Digital
TV Europe p24
As
operators recognize the limitations of traditional in-home service
provision we are starting to see a steady rise in Cloud technology
adoption.
In
order to match the heightened consumer expectation for TV everywhere,
all service providers have cloud technologies on their roadmap.
Rollout is hampered in many cases by existing investments in legacy
on premises equipment, copyright and legislative issues and some
technical nuts which have yet to be cracked.
The
benefits, though, of a shift to Cloud are widely understood. As John
Carlucci, president & CTO, Alticast, notes, “What’s important
about Cloud is how it helps operators to break free from the bounds
of the STB and use DevOps models and ubiquitous IT tools like HTML5
and JavaScript for app development.”
It's
also worth observing that Cloud tech promises to revolutionise
business models even further. “The next big step is providing
events-based channels and disaster recovery capability and ultimately
doing full linear playout of sophisticated channels in the Cloud,”
says
James
Gilbert, co-founder, Pixel Power. “In
that light, cloud DVR and ad insertion are good tests of the
infrastructure, but in terms of the future, the Cloud is about much
more.”
Cloud
DVR
Some
reflection of this shift in thinking is in the terminology, which has
shifted from RS-DVR to nDVR to, now, cDVR. While
increasingly being deployed, “there's no big bang shift in
behaviour” as Accedo's EMEA VP Adam Nightingale.
Accedo
expect over 50 per cent of cDVR penetration to have occured by 2022,
roughly the timeframe which Ericsson forecasts too. Parks Associates
research predicts cDVR subscribers worldwide will total 24 million by
2018.
Nokia,
which took over French firm Alcatel Lucent for $17bn,
says it has nine deployments for cDVR including Liberty Global,
Telefonica, Numericable and Vodafone Portugal.
South
Korean sat-caster KT Skylife is among those using Alticast solutions
to deliver either cDVR or hybrid systems that leverage the STB and
Cloud. Spanish
cable service provider Euskaltel launched cDVR last year using a
Nagra solution to offer a multiscreen service on legacy STBs and OTT
to connected devices
Arguments
in favour
The
upsides are numerous. For end users, content deployed in the cloud
enables multiscreen access and recording of multiple simultaneous
shows (not restricted by physical set of tuners). Without the limit
of a 500GB hard disk content, storage capacity is dynamically
allocated, plus the relatively high failure rate of STB disks and
consequent loss of personalised content can be mitigated. Customers
can also retain recordings when they upgrade to new devices in the
home.
For
the service provider there are capital savings from using shared and
scaleable storage over dedicated hard disks, and theoretically fewer
service issue call outs. Ericsson says a typical truck roll costs
$75/subscriber. This has been the main driver for the deployment of
cDVRs by operators such as Cablevision in the U.S. and KPN in the
Netherlands, it suggests.
“Associated
costs quickly add up given that approximately 5 per cent of hard
drives fail per year and new features and upgrades require hardware
replacement,” says ays
Itai Tomer, head of cloud DVR, Ericsson.
“A centralized network is more reliable than distributed drives.”
More
importantly, cDVR delivers a greater degree of control over content
for customer, service provider and advertiser alike.
“A
content provider can assign rules around which content can be
recorded and for what period,” says Roland
Mestric, Nokia's head
of video marketing.
“Such data can be used by advertisers who can place relevant ads
around content when it is actually watched. You can also ensure the
ads aren't skipped.”
However,
technical and licensing challenges are still hampering rapid
advancement of this kind of service. Negotiated
rights vary programme to program and country to country, with the
pivotal issue being whether a unique copy is required for every
subscriber. Each scenario has its own challenges and services
providers must ultimately decide between a private, shared, or hybrid
architecture.
Licensing
challenges
“In
the U.S. for instance, the landmark Cablevision decision deemed a
unique copy saved per user as the standard, although we are still
seeing MSOs looking to readdress that decision independently,” says
Tomer. “In Europe it varies according to region with issues ranging
from high costs (of deploying a private copy solution), to securing
the rights to content and consolidating within a variety of regions
with different regulations.”
Matters
are evolving. For example, new legislation before the French Senate
should provide a legal framework encouraging the deployment of cDVR
solutions in France.
Private
copy cases are extremely costly to deploy and therefore less
economically viable than shared copy scenarios. Explains
Tomer, “A
private copy system requires a unique copy of a program to be saved
for every subscriber that requests it, meaning recordings cannot be
shared. Each single, unique copy of the program has to be saved for
each user, which requires a huge, growing volume of storage, very
high recording and playout concurrency and that can be problematic to
sustain.”
Technical
challenges
This
plays into the three main technical challenges: scalability,
flexibility and reliability. Regarding
the first, says Mestric,
“We need storage that can scale from a few TB to tens of petabytes.
We need to ensure the platform can ramp from start to full
deployment.”
More
flexibility in the system is vital to make sure the service is
optimised based on service or use case requirements. “With cDVR you
can deploy a number of end user services like live restart or
catch-up,” says Mestric.
