Mastering the Home Cloud

Excerpt from the report Mastering the Home Cloud published by Videonet. For the full report, please click here (PDF).

Multiscreen delivery of TV and video within the connected home presents pay-TV service providers with attractive new business opportunities and some tough competitive and technological challenges. It is vital that providers act promptly and exploit their existing infrastructure and customer relationships to ensure that they control the delivery of video content in a seamless way to IP-enabled devices around the home.

The Cloud is playing an increasingly important role in delivering OTT content via the Internet to TVs, personal computers, tablets and smartphones. But inside the home, we can also observe the emergence of a parallel phenomenon the home cloud which connects the various devices that play and store audiovisual content.

Two key factors lie behind the rapid growth of multiscreen delivery and the connected home: first, faster broadband speeds, combined with technologies such as CDN and adaptive bit-rate streaming, mean that Internet-delivered video can be viewed on most connected devices at sufficient quality; second, the rapid uptake of smartphones and tablets is encouraging consumers to access more streaming video over the Internet. As a result, the way that TV is consumed is being transformed. Viewing is moving away from the main TV set in the living room to other sets and to second screens, which are increasingly being used to start viewing sessions and to search for content.

While these trends present exciting opportunities, they pose a critical challenge to pay-TV operators, which have historically controlled both the technology platform and the TV content that they deliver to their customers, guaranteeing both quality of service and quality of experience.

Today, service providers operate in a complex and often fragmented world where video content can be distributed directly to consumers (by rights holders or aggregators) over the Internet to devices that are bought at retail. On top of this, providers often face technological barriers that prevent them from securely delivering their premium programs to these devices. As a result, consumers are encouraged to look for that content elsewhere, either from new OTT providers or from illegal sources.

Despite this challenging environment, pay-TV service providers occupy the perfect place to provide the three core ingredients of a successful home cloud secure delivery of premium content, managed quality, and a consistent user experience across all devices. For example, by deploying their own home gateways, service providers can extend their existing broadcast infrastructure to increase the value of their pay-TV services by delivering their live and on-demand content to various devices across the home. And with their own connected home architecture, providers gain greater control over the user experience, strengthen the value of their brand and increase customer loyalty.

In the longer term, mastering this home cloud will also open up other opportunities in the new smart home, such as home automation, energy management and home security. But whatever the strategy may be, service providers will need a clear blueprint for integrating a set of standards and technologies, to create an efficient, secure and flexible architecture for the delivery, storage and sharing of premium TV content within the connected home, allowing them to overcome the complexity and fragmentation of the new television landscape.

Such a solution framework or blueprint reference architecture will accelerate time-to-market, reduce integration costs and ensure that viewers are able to view the premium content they want to watch on the device that they want to use, and also enjoy a consistent user experience. And as a result, pay-TV service providers will be able to respond to the multiscreen challenge, strengthen their relationships with their customers and truly become masters of the home cloud.

JoinIn is more than just our show theme, it's a new generation of architecture for the new connected home landscape.

JoinIn allows service providers to overcome the complexity, constraints and fragmentation of the new television environment. It integrates a set of standards, technologies and best practices to guide service providers and ecosystem partners in implementing a secure, efficient and flexible architecture for the delivery, storage and sharing of premium TV content within the connected home.

With JoinIn, service providers can engage viewers with a consistent user experience, monetize content and applications and secure the delivery of premium content to every screen

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