Nokia Siemens Networks used IBC to talk more about its Ubiquity Multiscreen TV Platform and in the last few days one of its major IPTV clients, Belgacom, has said that it will slowly implement the Ubiquity idea for its over 800,000 IPTV homes in Belgium.
Throughout IBC it was impossible to avoid the fact that the Netherlands and Belgium are jointly bidding for the European Soccer cup and Belgacom will initially use the Ubiquity idea on its national soccer league.
Nokia Siemens has effectively announced a software client for ‘any device with a screen’, which allows users to watch broadcast or web television and video via any network. But beyond looking the same and using the same interfaces, these will be extended so that you can buy access to games through your phone or your remote control and play them either on your phone or online or at home on your TV, and also mix up the communications from each screen with Social Networking sites.
In one fell swoop NSN is saying that it favors the process of each screen using its own network – IPTV to the TV, cellular to the phone and broadband to the PC ‘ to each have content delivered separately. It just agrees to harmonize them all at the server level, deep within the cloud, so that the experience is identical, even if the networks aren’t.
It’s an interesting debate and what we see as the exciting explosion of DLNA ‘ whereby standard stacks are tested against one another so that a single network can deliver the same TV experience to three screens ‘ would give us IPTV which then copies to a PC, phone or iPad, probably using the built in DCTP-IP link protection. Of course that’s only in the home, and a separate network is required if you move beyond the home. So these approaches are not mutually exclusive.
But NSN is clearly in one camp, and companies like ADB, the Swiss set top specialist, which showed at IBC a secure DLNA client on an iPad, are clearly in the other ‘ where a single iteration of video can be used across multiple devices.
Both approaches highlight the importance to vendors and carriers of spanning different content gadgets, but also shows off another cross-platform trend ‘ developer frameworks that support a wide range of operating systems and device formats. NSN has built its client on Nokia’s Qt cross-platform apps and user interface system, one of the Finnish giant’s most critical technologies, underpinning its own bid to deliver web and content services to a huge range of systems. This allows NSN’s client to run on various OSs including Symbian, MeeGo and Android.
Belgacom has already started a phased introduction of the NSN Ubiquity Multiscreen TV Platform and KPN, the other major which uses the NSN IPTV middleware system, is the likely next target. The Belgacom implementation will take until almost the end of 2011 and begins with three screen delivery to the Jupiler soccer League matches.
The other benefit of offering such services from the cloud is that video content can be brought together and offered alongside web/cloud apps, which can get you away from multiple device implementations ‘ reducing the complexity to just a browser.
There are lots of trade offs. When you have such a centralized scheme and you involve protected content (such as Soccer games) content has to be protected not just by one DRM, but a different one for each network. On the other hand in the DLNA world, you have a DRM and link protection and have to port the secure client, which is just as tough. But if you want to offer DVR function, that can also be done in the cloud and not repeated in storage on every device.
This launch sees Nokia Siemens entering the rapidly changing market for delivering user experiences that combine broadcast and web TV ‘ Microsoft, Google and Apple being the leaders. While software clients and user interfaces will be important, as well as integration with the back end, part of the war will be on the device front too ‘ where Ubiquity will no doubt plug into Nokia’s phones and tablets. Given Nokia’s track record in bringing this type of function to market, that could be way off in 2012, but the new leadership may have something to say about that. A Tablet that can let you watch the same program you have on the TV, however the program gets there, will be a big boost to Nokia.
Apple, of course, already has a specialized TV device, and a tablet. And this brings the consumer electronics powerhouses, such as Sony and Samsung, into the game alongside the firms coming from a PC/web or mobile heritage. Samsung is matching Apple device for device in this multiscreen tussle, adding its Galaxy Tab tablet to its existing businesses in heavily video-focused smartphones, notebooks and, of course, actual TV sets. Unsurprisingly, Samsung has allied with GoogleTV and Android against Apple, which is pushing into key Samsung territories itself, including television hardware (of a next generation portable kind anyway).
The real battle surrounds the platform, not the device. It is in the apps framework and user experience, spanning all the different screens and networks, that control and brand power will lie, and currently these are being controlled by players who operate on devices – Google TV, AppleTV, which runs counter to this NSN approach.