 | Issue: | EMEA 2005 |
| Article no.: | 7 | |
| Topic: | IPTV: rethinking broadcasting | |
| Author: | Ed Graczyk | |
| Title: | Director of Marketing and Communications | |
| Organisation: | Microsoft TV Division | |
| PDF size: | 80KB |
About author
Ed Graczyk is Director of Marketing and Communications for the Microsoft TV Division at Microsoft Corporation. He is responsible for communications, public relations, branding, positioning, advertising, partner co-marketing and events worldwide for the Microsoft TV family of software products. Mr Graczyk has held a number of marketing and sales management positions at Microsoft including marketing lead for the MSN MoneyCentral personal finance service, marketing lead for MSN Communications Services, public relations lead for the Web Essentials and MSN divisions, entertainment marketing manager for MSN and corporate account sales management. Before joining Microsoft, he spent six years with UNISYS Corporation. He served in various sales and product management positions, with a focus on customers in the banking, securities and insurance industries. Mr Graczyk frequently speaks at digital TV industry events, including Broadcast Asia, CTAM Research Conference, Digital Hollywood, DigiTrends Camp Interactive, Kagan Interactive TV Summit, IFA Berlin and the PBS Technology Conference. In 1994, he received the Corporate Account Executive of the Year Award at Microsoft. He is also a member of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing. Ed Graczyk has a bachelor’s degree in Science from the Boston College School of Management, where he holds a triple major in marketing, computer science and economics.
Article abstract
Television over IP-based broadband networks, IPTV, provides high-definition programming, Video on Demand, Digital Video Recording, hundreds of linear channels, a rich Interactive Programme Guide and more. It fundamentally changes traditional broadcast TV and lets providers deliver a new generation of integrated services called triple play, combining voice, video and broadband. IPTV’s efficient use of bandwidth gives the consumer a near-limitless number of channels and access to a huge library of live, on-demand and time-shifted, digital video recorded content.
Full Article
Recent technological innovations have enabled the delivery of high-quality television over broadband, IP-based networks. Called IPTV, this next-generation TV technology offers broadband service providers an opportunity to fundamentally change traditional approaches to broadcast TV and expand their businesses through new revenue models. Recent industry events – including BT’s decision to offer TV over broadband services, SBC’s Project Lightspeed rollout, Verizon’s announcement of FiOS TV and V-CAST services, cable’s aggressive rollout of triple-play services, and Microsoft’s recently-announced relationship with Alcatel – point to a paradigm shift in the world of digital TV and communication services in general. Convergence is, finally, really happening. IPTV is one of the best examples of this convergence. For years, the TV has been an island of entertainment and information unconnected to most of the other devices in the home that people rely on daily. IPTV is changing that by enabling broadband service providers, including telecommunication and cable companies, to build new, connected-entertainment, information and communication services and experiences for their customers. IPTV Caller ID on the TV screen, sporting events with multiple camera angles, accessing digital photos or digital music stored on a home PC from your TV set, and participating in interactive services tied to TV programming such as voting and polling, are a few examples of the exciting connected-entertainment services on the near horizon with IPTV. While some of these capabilities are possible with conventional TV distribution systems, IPTV raises the consumer experience to a new level and makes it much easier to implement for the service provider. But let’s be clear: IPTV is not about streaming video over the Internet to a PC or the ‘best efforts’ video quality that we experience on the Internet today. IPTV is about delivering a truly high-quality, competitive, multichannel TV service to consumer television sets over an IP network controlled by the broadband provider. IPTV services will offer the full range of features that consumers expect, including standard and high-definition programming, Video on Demand, Digital Video Recording, hundreds of linear channels, a rich Interactive Programme Guide and more. IPTV is the kind of breakthrough the TV industry rarely sees. Like the transition from black and white to colour TV, IPTV will usher in the next-generation TV entertainment that consumers will come to expect as the norm. The technology was not created overnight. It has been in development for over ten years, but is now being driven forward by such market forces as broadband adoption and the evolution of digital entertainment. Analysts at Multimedia Research Group predict that there will be 27 million IPTV subscribers worldwide by 2008. While IPTV piggybacks on the rapidly evolving advances in broadband and other technologies, a key difference with IPTV is the business opportunity. IPTV is the missing link needed to help service providers deliver a new generation of integrated services into the home. Some people refer to this as the triple play, or quadruple play, when mobile services are included, together with voice, video and broadband. IPTV, though, is really about delivering the single play – a full range of seamlessly integrated communication, entertainment and information services and experiences to subscribers over a single connection into the home. The broadband connection behind next-generation TV services will yield an exciting new range of TV content choices, personalisation, and connected experiences for consumers, regardless of where they are, what device they are using, and what kind of physical network they are connected to at the time. IPTV’s architecture enables sending individual video streams to individual devices in the home, in contrast to the broadcast model used by legacy TV distribution platforms where all channels are sent to all subscribers all the time, which requires a massive amount of bandwidth to carry all that programming. IPTV’s much more efficient use of bandwidth makes possible a near-limitless number of channels and access to a huge library of live, on-demand and time-shifted, digital video recorded, content, to the consumer. By taking advantage of the two-way architecture of broadband, IPTV eliminates the bandwidth constraints inherent in broadcasting TV today, where operators face challenges