The TelcoTV Conference begins on Tuesday and as a result, we’re seeing all kinds of product announcements for IPTV. The conference is the largest in North America focused exclusively on IPTV and other telco video offerings. Unofficially, I call it the U.S. version of IPTV Innovation Week.
Early indications suggest this is the year of OTT video, with numerous product announcements focused on the trend already announced before the first day of the show. Below is a quick summary of some of the announcements I feel are of interest to IPTV and broadband carriers:
- Amino OTT Platform – Amino, a U.K. based supplier of set-top-boxes and gateways will introduce their new Amino Freedom hybrid/OTT media centre. Amino claims the new gateway delivers “…broadcast TV, Video-on-Demand, home media and OTT content, plus new user interfaces, gaming and applications.”
- Entone OTT Platform – Entone launched FusionTV last week which they claim marries broadcast content from traditional IPTV or cable headends with OTT video content. FusionTV should help service providers “embrace OTT video, not try to defend against it,” Entone CEO Steve McKay tells Telecompetitor.
- Skitter TV OTT Platform– Skitter is the latest to announced their version of an OTT set-top-box solution. Although Skitter has supplied encoders for telco trials using set-top boxes from at least one third-party supplier, Roku, Skitter Vice President of Marketing Laura Tanner told Telecompetitor that Skitter has had a set-top box of its own under development for some time.
- Cloverleaf TV Apps – Cloverleaf unveiled a TV apps platform targeting smaller IPTV providers who can’t develop such a platform on their own. The new apps platform includes “… a quick-access personalized dashboard and app store, a full suite of localized news and information apps, social networking apps, and CloverLeaf’s DashDaily community publishing apps.” The platform offers an alternative to the growing number of app platforms being offered through third party services like Google TV or directly from consumer electronics (TVs, Blu-Ray players) manufacturers.
- Minerva Networks – Minerva introduced a new middleware platform, xTVFusion, which they claim blends “…Television and Over-the-Top (OTT) video services to broadband subscribers on multiple screens.” Minerva’s basically offering a middleware approach to service providers who are interested in trying to ‘blend’ OTT services into their video product.
- Innovative Systems Updates IPTV Middleware – Innovative Systems released their Version 2 IPTV solution which integrates a redundant APMAX platform. Innovative Systems claims this next generation middleware, which targets tier 3 IPTV providers, offers a variety of features including, “…all the normal DVR features plus folders for recording, recording bookmarks, next generation look and feel of the program guide including weather, whole home DVR, web page controlled DVR, Android Mobile Phone based Virtual Remote, voice controlled channel change, integrated telephone applications including Caller ID, and recent calls list with click to call.” The new middleware platform has also been ported to Amino set-top-boxes.
- Espial – Introduced a TV Browser platform “… based on the Intel® Atom™ processor CE4100 and the recently announced Intel® Atom™ processor CE4200.” Espial claims the new TV browser version provides an interactive, searchable guide for the emerging connected TV segment. “Espial TV Browser is a high performance browser that provides TV centric navigation features, high performance HTML5 and CSS3 animations, Flash, SVG, JavaScript and HTML speeds for highly responsive web browsing and user interfaces,” says Espial in a press release.
There will be many, many more announcements, and we’ll be covering TelcoTV all week.
