Imagine standing in front of a crowd constituting a random cross-sample of the world population. You want to convey a single message that everyone can understand – but will your audience understand your language? Some might, but certainly not all. Some would pick up your message right away, others would have no idea what you […]
Operators like to provide their subscribers plenty of services. It’s how they win loyalty and differentiate themselves from the competition. They want to offer HD channels and Video on Demand (VOD), they want to optimize delivery by means of Switched Digital Video (SDV) and Adaptive Bitrate (ABR), and of course they want to ensure that […]
A generation ago, part of the TV viewing experience was an unstated compact that in exchange for content, viewers would be subject to a certain amount of advertising. These ads may or may not have been relevant, but viewers nonetheless sat through them – what choice did they have? These days, service providers have moved […]
To keep their viewers happy, video broadcasters find themselves increasingly eager to offer the best possible deal. Crafting offers that win business has not always been easy. Traditionally, offers have been tied to a single device, such as a set-top box, and limited to rudimentary models such as subscribing to one or more channels or […]
In an age where we routinely view content on our STBs, laptops and handheld devices, service providers are revisiting a fundamental issue – how to define their subscriber base. For decades, subscribers have been associated with the STB sitting in their homes. But as subscribers watch content on an ever-broader range of devices, that model […]
It hasn’t been all that long since HD-quality video gained widespread acceptance as an industry standard. Yet a new resolution standard is capturing the attention of the broadcast world. It’s known as 4K (or Ultra High Definition – UHD), and it offers viewers four times the picture resolution of standard HD. At CES 2014, one […]
Like everything else in the forthcoming Internet of Everything era, cars, which today already rely heavily on digitized systems, are well on their way to connectivity with their surroundings. This is a welcome development. Already we have Bluetooth (radio to cellular) to help us speak hands-free while driving and GPS to keep from getting lost. […]
For a long time, the Pay TV world had a reliable division of labor. It used to look something like this: Film and TV studios generated content. Aggregators purchased this content and packaged it in the form of linear TV channels. TV operators acquired channels and offered it to viewers by means of a set-top […]
Some of us still remember, in the pre-DVR days, when missing an episode of your favorite show meant it was lost forever – unless you chanced upon it in reruns. Even when technology allowed us to book content for recording, whether by VCR or DVR, you had to plan beforehand what you intended to record. […]
