media Player support. I have had one of these now for nine months in the shape of a Humax Fox-HDR-T2 PVR. This offers support for playback off the Windows 7 PC and the NAS, over the network and does this in a basic fashion. The UI offers a ‘Storage’ selector, which allows the selection of the internal HDD, USB or the Network. Selecting Network, gives access to my video selection of DivX encoded content. It also gives access to photos and music. However the whole experience is a bit of a let down on multiple fronts. I would not wish the photo and music functionality on my worst enemy, and the move functionality requires the navigation of so many levels of folders just to get to my content that members of my family cannot bear to use it and prefer to fire up the PC directly and navigate the fiddly controls that Microsoft provide in Windows Media Centre. At least the STB does play 99% of my content, although that excludes my Apple movie content of course. All in all, very clumsy and not ready for the average viewer and human.

Now Humax have released the Media Server functionality for the box, and it has been suitable downloaded and upgraded (an awful process that they should be shot for – why put the OTA code ONLY on HD DTT muxes! I know, I know, it is a HD box, but it is also a great SD PVR as well for the majority of people today. The resultant experience is reminiscent of a TV upgrade process – awful.

However getting the Media server to function, shows exactly why DLNA is not yet ready for the consumer. Serving the content was fine as long as I used the Windows 7 PC (no hope under Windows XP but that is not Humax’s fault and the less said about Vista the better), and then only if you took the less obvious route (accessing network and then trying to pull up the content just got empty folders… oh yes you had to run Windows Media Player first and then select the Humax box in the Other Sources list to get to the visible content). Playing the content though resulted in an unusable couple of frames a second with the worst video tearing you have ever seen and stuttering audio. At least, this was the experience with the built in Windows Media Player software. Running up XBMC (an alternative DLNA Server and Player), gave a much more fluid experience with proper playback of the content with none of the tearing and frame loss. This demonstrated an awful lack of compatibility with the most common and built in Digital Player software in the world. How did Humax test this and decide it was fit for human consumption? Saying it is Beta is NOT a defence, not when you put it out for general use.

Speaking with my brother who has the same Humax elicited similar tales of woe, but his exacerbated by his attempt to get it working with his Sony Bravia Connected TV. He simply failed to any of his PCs to work with without the XBMC approach, and the TV simply saw the top level content only – anything in a sub-folder (which includes anything recorded in a series) was invisible, and the top level content wouldn’t play.

I should not attack Humax too much (why oh why did they not make sure it works smoothly with Windows 7 and Windows Media Player? as well as with the main makes of TV – Sony Bravia is not rare) but this shows how putting home media sharing out there for normal people is far from ready as Benjamin Schwartz has stated in recent blog post during a Connected TV conference. I can only agree with him, but only to the extent that device makes and software makers really need to up the game and stop blaming each other, and come up with software and hardware that just works out of the box. That really cannot be as hard as they seem to be making it.

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