We’ve said some harsh words about Israeli hybrid IPTV platform provider Comigo, following our failed meeting back at Mobile World Congress in February. So we were intrigued when the company made its first announcement since last September this week, forming a partnership with software-based head end provider Keepixo – the spin-off of Allegro DVT’s French broadcast business.
Keepixo’s Genova software suite includes multi-rate h.264 and HEVC live encoder, file transcoder for VoD assets, and a multi-format OTT packager. This is combined with Comigo’s Android-based set tops, OTT/IPTV platform, and Comigo Experience Intelligence Engine – Comigo handles the CMS and provides its own UI. The collaborative offering will reportedly be deployed by a major North American operator to deliver over 100 IPTV HD services using HEVC.
Faultline has seen Comigo demos before, and previously praised the impressive feature that overlays a shopping app on top of a film to push related merchandise to the viewer. What was more notable at TV Connect in London this week, was the overlaying of statistics and figures onto live sports events, with the facility to monetize this through related merchandise.
This led us to discuss the future prospects for extra features such as stats and replays during live sports – such as with virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR). There have been some quite impressive AR concepts from the likes of Microsoft’s HoloLens, which project stats onto a surface of choice, and even turn coffee tables into football pitches to display 3D replays. This is an exciting feature, but is a space that Comigo said it is not currently looking to expand into. Nevertheless, we think focusing on live sports is certainly a wise move.
Comigo’s platform includes personalization capabilities, using what it claimed was AI and machine learning – but when we dug a bit further this really just sounds like standard big data algorithms used in personalization and recommendation engines. Some of this data is gathered from social media accounts which are linked with the platform, and this also allows users to communicate with friends, see what they’re watching, and push special offers and deals with targeted ads. Comigo claims that the amount of back-end data it collects is substantial, although could not provide any solid figures on this.
The meeting this time around at TV Connect in London was a successful one, and the enthusiastic VP of Marketing Michal Fridman has optimistic ambitions for Comigo, with several potential deals in the pipeline to extend its reach outside of Europe – to North America, Latin America, and APAC. Although our assumption that US movie provider NeuMovie, a previous customer of Comigo, had bitten the dust was confirmed – but any reasons beyond the crowded US market remain under wraps. In terms of competitors, set tops from Kaon offer similar capabilities there is also an array of very cheap hardware that can be purchased in Thailand.
Keepixo was recently selected by Bosnia & Herzegovina-based telecom operator m:tel, to supply its high density transcoders and mosaic generators for m:tel’s new OTT multiscreen offering. Keepixo says its transcoders can deliver over 60 channels using HLS, and its mosaic generators will compile m:tel’s multiple channel service into one single view.
“By working with Comigo, we are able to combine our high quality video transcoding solutions and Comigo’s advanced TV platform. We are proud of this collaboration which brings OTT service providers an end-to-end, easy to deploy OTT platform with an exciting and feature-rich user experience,” said Jerome Blanc, COO for Keepixo.
“One of the key challenges that IPTV and OTT service providers face today is launching full multiscreen services with advanced capabilities ahead of the competition. By partnering with Keepixo, we are reducing integration complexity and bringing to market an HEVC and MPEG-DASH supported solution, therefore allowing service providers to dramatically speed time-to-market and save significant bandwidth costs,” said Motty Lentzitzky, CEO at Comigo.