--Product Targeted at Telcos Looking to Offer Broadband Video Portals
--Company in Headend Deals with SkyLife, True Visions
Tandberg Television--the company which over the past two years or so
has purchased VOD infrastructure provider, N2 Broadband, interactive
TV technology and services provider, GoldPocket Interactive, IPTV
content delivery company, SkyStream Networks, and Internet video
company, Zetools; and which was itself subsequently acquired by
Ericsson--has launched a product that is designed to enable telco
operators to monetize their Web portals with broadband video. Dubbed
the MediaModeler Content Management System, the new solution
provides operators with an application toolkit that is billed as enabling
them to offer their subscribers a more personalized user experience,
richer search and discovery features, and converged services across
TV's, PC's and mobile devices.
Tandberg is using recent research from the Diffusion Group--which
claims that pay-TV viewers are spending more time watching
broadband "over the top" video--in order to tout the new product.
According to that research, 40% of broadband users watch at least an
hour of video on the Internet each week; and of those, around 30%
watch 25% or more of their TV online. Tandberg says that Web video
portals enabled by the new MediaModeler CMS will provide those
users with enhanced search, discovery and scheduling capabilities in a
video-enabled environment that blends content from their pay-TV
provider with content from the open Web. "By 2012, more than 100
million households will be capable of watching broadband video on
their big-screen, high-dollar, high-definition TV's, and home theater
systems," Colin Dixon, manager of the Diffusion Group's broadband
media practice, said in a prepared statement. "To capture these
households, IPTV providers must leverage innovative broadband video
strategies in order to differentiate their offerings from today's
incumbent pay-TV operators. The new MediaModeler Content
Management System from Tandberg Television is one such innovation:
it enables blended video experiences in which subscribers can select the
content they want to watch and the platform upon which they want to
watch it, all through a single, customized user interface."
According to Tandberg, the MediaModeler Content Management
System is designed with a flexible database structure that supports fully
customizable metadata profiles. In addition, the company says, it is
capable of automatically enhancing metadata associated with ingested
video assets by interfacing with a range of third-party metadata services
and Web 2.0 sources. These two features, which Tandberg says form
the core of the product, are billed as enabling operators to build rich
search and discovery video portals by simply adding support for new
sources of metadata. "The Internet-connected PC is the digital hub for
hundreds of millions of consumers," Joe Franzetta, general manager of
Tandberg's broadband TV business unit, said in a prepared statement.
"Connecting the PC Internet video experience to an existing television
experience capitalizes on existing consumer behaviors and provides a
clear opportunity for telco operators to generate revenue from their web
portals. The MediaModeler system powers a richer video experience,
thereby driving increased video advertising inventory. Since the system
is aware of assets available to the viewer through the operator's service,
an operator can create end-user features that surface this content for a
viewer to choose, whether the content is on linear TV, on an operator's
VOD offering, on video-sharing sites, or on premium Internet video
sites, thus putting the control of when and where to watch this content
into the viewer's hands." Tandberg debuted the new MediaModeler
system at the recent NXTcomm tradeshow in Las Vegas. Its demo's of
the product focused on asset creation, content and feed ingest, library
management, custom metadata definition, metadata enhancement from
third-party sources, line-up management, search and filter, and video
playout."
In other Tandberg Television news: The company has scored wins with
two more pay-TV operators--Korea's Sky Life and Thailand's True
Visions (formerly UBC). Its deal with SkyLife sees Tandberg
upgrading the latter's headend with an MPEG-4 AVC system that will
allow it to expand its HDTV services. In addition to deploying
Tandberg's EN8090 MPEG-4 AVC HD encoder, SkyLife is deploying
the company's E5770 MPEG-2 SD encoder; its RX1290 Multi-Format
Professional receivers, which can receive both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4
AVC HD and SD services; its SM6600-series satellite modulators; and
its nCompass Control management system for configuration, system
monitoring and redundancy. Tandberg's deal with True Visions,
meanwhile, sees it providing the latter with a new DTH headend for its
satellite TV service. The deal covers various MPEG-2 encoding and
video processing systems, as well as the nCompass control and
management system.
