DLNA looks ahead to second screens after VidiPath November 10^th 2014 - 11:24 AM

The DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is already plotting its future course as its VidiPath certification programme aimed at guaranteeing device conformance with subscription TV services gets going. A major future focus will be second screens, both for interacting with and controlling primary services, according to DLNA Director Stephen Palm.

OTT live is the next frontier for content security November 6^th 2014 - 11:47 AM

Forensic watermarking is the key to combating OTT stream piracy. Anyone who has attended a seminar on video security over the last year cannot fail to have noticed that content redistribution over the Internet is set to overtake traditional control word sharing as the biggest single piracy threat to premium…

Smart TVs as set top box replacements transfer capex to consumers November 3^rd 2014 - 04:21 PM

Amid all the talk of set top box (STB) virtualization an important underlying question is how much functionality is moved to the cloud and what is retained on the customer premises. This is important because it will play a major part in shaping the economics of STB virtualization, depending on…

HBO and CBS’s Move to Internet Subscriptions Spawns Fear of “Fragmentation” in Online Video Market October 27^th 2014 - 07:30 PM

Is today’s cable subscription model about to break? Will cable companies find cord cutters destroying their lucrative model—the one where you pay for 100 channels and watch only 10? The company Piksel says yes—maybe, but the giant content holders have to be careful.

Mobile tops CDN Summit October 22^nd 2014 - 05:16 PM

The needs of mobile operators have leapt up the CDN (Content Delivery Network) agenda, reflecting the fast growing consumption of high bandwidth content on the move, chiefly video. As a result MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) had top billing at the recent CDN World Summit in London and not just as…

OTT broadcast passes tipping point as HBO and CBS leap aboard the waggon October 21^st 2014 - 12:12 PM

The tipping point for OTT broadcast services was surely passed when on successive days HBO and CBS announced they were cutting their own cords with announcements of online-only subscription services. Analysts such as UK based Rethink Technologies are right to assert that these moves will start the dominoes falling not…

Integrated First and Second Screen Experiences October 16^th 2014 - 08:59 AM

The usage of mobile devices has exploded over the past ten years. At the same time TV remains incredibly popular and powers the largest content industry in the world. The holy grail of next generation connected devices is, quite naturally, to connect the first screen, the TV, with the second…

An Exploration into the Impact of Middle-Mile Optimization on Content Delivery Bottlenecks September 22^nd 2014 - 05:02 PM

In this whitepaper you’ll learn: results of an industry-wide content acceleration technology “bake-off”; the benefits of middle-mile optimization on content acceleration technologies; the testing methodologies and approach we used when comparing providers; and independent third-party corroboration of the test results. This whitepaper is a detailed look into the methods and r…

Hard Questions About Hardware August 11^th 2014 - 05:14 PM

Pay TV companies and Telcos are trying to tackle three big questions (1) How to stay relevant (2) How to respond to OTT Services and (3) How to reduce the OPEX and CAPEX costs of STB’s and other hardware. In this paper we examine the choices for virtual services, software, dongles, STB’s a…

LTE Broadcast gains momentum despite negative report from EBU August 11^th 2014 - 08:25 AM

LTE Broadcast is the mobile industry’s latest attempt to develop a viable technology for multicast transmission over cellular backhaul infrastructures and on through the Radio Access Network (RAN), after a litany of previous failures such as DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting- Handheld) and in the US Qualcomm’s MediaFlo.