How OTT is changing the shape of pay-TV

How OTT is changing television: moving to the Cloud

By Simon Trudelle, Senior Product Marketing Director, NAGRA

The past year has proven to be rich in new OTT service launches, making it clear to everyone that the premium video and TV content industry, from Hollywood studios to live sports broadcasters, has decided to leverage the power of OTT and cloud technologies to distribute content over IP networks. In parallel, several leading pay-TV service providers have ramped up their OTT and multiscreen TV services, including reaching agreements with leading pure player' OTT platforms, to enrich their content offerings and deliver more value and convenience to their subscribers.

According to recent NAGRA-commissioned industry research - highlighted in this report - OTT and multiscreen TV are gaining mass adoption and becoming a must-have for pay-TV service providers worldwide. Yet integrating new OTT content platforms and on-demand services into existing multi-channel broadcast-centric offerings calls for a change in the way pay-TV platforms are architected and operated, influenced by cloud-based technologies. There are three aspects to consider:

OTT TV is a cloud native solution, generally designed to work on standard virtualized IT infrastructure. It enables an exciting range of new cloud-based TV services, from start-over TV to full network PVR and VOD capabilities across a large range of operator and consumer devices;

OTT TV platforms reach a broad range of fast- evolving consumer devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs that also imply short technology upgrade lifecycles, meaning that apps and services get regularly (almost constantly) updated, at a rate rarely seen before in the broadcast pay-TV world;

OTT TV is elastic and service-oriented by design, addressing peak usage scenarios as well as enabling alternative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business models that provide new opportunities for monetizing content.

In essence, OTT TV sets new expectations for multiscreen pay-TV platforms: they have to be cloud-based, address the need for securely delivering live and on- demand content across multiple networks and devices, while ensuring a flexible environment for updating the platform and optimizing operating costs. Industry leading operators are already showing the way: the cloudification of converged TV systems - at the backend and on the client side - is happening fast, driven by new feature-sets, time-to-market and cost efficiency.

At NAGRA, we believe that moving to the cloud is both a business opportunity and a must for pay-TV service providers. Doing so will ensure they stay in their leadership position in an open and dynamic video market environment where they are now competing with some of their content suppliers, either directly or through Silicon giant resellers.

Having worked with leading pay-TV service providers to implement strategic transitions to converged platforms, NAGRA offers a unique and exciting mix of next-generation cloud-based TV products such as the MediaLive multiscreen solution that leverages public and private cloud infrastructure, or a pragmatic mix of both, while supporting fast and frequent product release deployments.

On the client side, with the OpenTV 5 connectware platform and studio-approved anyCAST content protection products, NAGRA is also enabling the accelerated integration of third-party premium OTT services like Netflix into the service provider user inter- face on set-top boxes and other devices. These solutions can be deployed on-premise or as SaaS, cloud TV services. This ensures that win-win OTT TV business propositions, in-house defined or from third-party providers, can be quickly delivered to subscribers with the required best-of-class user experience and security on all devices.

The latest Videonet report sponsored by NAGRA and available in our Document Center here takes a comprehensive look at OTT TV and the cloud and how both will continue to transform the infrastructure choices of cable, satellite and telco service providers over the coming years. It also shows how leveraging existing assets and networks while relying on proven market solutions will be key for business success.

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