The challenge of the connected home

The rapid growth of multiscreen TV delivered via the Internet to tablets and smartphones is creating new commercial and technological challenges for established pay-TV service providers.

OTT delivery of film, video and music is transforming the television industry in ways we could have never imagined, offering consumers greater choice of content, more devices on which to watch that content and more flexibility on when to watch it. But this is not necessarily good news for incumbent providers of pay-TV services.

In some markets, customers have been cancelling pay-TV subscriptions because they feel that OTT can give them all they need at a lower cost. The quality of the video may be inferior, but it is good enough for many consumers. And faster broadband speeds combined with technology such as CDN and adaptive bit-rate streaming mean that the quality is getting better all the time.

While the threat of this phenomenon so-called cord-cutting might have been exaggerated in some quarters, pay-TV operators know that they have to respond creatively to the challenge from new competitors such as Netflix, Google, Apple and Amazon and the arrival of devices that can be used to display OTT video on the main TV display.

Yet this new environment actually offers many attractive opportunities to pay-TV providers. They can exploit their existing infrastructure and the equipment they have in their customers' homes to turn TV set-top boxes into multimedia home gateways to seamlessly deliver content to any connected device, including above all the big TV screens in the home.

They occupy the perfect place to provide the three things that are essential to the controlled delivery of video services within the connected home they can manage the quality of experience, ensure the secure delivery of premium content, and enable a consistent user experience (which carries their own brand) across all devices.

The need for a blueprint

But making all the pieces work together can be quite a challenge. The main obstacle to this is fragmentation: multiple content rights for multiple delivery networks, multiple content-protection technologies and devices that offer different viewing experiences to the user.

To overcome this, the operator needs to find a way to tie all the pieces together, to get the diverse devices talking to each other within an environment that strengthens the operator's brand and its relationship with subscribers and above all in the end, that provides a smooth and seamless viewing experience.

With these challenges in mind, the need for a blueprint is becoming increasingly clear, one that integrates 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 home.

Enter JoinIn, a reference architecture for the connected home that defines a homogenous set of innovative technologies, protocols, industry standards and best practices. This true blueprint for the connected home enables pay-TV operators to integrate multiple technology components and thereby ensure that their premium content can be viewed conveniently on multiple devices, strengthen their relationships with their customers, expand their offering and grow their business.

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