“The characteristics of a system for live are, however, not the
same as for VOD or catch-up, so based on the requirements of
operators a system has to have the flexibility to be optimised.
Moreover, if an operator starts with catch-up they need to be able to
add full cDVR as it negotiates rights with content providers.”
Platform
robustness ensures the consumer always has access to content and will
not lose it. “If a hard disk fails it needs to be recovered very
quickly. Performance and speed is the key criteria.”
At
the network level the technology is now available from streaming and
content delivery network vendors (such as Harmonic or Edgeware),
enabling robust solutions to be deployed. Of
course, 'Cloud' in cDVR doesn’t mean a 'public' cloud. “Operators
are, for the most part, still skittish about public cloud due to
concerns about security, quality of service, and control. So these
cDVR deployments are happening on private clouds,” observes Yuval
Fisher, CTO, MVPD, Imagine Communications. “The general view is
that a cloud is an infinitely scalable and fungible collection of
resources. But the reality for cDVR clouds is that this doesn’t
scale. As a result, cDVR deployments require specialized clouds, and
this is something the industry is just now digesting.”
The
bottom line
“Rights
holders are also starting to realize that cDVR actually offers new
opportunities to monetize content with services that appeal to a new
generation of multiscreen TV viewers that value convenience and
flexibility more than any other market segment before,” says Simon
Trudelle, Sr. director product marketing, Nagra. However,
says Tomer, “cDVR isn’t a trivial deployment and legal issues,
storage concerns and performance requirements must be considered.”
Cloud
Ad Insertion
Generally
speaking, operators are yet to fully embrace the cloud to deliver ad
insertion across live and on-demand services.
According
to Thinkbox 2015 figures linear still accounts for 81% of all TV
broadcaster viewing in an advanced market like the UK. As overall
Cloud-based on-demand TV consumption increases, the value in managing
addressable ads delivered to personalised, connected screens will
become more transparent to broadcasters, brand advertisers, and
measurement firms.
“The
deployment of next generation fully connected STB, complemented by
other screens, is clearly the enabler that will drive demand,”
suggests Trudelle.
Early
adopters are beginning to implement ad insertion technologies, others
are in wait and see mode. “It’s early days,” says Ericcson's
Tomer. “One thing is clear: operators agree that changing viewing
habits combined with OTT video and innovation in cDVR technology have
changed the game for advertising.”
Value
in targeting
“The
real value of the Cloud here is targeting,” says Imagine's Fisher.
“A different way to look at this is that as advertising moves
towards impression-based targeting, it is also moving toward software
and cloud deployment as a natural evolution in how solutions are
packaged.”
Cloud
enables scaling - the ability to utilise more ad insertion resources
when needed (such as at prime time). This is “basically a cost
saving feature” for Fisher. “So it’s not really a benefit as
much as a mitigation of the extra cost associated with deploying full
targeting capability. More importantly, new ad insertion mechanisms
are based on software, and that brings significant operational
simplicity.”
Cloud
ad insertions also overcome issues with ad blockers, so operators can
increase revenue from ads, although it won't totally eradicate
blocking.
“Generally
the user experience is better with Cloud ad insertions but probably
the most important advantage is that an operator is in control of the
ads, rather than having to rely on the platform owner,” says
Accedo's
Nightingale.
Making
it happen
Whether
server-side or client side, ad insertion is now well defined from a
technology standpoint. Client
side solutions include using one player to play the main content
while a second is used to play ads. According to Nightingale, this
solution “permits the app to initialise the players ahead of
playing the content and then switches players (brings a player to the
foreground) when required.” He says, the customer doesn't see any
buffering or delays between the main content and ads. “This
solution generally works well but it does requires a lot more memory
on the client device.”
Alternatively,
client stitching applications make use of one player, and while
playing either the ad or the main content, is able to buffer the
other content for the next item ready to be played when required. “No
buffering is seen by the customer and the UX is seamless,” he says.
The player can also be given a playlist of assets to play which plays
sequentially one after another.
Dynamic
stream stitching, sometimes called manifest manipulation, is
performed on the server side and requires very little customisation
of the client side player. Explains Nightingale, “The client tells
the server what content the customer wants to play and any ad
requirements and the server makes the calls to the ad server. The ads
are stitched into the main content and delivered to the client.”
While
Cloud ad insertion requires greater preprocessing of ad content in
terms of adaptive bitrate, video quality, sound codecs and so on, the
challenge service providers face is often more on the business front.
“With
the exception of the U.S. market, where MVPDs actively manage some of
the advertising space on behalf of broadcast networks, demand for
addressable ad insertion remains low as the ad space is managed by
broadcasters,” says Trudelle.
Tomer
also notes the that current inventory of ads, although growing, is
very low “plus they are expensive to create”.
