Whenever we hear the words cloud and set top in the same sentence these days our ears perk up. Cloud TV has the power to slow down the rate of deployment of set tops, and that could present a major problem to an already overcrowded and hyper competitive set top marketplace.
So the deal that Entone has done with consumer electronics maker LG Electronics had us puzzled enough to ask for a chat with Andrew Morton VP of broadband TV at Entone, for some clarification.
Entone has plugged its cloud TV service into what is an Apple TV look-alike product from LG. The key to this is the Netcast media streaming platform, which not only sits on this low end media server but also on LG Smart TVs and set top boxes.
We can see that for LG this is a simple enough move. It means that suddenly, by letting Entone attach its Cloud TV to this box, LG can pitch a brand new version of a sub $100 box (the price has not been announced, but this is the barrier it has to get under), at the existing Entone customer base, instead of set tops. Entone says it has well over 100 operators using its Fusion TV, which comes in either a full IPTV multi-cast edition or a pure broadband OTT version. In recent years it has all been about the latter.
In the past Entone itself has designed set tops and media players of this type and sold them to incumbent telcos in the US, and also in places like Ukraine and Moldova (in recent deals). This signals that Entone is happy to get out of the hardware business and follow its cloud vision.
Entone has probably had some difficult conversations where it has had to supply some kind of OTT end point to an ISP, and the discussion was all about the box price, and discounts for volume, when all it wanted to do was build up the number of devices connected to its cloud based gateways.
Now it can tell the ISP that as long as it’s a device with LG’s Netcast on, it will work with its service and this, says Morton, opens up a lot of new customers for it. ‘There are a lot of ISPs that have a lot of trouble getting access to content. Now they can either not bother at all, or get their hands on a handful of licensed channels as well as offering Netflix, Amazon or Hulu or Vudu or all of them, which are already on the LG range of media gateways.
‘The difference is that if the customer acquires a box themselves, it has no relationship or support from an ISP, and this is about both unmanaged OTT and managed OTT through our system, both of which will be associated with an ISP.’
ISPs can sometimes be seen as the enemy of high bandwidth OTT services like Netflix, unhappy to carry the bandwidth, while they are perceived as dragging their heels in terms of speed of delivery. By offering the device with a broadband line, the benefit is that it is associated with the ISP.
‘Some ISPs, even cable companies may sell TV, but also have a lot of naked DSL or broadband only customers and this gives them some way of getting some TV revenue out of them,’ Morton said. This is particular interesting where DSL lines are not high bandwidth enough to offer multicast services (often very true in the US).
The first LG Netcast enabled device which is supported by Entone’s servers will be the LG SP530 Media Player and the gateway is a hybrid in the sense that it offers both OTT and linear TV, even if the Linear TV is OTT delivered. We imagine that eventually the Entone software will also work with installed LG set tops and smart TVs, but as yet it’s not been announced that way.
‘Entone has pioneered the market with hundreds of IPTV and Hybrid TV deployments,’ said Steve McKay, CEO of Entone in a prepared statement. ‘The connected home platform we’ve developed with LG creates an even higher level of service richness and flexibility for the end consumer while improving the economics of service delivery for the operators.’
The LG SP530 can operate on a standalone basis over any Internet connection. When integrated with Entone’s FusionTV application and Magi hybrid media gateway, the media player is enriched with the support of live TV, whether delivered over-the-air (OTA) or through an authenticated pay TV service. The announcement was scheduled to come out at the NCTC Independent Show in San Diego this week.