When will IPTV realise the rich promise of interactive television, including personalised look&feel?

All the IPTV middleware suppliers are in some stage of responding to the Tier-1 operators’ need to integrate with existing and new platforms. But after that becomes available, what next? By Steve Hawley (Taken from the September edition of IPTV News Analyst)

The IPTV middleware technology category continues to evolve, sometimes in ways that were never expected and sometimes in ways that are fundamental and long overdue. The functionality, the open, well-documented interfaces and the professional services that help an operator, integrator or allied vendor integrate a middleware platform within a service environment is one of those areas that is both. Back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, IPTV industry participants were more concerned about making TV “work,” and the integration work was almost entirely custom from operator to operator. Few of us understood what it would mean for IPTV to grow up and meet IT, but to meet the needs of Tier-1 operators, it had to.

Expanding interactivity

One area of great potential for IPTV is to actually deliver on the long-held promise of interactive television. Let me clarify: yes, IPTV systems have long been able to respond to subscriber requests by passing commands upstream into resources across the network, to pause live TV, play movies, change channels; by definition, interactive television. The technologies exist and work.

However, this view of ‘interactive television’ still shortchanges three important stakeholders in the IPTV equation: the service provider, the content owner and the advertiser. To accommodate the needs of the service provider, IPTV has become open and IT-friendly, integrating with external systems such as billing and provisioning. That’s great, but Telcos still have much to learn about the business end of content. Much of the programmer’s (content owner’s) concerns about IPTV has centred on the operator’s ability to protect their content and the content owners are increasingly satisfied with the IPTV DRM, encryption and watermarking technologies available today.

But the content owner has interests that go beyond the operator’s ability to protect the content from theft. It also wants to know how well the content performs in the marketplace. How many viewers watched? How many PVR’ed it? If it was an on-demand content asset, how did it sell? In both cases, what were the viewing patterns, so the operator can effectively sell advertising space?

Most IPTV middleware has functionality that either directly (by using built-in reporting, charting and trend analysis tools) or indirectly (by exporting data to analysis tools), answers these questions. And the third stakeholder, the advertiser, benefits indirectly from the analysis and reporting tools associated with the middleware platform. So the bottom line is that progress is being made but it’s still a work in progress.

Another frontier for IPTV platforms is personalisation. Part of the personalisation question is addressed by the analysis and reporting functionality described above, so business stakeholders can conceivably direct “relevant” advertising and programming to the subscriber on a one-to-one basis. But the other is the personalisation of look-and-feel.

Customised ‘skins’

The mobile phone industry has made millions (billions!) on custom ring-tones and user ‘skins’ to help the subscriber make a unique personal statement, but where are the IPTV products that allow the subscriber to personalize his or her user interface? Now, there’s an area in which an IPTV operator can differentiate itself from the cable or satellite competitor. This would be the natural extension of what is available today. All of today’s IPTV middleware platforms allow customisation of the user interface across the entire service provider base. But how many of them allow personalisation down to the individual subscriber?

Operators and advertisers can contribute content and advertising that fit the personality of the individual user because, after all, IPTV is an interactive experience and subscribers can assign settings. Just as they already do with their mobile phones.

Furthermore, IPTV user “skins” can be sponsored by advertisers and the interactive nature of our hypothetical next-generation IPTV middleware platform has readymade functionality to tell the advertiser how well it did. Everyone wins. The subscriber gets the look, feel and content he or she wants. The operator realises a new lifestyle brand and gets ad revenue, and the advertiser participates directly, just as happens now on the Web – except, that it’s IPTV. Can this future be far off?

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