The
bottom line
For
scenarios where STB connectivity and interactivity are not guaranteed
or are limited to a subset of the subscriber base, the Cloud may not
achieve value in the short-term. “It
really means that service providers should have a plan to go 'fully
connected' before envisioning deploying Cloud ad insertion,” says
Tomer. “Those who can move fast will clearly reap the benefits of
this new technology.”
Cloud
TV UX
Transplanting
user
experiences to the Cloud offer many of the same advantages to
operators, notably the ability to change the UX rapidly and at scale,
rather than rewriting UXs for every make and model of STB, and
enabling an operator to innovate discrete UIs for every subscriber.
“The
always-on nature of the cable network enables the Cloud to be
harnessed so that operators can deliver advanced user experiences –
such as Millennial Navigation, Kids’ Modes and Sports Zones –
that are not capable of being supported by the set-top box alone,”
says Carlucci. “Since UXs no longer need to be resident on the STB,
operators – and customers – can have an infinite number of UX
variations.”
With
Accedo AppGrid users can update
applications in real-time across platforms and control it per user,
country or time of day without redeploying and submitting
applications. “Being Cloud-based means providers can easily engage
with viewers, for example through in-app notifications,” says
Nightingale.
UX's
delivered as streams to every STB enable operators efficiently to
deploy services “that are equal to – or better than –
experiences that run on the box itself,” says Murali Nemani, CMO,
product management and marketing, ActiveVideo.
There
are a number of instances illustrating how Cloud UIs can bring a
diversity of advanced UXs to existing STBs. VOD and catch-up services
with Ziggo in the Netherlands; trend-driven UIs with multiple tiles
of live video on single tuner STBs with Liberty Puerto Rico; and the
complete YouTube experience to upwards of 500,000 existing STBs at
UPC Hungary (all these are ActiveVideo deployments).
Similar
innovation is taking place in the U.S. where Cablevision were the
first to make the full Hulu experience available on all its current
generation boxes.
Not
a stop-gap measure
Cloud-based
or STB strategies are not mutually exclusive. Operators are always
going to want to bring the best possible user experiences to
customers; the more compute power they can move to the Cloud, the
more it reduces the operational burden of improving user
entertainment and navigation.
“You’ll
see the industry continue to use the Cloud to deliver TV UXs even as
boxes become more capable,” says Carlucci. “We will leverage what
the improved STB can do but we also will continue to see the cloud
and the network evolve.”
There's
a similar strategy at ActiveVideo which offers GuideCast and
StreamCast products to ensure
that next-gen services can be delivered at scale to STBs already in
customer homes, as well as to new devices coming to market.
“Some
[operators] are streaming the entire UX from the cloud; some are
using cloud resources to complement a next-gen device strategy,”
says Nemani.
U.S
cable company Charter has moved to stream its entire UX from the
Cloud beginning with its
Spectrum Guide guide. Tom Rutledge,
Charter
president & CEO [speaking at CES 2015] said: “We’re taking
the intelligence out of the box and putting it into the network and
making the box a thin client box so that the processing power of the
box is no longer a relevant issue; the processing power moves to the
network. That’s a breakthrough.”
Craig
Moffett, of MoffettNathanson Research, estimates that Charter will
spend $2bn over five years for its cloud-based guide build compared
to $8.4bn for IP-enabled boxes: a 77 per cent capex saving.
Questions
of deployment
However,
there are notes of caution. While agreeing that Cloud UX can tap
“virtually
unlimited back-office CPU power” Nagra believes this is “driving
the industry to a position of compromise” because the functionality
of a native embedded UI/UX “cannot be replicated with today's Cloud
UI offering.”
Anthony
Smith-Chaigneau, sr director, product marketing elaborates, “Cloud
UX deployment has its share of issues technology challenges. These
include the latency of the remote control, as each action of the
remote has to be transmitted to the cloud for processing. If network
resources are limited it is difficult to anticipate the actual load
of the network. This is the case in particular for live/linear
services where each video stream is unicast.”
There's
a real question about the simplicity of the STB/CPE client, he
suggests. “Both video and audio still need to be decoded, taking
into account the numerous compression and transport formats, this
requires a variety of computing power requirements.”
Plus,
he wonders how open providers like Netflix or YouTube will be to
being
“proxied”
by a Cloud infrastructure. Currently they have their UI implemented
in the client device.
The
bottom line
“Ironically
TV everywhere is addressing laptops, smartphones and tablets that
have enormous computing power,” says Smith-Chaigneau.
“So with a Cloud UI-UEX are we just talking about the issue of
'incapable' STB/CPEs in the field? Is that is the problem that we are
addressing with this solution?”
He
answers his own question: “It
may well be that cloud UX is the solution for small and medium
operators who want to deploy similar advanced services and advanced
UX without having to bear the cost of implementing a middleware in
the client STB/CPE, or at least be able to support a middleware that
provides mainly the video and audio rendering means: no PVR, no video
gateway to home network. Network bandwidth still remains a challenge,
but there might be less problems as these operators have to serve
smaller number of clients.”
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