feature iptv/hybrid tv

It’s clear that by the end of 2010, the public and the industry will have woken up to a fact that many of us have known for a while: TV devices of all sorts will be connected to the Internet. TV is perhaps the last consumer electronics device to take the plunge into full IP connectivity. Mobile phones and portable games machines have had it for years. But now DVD players, HD set-top boxes, flat panel TVs and even Pay TV operators’ own devices are shipping with 100Mb/s Ethernet connectors, and the whole industry is waiting to see what User Experience (UX) will result.IanValentine, founder & chief architect of Miniweb, reports.

Connected TV: userexperience rules

ow will broadband connectivity change the TV experience? This is an area I have been working in for over 5 years, dating back to work at

Sky in it’s R&D group, as we explored how broadband connections affect TV. Work now continuing at Miniweb; building a connected TV services platform. What surprises many is that it’s not just about greater interactivity. Interactive TV has been the function of the “return path” for years, but broadband connections will not

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make it ubiquitous and uniform. Every TV manufacturer is inventing some new ‘App Store’ model, incompatible with their competitors’ products, so each device type is likely to have a different range of interactive apps each authored specifically for that device. Those of us who looked to standardise these environments have to admit we failed, and therefore in the foreseeable future the dream of advertisers and broadcasters creating interactive TV applications once, and deploying and running them seamlessly across multiple types of TV, is broadly gone. But in a broadband connected world, this does not matter, for the ‘killer app’ is not interactive. It is simply better TV. TV is all about media and entertainment. In fact, the TV can be differentiated from the Web, with a simple statement of fact: TV is ‘entertainment first, interactivitysecond’, while the Web is

‘interactivity first, entertainment second’. This paves the way for defining the Connected TV experience, for it’s not aboutintegrating the interactive content from the Web into the TV experience (although this may be a secondary element), but rather integrating the media content available from the Internet into the TV experience, enhancing the entertainment value of TV. The Internet, with its efficient codecs, content delivery networks, and advanced streaming protocols is now ready to serve its media content directly to TV audiences. This explosion of content available to a Connected TV device is akin to the explosion of content that became available as TV devices moved from analogue to digital. At that time, viewers needed a new paradigm to navigate channels too numerous for simple channel numbers and channel up/down zapping. The Electronic Program Guide was born.

Sophisticatedrecommendationssuch as collaborative filtering become possible, but simple recommendations are also valuable such as top rated, or simply last night’s TV.

So, core to the mature Connected TV experience is going to be a range of ‘discovery tools’ which, like the EPG of old, will help the viewer navigate, find and return to broadband content.Collec-tively these could be part of an extended Connected TV Guide and as such be part of the device itself rather than any content owner App. Miniweb has identified 5 key discovery tools which need to be built into this Broadband Content Guide: 1) Textual Search – the ability to enter a search term, generating results from multiple publishing sources. 2) Related Content – relationships between content that allows a viewer to follow a theme. For example, episodic programming, programming from the same director, or about the same subject. 3) Community – the ability for you and your friends to communicate or share content. 4) Recommendations – sophisticated recommendations such as collaborative filtering become possible, but simple recommendations are also valuable such as top rated, or simply last night’s TV. 5) Advertising and Messaging – the ability to advertise content, which when targeted to the sample of one, could become very useful opt-in alerts about new content. The use of these tools in Connected TV all have one core theme, the content is now more important than the publisher. While broadcast content is organised into ‘channels’ – essentially publisher oriented, online content needs to be organised according to the content itself. Viewers expect this, they need to discover content easily from any publisher, and the device needs to be able to serve it up. When a viewer searches for ‘Eric Clapton’, they are not looking for a list of publishers that may have Eric Clapton content, they want to play Eric Clapton directly, whichever publisher is serving it. And they do not want to go hunting in an App Store or Gallery, guessing which ‘app’ may be the magic doorway to Eric Clapton. This example shows the limitation of many Connected TV systems today and opens the imagination to the real functionality of a Connected TV device, which can add value over, above and independently of, the content publishers’ apps. The end game of a Connected TV

experience is a fully personalised entertainment experience, within an integrated environment, which can provide access to entertainment on tap, just like TV, with the least possible effort from the viewer. In essence Connected TV is still TV. It’s just better TV, because it’s connected. The viewer should not really care whether the video is being delivered over broadcast, broadband, or using DLNA or PVR functionality. It should simply be TV. The goal of Connected TV products should be to simplify the proposition to the point that the “seams” between the delivery technologies simply disappear. Miniweb, for example, has designed its Connected TV service platform to enable broadcasters to integrate their broadband delivered, on-demand content directly with their linear TV channel. It makes sense to us that viewers are able to enjoy broadband delivered content from a broadcaster as an enhancement to the linear channel. Imagine watching a film on a broadcast TV channel, or a repeat of an episodic TV show, and then being able to immediately link to the sequel, or the next episode, from their broadband delivered on demand service, all without appearing to leave the channel or the broadcaster’s branding. Some connected TV devices today list ‘catch up’ TV services in a separate area to TV channels. I think that is very short-sighted! If every TV channel has its own catch up service (as inevitably will happen) the list of TV channels and the list of catch up services will be the same. There is no need for two lists, the catch up services should simply be associated directly with the broadcasters’ linear TV channels, and appear to be an extension to them. All other media from ‘online only’ publishers can be accessed via the discovery tools, and bookmarked or installed as part of a personalised UX. So we are beginning to see what a mature Connected TV viewer experience should be. It must have universal content discovery tools, it must have integration with the broadcast channel structure that is part of traditional TV, it must be personalised. If we add in the commercial requirements of a payments system and an advertising model, we can begin to understand what the functionality of a Connected TV service platform needs to be. The Connected TV service platform

is not a content publisher itself, but the key enabler to deliver a TV UX that seamlessly integrates traditional and connected TV content. Just as the web needs Google to make it usable, so a Connected TV device needs a service platform to make sense of the explosion of internet media content that can now be played directly on it. The service platform can also solve issues surrounding the fragmentation of Interactive TV ‘apps’ technologies. Miniweb’s Connected TV service platform can be deployed to a wide range of interactive TV environments, from Widgets to web browsers, from Flash to MHEG, native code or interpreted Java environments, they can all now make calls over the Internet to a common service platform to discover, play, pay and personalise internet media content delivered to a Connected TV device. Content publishers working with Miniweb have discovered that they may not need to build an app for every type of TV they want to reach, they can simply work with Miniweb’s service platform to specify their content distribution rules, payments models, play branding and TV integration options. By syndicating metadata feeds to the broadband content guide and discovery tools, their content can not only be made to work across a range of Connected TV devices, but their Internet business models can also be extended to TV too. Connected TV device owners working with Miniweb have discovered that an advanced UX is possible, and that integrating new content publishers is easy. The viewer is the ultimate winner here. Internet delivered media on Connected TV devices needs to have a user experience that is actually better than the web; and with centralised payments systems, personalisation and related and recommended content being made available across all publishers, it can be as easy as TV. Connected TV represents a true step change in the TV viewing experience, and Miniweb is helping device owners and content owners alike become a part of it.

iptv/hybrid tv feature

Who’s watching what? The community aspect of Connected TV allows your friends to communicate or share content.

In essence Connected TV is still TV. It’s just better TV, because it’s connected. The viewer should not really care whether the video is being delivered over broadcast, broadband, or using DLNA or PVR functionaity. It should simply be TV.