The Lands of Make Believe

The future of TV

For different reasons, TV has a magical effect on all of us. For children it’s all about the mysteries of a make believe land, full of princesses and superheroes. For grown-ups, this make believe land can be about, the endless possibilities of new worlds, perspectives and discoveries.

For different reasons, TV has a magical effect on all of us. For children it’s all about the mysteries of a make believe land, full of princesses and superheroes. For grown-ups, this make believe land can be about, the endless possibilities of new worlds, perspectives and discoveries.

For me, TV was a starting point for my curiosities, an eye-opener for a reality outside my very own home.

For those, like myself, born in the 70s, we got to witness a truly magnificent transformation in television, from experiencing TV in black & white, to colour and 4K, and from network to cable. Technology has always acted as an enabler for TV´s continuous growth. However, it seems like that is no longer the case.

What’s changed? The TV ecosystem has traditionally been very contained and controlled. However, the technology that was once a driving force, now provides users with an abundancy of options, by using a myriad of devices and new players disrupting how the content is consumed and altering the value chain balance in favour of the latter.

All these changes, especially the cable revolution, have pushed the TV business closer to the telecom domain, opening new opportunities and business challenges. In fact, with the decrease of traditional voice services, TV has been critical in many fixed-mobile convergent projects, as a potential source of revenues for both wireline operators and quad-play players.

Customers, on the other hand, also demand an integrated offer from CSPs. They look for a single provider for all their connectivity needs and an integrated offer, which takes in consideration the new digital mentality and the freedom to have a similar experience, regardless of the device or channel used.

The TV experience has gone through many evolutions and today, because of the digital, it is entering a new stage. CSPs are on the front line to better reap the gains of this new age but before they do, they need to tackle new emerging challenges.

CSPs’ Challenges with Digital TV (DTV)

Digital opened up the TV ecosystem, took away the control and transformed the business model to become more fluid, interdependent and competitive, with the emergence of players that until recently were unable to play a central role in this domain.

CSPs serious about embracing a DTV offer, must consider the implication of three main vectors:

• TV platforms
• Content
• User experience

Celfocus Digital TV Platform – Created to Evolve

Over the last years, the way customers experience TV has changed significantly. It is richer, more open, complex, and spread across multiple devices. CSPs must not only consider the technology stack to deliver the best results but also how to get the most engaging content and most importantly, the best user experience.

The video entertainment industry is changing faster than ever, and flexibility is pivotal. Celfocus Digital TV Platform is a video platform that enables CSPs to reach customers anywhere (TV, smartphones, tablets, web, etc.) and provide a competitive experience and commercial offer.

The next generation TV experience has arrived and it is all about WHAT customers want to watch, WHEN they watch it and WHERE they watch it.

Celfocus has the experience and a record of accomplishments to help CSPs support their strategy by providing comprehensive and holistic offers, by delivering turnkey projects, agnostic to vendor-specific technologies, based on a core set of already developed enablers that allow CSPs to quickly create a DTV offer or extend and improve their existing one.

Celfocus Digital TV Platform was built using state of the art technologies. We are able to provide the best consumer experience and flexibility out of a video delivery solution.

What does it mean for CSPs?

Celfocus Digital TV Platform is more than a UI. It provides a complete and modular set of APIs, CMS, video ingestion and video delivery making it a complete solution for all CSPs’ needs.

Digital users are accustomed to having all services tailored and personalised for them. This trend is coming to the TV experience. Celfocus Digital TV Platform provides an out-of-the-box integration with most recommendation engine solutions in the industry.

Ad insertion on streams is one of the several ways Celfocus Digital TV Platform enables content monetization. It provides the tools to help manage campaigns, filtering content, placing rules, and generating reports for Ad providers.

Celfocus Digital TV Platform supports integration with all major solution providers for cloud DVR systems, which ultimately provides a dramatic reduction on hardware specs and transfer storage requirements to scalable clusters on the cloud.

In order to better understand users, their viewing habits and their TV experience, Celfocus Digital TV Platform supports integration with several user data collection systems that can be used to generate: business reports, UI/UX usability tests, AB testing and trend analysis.

Providing customers an unrivalled TV experience

When users want to watch their favourite films and series, they want it to be simple and easy. Celfocus’ Digital TV Platform was designed to transform the way users reach content. By revamping industry standards and creating new paradigms, customers will be engaged both while watching linear channels and on-demand contents.

Nowadays, video catalogues have become complex platforms that require support for several different commercial offers. Celfocus Digital TV Platform provides easy-to-use management tools that enable control, creation, management of video catalogue's (EPG + VOD) metadata, and business models while providing customers with an unrivalled TV experience.

With Celfocus Digital TV Platform, users are able to carry their TV experience anywhere. In addition, they can have a continuous experience in all devices because everything they see or do on one device will improve the experience over all platforms.

By centralizing all recordings in the cloud, Celfocus Digital TV Platform provides a uniform experience for users across all devices. Moreover, new innovative features can be added and a great example is the ‘resume content across device’ feature, where a user starts watching a content in one device (e.g., a mobile device) and resumes its viewing when at home in a larger display (e.g., TV).

Regardless of how the TV experience changes and from how many devices it is now accessible, the affect it has on us remains kind of magic. It allows us to visit the ocean’s deepest part or the highest montains.TV is about inclusion, accepting diversity, bringing everyone together and bridging differences. It is really the box that changed the world.

While currently witnessing a drastic evolution in TV, this 1951 commercial for Motorola TV gives us a flashback on how it all started.