TV Everywhere is the pay-TV industry’s response to the growing threat over-the-top video (OTT) poses to the subscription video business model. The vision of TV Everywhere (TVE), which was originally championed by the cable industry, is to give paying video subscribers access to their video package on a multitude of devices beyond the TV, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The challenge with TVE is ensuring only paid subscribers can securely access their content, everywhere.
TV Everywhere Authentication
This TVE content access issue is known as authentication and it hasn’t been a seamless process to the subscriber. Different video providers offer different authentication options as do the content providers. Often times, subscribers have to find their account number and establish yet another online username and password. It’s hardly an easy process, potentially discouraging the growth of TVE.
One of the firms working on this issue is Synacor, who provides much of the current TVE authentication methods for video service providers. Their latest attempt to streamline the TV Everywhere authentication process introduces Social Login, which in effect, allows a subscriber to use their existing Facebook, Twitter, or Google login as the authentication method to access TVE content.
“Social Login gives Synacor customers the flexibility to offer consumers access to online pay-TV content with their favorite social accounts like Facebook, Twitter or Google, while simultaneously authorizing with their pay-TV provider or billing account,” reports Synacor in a press release.
The social login feature is a part of Synacor’s Cloud ID platform, which aims to simplify TVE authentication and coalesce TVE around a variety of partners including video service providers, mobile carriers, content companies, and consumer electronic device manufacturers.
It’s obviously too early to tell , but any step towards the simplification of the TVE authentication process is a positive one. If a subscriber can gain access to TVE content by linking an existing social ID, like the fairly ubiquitous Facebook, will we see the promise of TVE ring true?
