The reasons for its popularity are clear. Android TV works well and is easy to use. It has an intuitive interface, includes access to any streaming app viewers could want, and offers important features like voice control and deep search. For operators making their own Smart TVs and STBs, Android TV eliminates the hassle of developing a proprietary OS. Of course, they still must customise their Android TV OS by modifying it to personalise their brand, user experience, and available or highlighted content, as well as controlling things like security, analytics, and billing.

In a world where most users have Smart TVs, STBs, gaming consoles, and mobile devices capable of playing streaming apps on their home entertainment set-ups, how can any provider become the go-to method for watching video? The answer is simple: by providing the best end-user experience. After all, if a customer is watching Apple TV+ on one operator’s STB and it crashes, they will go watch it somewhere else.

Continual testing and monitoring of the Quality of Experience (QoE) being delivered to customers is the best way to retain them. It isn’t about monitoring only one service, either. Content providers on Android TV should be testing how their own app works, how it interacts with Google’s OS, and even how popular third-party apps perform and interact.

Another common concern for providers on Android TV is content availability. If consumers search for a movie, is watching it using their service or someone else’s the first option given? Does using voice control search or different keywords yield different results? After each new asset integration, content providers need to make sure their content is being properly annexed and is easily accessible for users at home.

The other issue for operators using Android TV is that they have no control over the future of the OS, or even a timeline for updates. Google can push an OS update at any time. Even if an operator’s services, apps, and content were working perfectly before, they could immediately be altered by an unexpected update. The only way to prepare and protect their service is to continually test and monitor its performance, making sure to benchmark the results over time and through different updates.

In fact, continual testing and monitoring of video services is the best approach for all operators using Android TV to ensure that their customers are receiving excellent streaming quality and will continue to use their products. It’s the most effective way to make sure their content is accessible and available in the ways they want it to be, keep performance consistent across OS updates, and be proactive about QoE while using Android TV.

Many of these testing and monitoring scenarios can’t be accomplished manually. It’s difficult to find a human willing to sit and monitor Android TV’s performance on their device 24 hours a day, or type in the same title over and over to ensure the results work. That’s why testing automation exists – to cover the endurance, stress, and performance testing that cannot be accomplished manually.

Testing automation and proactive monitoring are essential tools for any operator working with Android TV. It lets their team sleep soundly at night, knowing their service’s performance is still being measured. It helps avoid technological catastrophes and retain customers. Since Android TV is only getting more popular and reliable, it’s an excellent time for operators to choose it for their OS – and combine it with testing automation to ensure their own success.

This live webcast explores the future of aggregation – and how platform operators and streaming services that curate content can differentiate themselves in the battle to acquire and keep users. It considers the value of Originals and exclusive content – and how platforms and streaming services that lack exclusive content can set themselves apart in the 2020s, and what their value-add is for consumers.

You will hear about the evolving relationship between content curators and aggregators and their content partners – including the onboarding of apps and the benefits that Pay TV operators can bring to streaming app providers beyond ‘carriage’, from carrier billing through to marketing and advertising partnerships.

Our panellists consider the opportunities for aggregators and content curators to segment the Pay TV market and address a larger total audience, serving genre super-fans through to light and casual viewers. Extended aggregation opportunities are investigated – like music streaming and exercise apps – and we ask: can platform providers become more central in the digital consumer home?

The panellists are:

• Brigita Brjuhhanov, TV Product Owner/Team Lead, Elisa
• Joe Nilsson, Chief Commercial Officer, SportsTribal
• Tim Pearson, Vice President, Solution Marketing, NAGRA
• Mary Ann Halford, Partner, Altman Solon
• Moderator, John Moulding, Editor-in-Chief, Videonet

This webcast is live and will include audience questions. It is free and you can register here.

Elisa is one of the most important small/medium Pay TV providers in Europe, demonstrating how operators can cement their position in homes with its next-generation TV platform, Elamus, which was launched last August.

SportsTribal is a new FAST (free ad supported streaming TV) platform devoted to sports, featuring 35 channels that span billiards to combat sports, giving rights holders another distribution option beyond Pay TV and direct-to-consumer apps. This service is an app itself, appearing on Smart TV platforms.

NAGRA is a long-time leader in multiplatform television delivery and UX development (in addition to content protection, data-driven business analytics and cybersecurity. The company has extensive experience helping Pay TV providers (and indeed sport rights holders and streamers) creating platforms and services designed to attract consumers.

Altman Solon is one of the world’s largest global strategy consulting firms with an exclusive focus on the Telecommunications, Media, and Technology (TMT) sectors and among its many subject specialists has helped global media companies and dynamic new players adapt to the disruption of OTT/streaming video and the new strategies for creating, marketing, and delivering video content.

Other themes that will be addressed during this one-hour live video discussion include:

• The potential of CE platforms (from Samsung and LG to Amazon, Google and Apple) as content curators and aggregators.
• Best practice in content discovery and navigation – how to get consumers to the content they will love faster and more reliably.
• Content that attracts and keeps users on aggregated services and the relative merits of international vs local and hyper-local.
• Device strategies to reach the total subscription TV market, from high-end home gateways to streamer boxes and direct-to-TV (operator-as-an-app) approaches.
• Where content will come from as major international studios sell more of their output to their own D2C streaming service (life without your own studio).
• The potential for streaming services to grow their app ‘universe’ with third-party content relationships, and how third-party content is curated and presented.
• How smaller operators remain competitive in television services, ensuring sophisticated aggregation, personalisation, content discovery and navigation experiences.

