-
StatusCompleted
-
Status date2012-09-18
Recent market studies have highlighted a significant business opportunity in the development of a satellite-based Video On Demand ("VOD") solution.
VOD content is pushed (therefore the name "PushVOD") by the network operator onto the customer’s digital TV receiver ("STB") over the satellite network.
Content is not streamed, but chopped into discrete “chunks” and broadcasted. On the STB, chunks referring to the same movie are glued together in the proper sequence and the PushVOD solution makes the content available to the end user.
It was a critical task to be able to address multiple business models and to use an attractive, easy to use User Interface for a PushVOD service. Therefore TeleIDEA has been working on the definition of a Metadata model that allows presentation of the content in a media rich way. In addition, purchase models and methods needed to be developed to be able to perform different kinds of transactions such as pay over mobile phone and support for impulsive transactions.
Integration with the overall infrastructure needed to take place, and the final solution needed to be validated within the ecosystem available at customer premises.
Throughout the actual validation of the project one of the main issues was ensuring that test PushVOD content was broadcasted at regular times. In addition, the time-window in which PushVOD assets were broadcasted was only very narrow (3:00-5:00) due to (i) limitations imposed by a shared tuner (which is used both for recordings as for PushVOD reception) and (ii) limitations on the bandwidth available.
Satellite-based network operators are very eager to please their customers with a PushVOD solution, thus filling the gap with cable-based operators, for which Video on Demand solutions have already been long available.
Next to increasing their revenues on their existing customers, network operators would be able to offer a more complete and appealing package, and therefore attract a larger number of new customers, mostly switching from an analog to a digital, or from a terrestrial to a satellite solution.
It is also foreseen that availability of PushVOD on satellite networks will help users migrate from a cable or IPTV network. Currently the major drives behind viewers switching from cable to satellite are the larger channel offerings available on satellite networks, and the reduced subscription fees. On the other hand, forces acting in the opposite direction primarily stem from unavailability of a return link, thus preventing services like Video On-Demand.
This will not be a limitation for satellite networks anymore since the pushVOD solution suggested in this project will get around return link availability, and still provide a VOD service to viewers.
Last but not least, a consistent amount of viewers will be more encouraged to complement their cable or IPTV connections with satellite installations in order to enlarge the received offering (e.g. cultural communities).
The SMARTPushVoD system basically consists out of a Head-End component, which is the PushVOD server and a client component which is the Set top Box. Content is not streamed, but chopped into discrete pieces (“chunks”) and broadcasted over the satellite network. At the STB, chunks referring to the same movie that are correctly received are glued together in the proper sequence. Once a movie has been completely received, it appears in the PVOD catalogue on the STB and is ready to be selected and viewed -after the proper payment procedure has been fulfilled- by the consumer.
Besides the functional aspects of a PushVOD service, an important task is to bring the service to the end-user in a user-friendly way. TeleIDEA developed the User Interface (UI) and provided the application logic on top of the middleware, the drivers and the Conditional Access (CA) modules.
The project consisted out of four main workstreams.
The specification workstream defined the requirements that were set for the project as well as the creation of the overall architecture and specifications for the PushVOD solution. Tasks executed during this workstream were finalized end of July 2010.
The second and biggest workpackage concerned the development and integration of the different modules constituting the PushVOD STB. This included a.o. creation of the User Interface and STB modules associated to PushVOD. Also the integration in the customers test and production facilities were carried out in this 2nd workpackage. This work was concluded by May 2011. Finally once everything was integrated at the customer premises, the final system validation and a customer field-trial took place. Which ended during the 2nd half of August of 2011. The 4th workstream concerned the overall project management and further commercial feasibility studies as well as keeping up-to-date the project documentation.
The SMARTPushVoD project resulted in the realisation of a full-featured PushVoD component integrated within the TeleIDEA software solution for a project that has been executed for NOVA in Greece/Cyprus. Within this project TeleIDEA software was integrated on a Pace STB, running the OpenTV Middleware and using irdeto for the conditional access.
The integrated STB has been launched as a PVR product, whereas the PushVOD service is currently still in a test-phase on a live test transponder of the NOVA satellite operations 12130MHz, 13 East. At the time of writing NOVA deployed over 4300 set top boxes and continues to promote their new pvr products and services. These settop boxes do not include yet the PushVOD functionality as this feature will be enabled with a software upgrade when it is approved for production by NOVA.
With respect to the PushVOD service, NOVA is already promoting the “Nova On Demand” service through the NOVA webpage. The current Nova On Demand service offering includes about 20 hours of movies and series that are refreshed on a weekly basis. The titles that are available today are free of charge for people who subscribed to the Nova “Full Pack” or “Cinema Value Pack”.
