This weeks round up of OTT Video News Deals, Launches and Products
Liberty Global’s Germany UnityMedia unit is now providing catch up free to air programming, themed as crime, passion and living from RTL Germany as part of its VoD service. The two signed a collaboration VoD agreement in November.
US cableco Cox is shuttering its Flare family of digital entertainment services and will switch off FlareKids channels, and online gaming service FlarePlay and the digital storage service myFlare between now and the end of May. Cox has used the Flare brand to incubate new ideas for its mainstream services and it used to have big plans for it, but could not find a way to make money on the brand.
Viacom has surprised everyone by looking for a financial partner to take on part ownership in Paramount Pictures, and wants to offer “a significant strategic minority.” Viacom has retained PJT Partners as its financial advisor to assist with the process. It’s not thought that it is in any financial trouble but is in response to an offer from an unnamed potential investor. Paramount is thought to be worth about $10 billion.
Fifth Journey, a Hong Kong gaming firm has signed partnership deals with US studios Universal Pictures, Lionsgate and MGM to build mobile games based on some of their film assets and in return they will each take a stake in Fifth Journey.
Activision Blizzard has just completed a $5.9 billion acquisition of King Digital Network, the company that brought the world the Candy Crush Saga and says that the combined company will have more than 500 million users from console and PC online games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft to Candy Crush. Activision forecasts 2016 revenues of $6.25 billion and says it now has 1,000 gaming titles in its library.
Kudelski Group has cut another of its patent deals, this time with Verizon and both will now dismiss all pending patent litigation. The patent claims it had against Verizon were for FiOS TV, some advertising functions and OTT streaming services patents used at both Verizon and AOL. It has signed similar deals after legal actions, against Bloomberg, Google, Netflix and Apple during the past 12 months.
Triple play provider Television Internacional (TVI), in the North East of Mexico, jointly owned by Televisa and Multimedios Broadband, has signed a deal with Arris for Edge QAM. TVI operates under the brands Cablevision, and izzi and reaches 700,000 subscribers. Arris Global Services will converge TVI’s current QAM services into EQAM using its APEX3000 converged video and data platform, a short step from full CCAP.
ESPN and Verizon are close to a resolution in a legal action about allowing Verizon’s to offer a skinny bundle on FiOS and will pause proceedings while they talk further. Last week Verizon made changes to its Customer TV package. This dispute has raged since last April when ESPN channels were pushed to an add-on tier instead of being in the basic package. Verizon now has two identically priced starter packages, one with sport and one without.
Ericsson and Cisco say that they have jointly supplied Aster, a small, local cable operator in the Dominican Republic with Mediaroom and a new AVP4000 head end, along with Cisco’s CCAP product line and DOCSIS 3.1. That’s one way to break into cable. Ericsson is the primary integrator.
A report from researcher IHS out this week claims that once Netflix arrives in a market, it accelerates the decline of physical video media like DVDs. At first sight this seemed a significant report, but it’s really just common sense – everyone wants to stream video but not all markets offer a clear market leader for this. So when Netflix turns up, this allows people to do what they have always wanted. The report is entitled “Did Netflix Kill the Physical Video Market?” We have known physical media has been slowing for some time, but IHS has not done enough here to point out how responsible Blu-ray is, as it declines in price, which is more or less in line with Netflix market arrival.
It says that before Netflix launched in the US, spending on buying and renting movies was falling at 1.2% a year. After 2010, spending fell by 10.3%.
You get the feeling that IHS is kind of blaming Netflix for being successful.
The French web news property Dailymotion says it is ramping up services in Asia, and will deliver video to compete with traditional broadcast and TV services (see piece on Vivendi elsewhere in this issue). It is working with Limelight Orchestrate for CDN delivery.
French security specialist Inside Secure has completely repositioned the company after disappointing results. It showed revenue of $70 million for the year and just $15.8 million in Q4 and lost some $21 million for 2015. It is now exiting from the semiconductor business, and has a sale in prospect; will shift to a direct licensing model for mobile security and cut costs. It will also “rightsize” the business via a restructuring plan shedding 15% of the workforce and raise two rounds of capital totaling around €7 million, the first in a rights issue in a few weeks. New CEO Amedeo D’Angelo came on board in October and has conducted an in-depth strategic review and says the company’s core strengths lie in intellectual property security and technologies, which addresses the rapidly growing mobile payments business. It includes in this business its downloadable DRM operation to secure video services.
Telecoms regulator Ofcom said this week it will reduce reliance on the British Telecom’s OpenReach to allow the build out of fiber in the UK, by making it give access to telegraph poles and allowing the laying of fiber alongside BT’s own in its cable ducts. BT is planning to invest in more copper connections using G.fast. Ofcom said it would also force OpenReach to operate at arms-length from the rest of BT, but would not force a split in ownership as Sky and Virgin have called for. Ofcom said OpenReach should have greater independence and takes its own decisions on budget, investment and strategy.