to add more programming choices, especially on demand high-definition programming, in their space-constrained networks. IPTV also takes advantages of the latest in set-top box technology, with more powerful, broadband-enabled devices that will lead to significant advances in interactive programme guides and new viewer interfaces. The same advances will enable advanced search capabilities as well as personalisation and predictive guidance based on viewer preferences and behaviour. Now that the technology is in place the challenge is to build and market a successful service to consumers. Marketers of IPTV services must clearly differentiate their offering through service capabilities, packaging, pricing and distribution. Packaging IPTV with existing primary services, such as high-speed data or telephony services, enables the network operator to reinvigorate his business while significantly decreasing subscriber churn. Subscribers benefit from a better total value proposition of integrated communication and entertainment services, and in particular, a far better TV experience. More and more, consumers are becoming used to interacting with digital entertainment. IPTV extends this concept and enables next-generation TV services that consumer value, including the following: Networked and remote digital video recording DVRs are all about watching television in your time. Adding the television/set-top box to an IP-based home network increases that ability for consumers, enabling TV watchers in the family room to record a football match while someone in the master bedroom records their favourite movie. IPTV also makes it easy to remotely program the DVR from your PC at the office or another Internet-connected device such as a mobile phone. Advanced communications features Today’s generation is conditioned to communicate with friends and family in new ways. IPTV enables service providers to better leverage their multiple products and build integrated messaging services where voicemail, SMS and even email can be accessed via the TV screen. Next-generation interactive TV features IPTV’s always on, two-way connection is ideally suited for advanced interactivity that involves the viewer in the TV experience. TV-based applications such as voting, changing camera angles, real-time shopping and matching wits with game show contestants are among the many possibilities. Targeted ads and programme recommendations Since IPTV uses a broadband, not a broadcast, architecture, it means there is a two-way, 1:1 relationship between the network operator and the television viewer, which enables the delivery of more-personalised content based on a subscriber’s viewing history or “opt-in” personal information from the consumer. Instant channel changing Digital TV is great, but it can take up to two seconds just to tune a new channel on broadcast digital TV platforms. IPTV can offer software-based tuning that enables a subscriber to zap through channels in milliseconds, actually faster than the blink of an eye. The user experience is extremely important; IPTV services can add to the user value by not intruding on the user experience. Multiple picture-in-picture services For picture-in picture (PIP) functionality, broadcast TV requires multiple tuners in the receiving device, one for each image. With IPTV, tuning is software-based, meaning no hardware tuners are required and multiple moving pictures can be cost-effectively shown on the screen at once. One application of multiple PIP is a richer mosaic interactive programme guide (IPG) with six to eight moving video thumbnails per screen, contrasted with the simple text-based IPGs people are familiar with today. Piracy and illegal duplication of content are major issues for content providers. A content protection model that safeguards content owners without sacrificing consumer experience is important. When safeguards are in place, and high-quality content can be delivered, content owners will take advantage of the new purchase models that IPTV enables. Digital rights management (DRM) systems define and preserve the content owners’ rights to managing the distribution of content as well as the rights of the end user to view it. Advanced DRM technology will make available a variety of new content options for IPTV and a home network might contain several IP-based devices capable of accessing, storing, sharing or displaying DRM-protected digital TV content in a secure way. To illustrate, think of a set-top box that receives a TV signal and stores it on the set-top’s DVR. The set-top could securely make that content available to other televisions in the home or to a portable video player – as long as the right to do so has been acquired from the content provider. The business rules for DRM are driven by the content owners and service providers. Soon, the hardware required to decode and display IPTV services will be embedded in single, low-cost silicon chips. This will help drive down the total costs of deploying and maintaining an IPTV system. With new silicon advances, IPTV set-top boxes can become more powerful, more economical and fuel greater IPTV innovation. Business model This new generation of chips will also enable a new category of ‘IPTV ready’ consumer devices. In some markets, consumers will be able to choose between an array of devices and manufacturers for a reasonably priced IPTV receiver with the features and functionality that best meets their needs. The business model might look very similar to the mobile phone market today, where operators subsidise basic low-cost versions, but consumers can buy more powerful, feature-rich devices. Eventually, consumers will have yet another choice – whether to subscribe to an IPTV service from their telecommunications provider, their cable provider or from the emerging group of wireless broadband providers. The advantages of IP-based networks, especially the bandwidth and economic efficiencies gained by delivering video, broadband and telephony services over a single network, are numerous. Both cable and telco operators will inevitably converge upon IP-based networks for all their communication services. The lines between cable and telco will blur even more than they have today. Both are quickly becoming multi-service providers offering a full range of communication and entertainment services and compete in terms of quality of service, the value of their connected-entertainment and connected-information offerings, and how well they market their service bundles. While there are significant benefits for service providers who adopt IPTV, consumers will be the ultimate beneficiaries with more choices, better prices, faster innovation and, overall, a much better TV experience.
