A new dawn, a new day and a pay-TV proposition without a set-top box?

By Tim Pearson, Sr. Director Product Marketing at NAGRA

Last year, NAGRA assembled a stellar panel for Talking TVkey, a panel that discussed the opportunity direct-to-TV solutions could bring to their businesses. Aside from the obvious savings on CAPEX, the debate explored some of the other interesting considerations that a migration from an operator supplied set-top box to a consumer owned television set may bring.

As I recently wrote in TVB Europe, 2020 had a significant impact on the pay-TV industry and forced an already highly dynamic industry to review their long term plans due to the accelerated evolution of consumer behaviour and consumption. This need for innovation, required to match both the speed of evolution and the ever-savvy consumer, brings solutions like NAGRA and Samsung's TVkey into sharp focus.

At the Talking TVkey event last September, the panel explored some of the benefits that solutions such as TVkey can bring - for example, the rapid on-boarding of new consumers during the set-up of the new TV set, integrating the operator branding into the key TV interface elements (guide, channel list, zapper bar etc.) and the new retail opportunities afforded by working directly with the TV set manufacturers.

HD+ have been using TVkey for over a year and commenting at the event, their COO, George Agnes said It is a win-win-win for the whole value chain. Consumers will gain control over their content in a streamlined convenient manner, operators are able to increase reach to customers without investing heavily in STBs, while manufacturers can offer compelling services on the TV, therefore increasing the value of the product.

As the market evolves and operators are faced with not only further pressure on the economics of supply but new channels to market, it is likely that more operators will move to direct-to-TV solutions to optimise the overall customer experience. The market share for smart TVs will be a contributing factor to the pace at which this evolution takes place. As prices reduce year-on-year and the technology matures, it becomes an increasingly accessible channel through which consumers can access extensive pay-TV services.

Our September event focused on the challenges faced by primarily European operators and provided a number of valuable insights but what about other key markets?

In particular Asia Pacific where a potential change to regulations in India to include tuners in TV sets, the decision by Vietnam to leap-frog' digital terrestrial and head straight from analogue distribution to OTT and an increase in the sales of connected TV's indicates that the market dynamics may be more accepting of direct-to-TV solutions versus the set-top box; accelerated by the changes driven as a result of the pandemic.

To find out more, and working with our friends at Media Partners Asia, we're delighted to be sponsoring another Talking TVkey event specifically focused on the challenges faced by operators in Asia Pacific. Featuring executives from Starhub, True Corporation and PCCW alongside their counterparts from both NAGRA and Samsung, it's sure to provide another hugely insightful session on the role direct-to-TV solutions can play.

Are you a pay-TV or telco service provider? Join us to discuss how you can leverage the award-winning TVkey solution by NAGRA and Samsung to deliver a user experience that exceeds that of the set-top box and unlocks new routes to market to enable customer acquisition.

What have been the learnings from operators that have deployed such solutions? What could be the benefits and challenges faced by operators launching these solutions in Asia Pacific?

Find out the answers to these questions and more. Request here your invitation to this exclusive event.

LINK:	https://dtv.nagra.com/new-dawn-new-day-and-pay-tv-proposition-without-...
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