A White Paper landed on our desk this week from Espial, the Canadian browser designer which has, in the past, insisted that instead we call it a leader in TV software because it doesn’t only design browsers. The paper argues that all OTT implementations should be done in the cloud. We’re not so sure, some of each perhaps.
The paper has clearly been prepared to bring Espial some plaudits, come IBC, the big European broadcasting conference in Amsterdam, just over two weeks away.
Its thrust is that Content Service Providers (CSPs) which is its new name for OTT operators, face rising costs if they have to develop new widgets or full embedded applications for all the different chipsets and TV set tops out there and change them as hardware changes. Use a browser it says, suddenly once more accepting that it is just that, a browser company
What Espial is doing is trying to get the US flavor of OTT player to follow its architectural lead rather than look across at what’s happening in Europe.
Sure an awful lot of things have to be done in the cloud, and TiVo is the best place to watch what is happening in that respect.
TiVo already has a mass of experience in delivering IP based programming to a TV set, controlling new forms of advertising, managing hardware, and returning audience data over a broadband line. TiVo offers advanced search and of course recommendations from the cloud, as well as EPG and VoD integration and server side software for audience measurement. But it has to have a middleware client on the box or it has to own the box. Most operators which buy into TiVo have to unify all their devices to be TiVo capable, or TiVo has to do a port to one of the major Motorola or Cisco boxes. So in a way Espial has a point.
And it is targeting this logic more at companies like Roku, Amazon Unboxed and Netflix than at TiVo. And as we have said, its aim is not to be sidelined by what browser rival Ant Software is doing in Europe, which is to offer a browser, but more than just a browser to cushion the blow of working with different hardware architectures.
European broadcasters have created at least two major middleware clients for hosting IP video alongside broadcast video, the UK’s Canvas and HbbTV for the rest of Europe. HbbTV broadcast video is standardized in Europe using DVB Project standards and IPTV, which is moving towards standardization using Open IPTV Forum standards. Effectively Ant has provided much of the thinking behind HbbTV by extending its browser layer to include jobs like managing Javascript applications and looking after the lifecycle of embedded apps on the set top or TV. It has its own EPG manager to merge IP content with DVB EPG data, all handled in XML. And it has Zapper applications to put all of this, including remotely streamed IP video, under the control of the TV remote control.
It layers red button interactivity in there and can spool IP programming onto the TV DVR and support teletext messaging. In fact it is built on top of a teletext messaging client, which was upgraded for HD TV sets. (See diagram).
We’re not so sure that all of this CAN be in the cloud and a browser on its own cannot integrate the experiences on the TV set to make it feel like it is one considered experience, rather than a hodge podge of different apps, each with a different look and feel.
Already there are a number of Widget managers in evidence around the world, the best known from Yahoo! and backed by Intel. And Samsung and others are even talking about the TV having its own App Store. Why not? You won’t do all that in the browser, no way, although Google might tell you yes.
And some TV aficianados reckon that OTT services cannot be stand alone and must integrate into the overall TV environment. It’s certainly true that pay TV operators are the most likely people to pay for devices with OTT connectors in them, so it seems that program integration seems the way to go. Surely making OTT purely a cloud application that can come to a browser, will mean targeting an alternative to the paid programming, not backing the Pay TV providers who wish to have OTT services integrated so they don’t dilute or compete with their offerings.
We don’t see that Google TV is enough of a product in its own right. And before them neither were Joost and Babelgum and others. Maybe new services like the anticipated Apple iTV service will be enough of a service to stand alone, and allow consumers to drop their pay TV service. But that sure as hell won’t use the Espial browser and the only way for Espial to be making headway in this market is to provide the same application support that Ant has succeeded in offering in Europe, so that all the code on the TV set belongs to them and adheres to standards, so that the Rokus of this world won’t have to manage software updates, Espial can do it for them simply by updating the browser and related software.
Espial colored all of this, in its white paper, with support for HTML5 and CSS3 animations, with hardware-accelerated 3D graphics using OpenGL. While it didn’t slam Adobe Flash, it is clearly steering people away from it.
Sure CSPs or OTT players will want to control their development so they can differentiate themselves. This will mean carrying a cost forward, which may well inflate over time. But for the successful player in OTT, the revenues are so much higher (it’s like Pay TV without paying for the network costs), that they can, and probably must, afford it.