Register here

Some (though not all) of the major international studio groups are going all-in on their owned-and-operated (and direct-to-consumer) ‘Plus’ apps, hoping they will become the home for digital viewing of their content. And broadcasters everywhere have been investing heavily in their ‘Player’ services, including deeper catalogues that help them evolve from catch-up services to destinations in their own right. But speaking at Connected TV World Summit three weeks ago, Jonathan Lewis, Head of Commercial Innovation & Partners at Channel 4 Television, explained that Channel 4 was taking a balanced approach to digital distribution.

Focusing on the YouTube deal in particular, he said: “We don’t think this is going to cannibalise audiences on our owned-and-operated platforms. TV is getting older, and YouTube is still the youngest social platform, and big-screen viewing on YouTube is skyrocketing and that is really important to us because people want to watch our content on the big screen.

“We view YouTube as a distribution platform in the same way that we view Sky Glass and other connected TV environments. This is a big pivot [to embrace long-form distribution on YouTube] but the YouTube strategy helps us reach younger audiences and super-charge our digital growth strategy and diversify revenues. It is a significant step in terms of delivering on our Future4 strategy [the high-level strategy C4 announced two years ago to prioritise streaming and grow digital’s share of revenue].”

The YouTube deal applies to the UK and Republic of Ireland and will see Channel 4 making an ever-growing catalogue of content available via the service – reaching around 500 hours next month and something like 1,000 hours by the end of this year. And this is part of a wider digital distribution focus that includes social platforms like Snap, Facebook and TikTok – with TikTok viewed as a natural home for 2–3-minute clips of the broadcaster’s output, which includes often irreverent comedy.

Asked why Channel 4 does not want to ‘force’ streaming viewers to come to its streaming service, All4, to see content [a theoretical possibility in the streaming space], Lewis declared: “We will fish where the fish are.”

He added: “We are doing both [D2C via owned-and-operated, and third-party streaming distribution partnerships]. We are trying to appeal to an audience that we are pretty confident are not going to come to All4. That is why we are going to start building a big presence on TikTok, because we recognised that the format, and the types of content you find on TikTok, won’t work as a 30-minute show [within All4].”

Lewis believes it is important for the Channel 4 brand to be seen, including by people that may not come to the owned-and-operated app. Focusing on TikTok again, he said: “We need to be on that platform and talking to that audience because we want 16-24 year-olds to have an empathy with Channel 4 as a brand, and a sense of what our brand means, and they are not going to get that if we just sit within our walled garden expecting them to come to us.”

Channel 4 views these third-party streaming services / social platforms, and also long-established partners like Sky, as key elements in the future digital distribution strategy. “We were a launch partner on Sky Glass,” Lewis pointed out, referring to Sky’s Pay TV operator created/branded retail Smart TV that ditches satellite tuners and relies on streaming. “We want to offer our service to users where they want to consume it. We see IP [digital/streaming] as a TV delivery that allows us to hold onto audiences, grow them where we can, and in particular grow younger audiences.”

Lewis emphasised how third-party content distribution complements the owned-and-operated environment – observing that when Channel 4 signs a syndication deal for Netflix to show archive programming, viewing of the more recent episodes increases on All4. He cited the [outrageous teen comedy] ‘The Inbetweeners’ as one example. “There is a halo effect.”

The deal with YouTube does not cover international markets but Channel 4 is looking at how it can increase non-UK revenues and it was clear that if the rights agreements could be agreed with the Indie producers (who retain their rights on Channel 4 broadcasted content) then a wider YouTube deal could at least be considered. The same applies for potential FAST channels, although Lewis acknowledged that the broadcaster would need to convince the programme rights holders that Channel 4 curation for international streaming was their best option.

One key point about the UK YouTube deal is that Channel 4 (whose 4Sales is one of the major UK television sales houses) will sell the advertising that appears. “We will have the relationship with the advertisers. We have great relationships with them already and now we can offer a reach extender into younger audiences off-platform.” This direct Channel 4 sell means advertises can also buy directly against content (rather than buying only against an audience).

Bravo noted: “OTT technology simplifies all the technology standards we have to use in our devices, which has time-to-market benefits. And you can see the amount of investment in set-top boxes by big streaming companies. Until now we had lots of legacy in the broadcast and multicast space. We have created a new television ecosystem – a single product for all our NatCos. Now we must improve OTT capacity and move customers to the new ecosystem.”

Interviewed by Andy Waltenspiel, Managing Director at Waltenspiel Management Consulting, Bravo confirmed that Deutsche Telekom views the set-top box as a key control point and a device it is committed to, even though it is seeking ways to implement its full Pay TV operator experience on other devices. He agreed with comments his boss, Pedro Bandeira (VP Product and New Business, Europe at Deutsche Telekom) made previously (elsewhere) that the TV industry had possibly under-invested in CPE in recent years.

“It is clear the customer experience is connected to what happens in their homes and that applies to all CPE, not only set-top boxes,” Bravo noted. “People thought for many years that telcos were selling X Mb of fibre or xDSL but, to be honest, we were selling Wi-Fi, and for that you need the best devices. I think we need more powerful devices, and you need to control the number of providers that you use – if you have a zoo [of devices] you have lifecycle management issues.”

In January this year Deutsche Telekom launched its MagentaTV One STB, powered by Android TV OS, in Germany to deliver its premium TV experience. This follows the introduction of the Android TV OS powered MagentaTV Stick in 2020. On the partnership with Android, Bravo pointed to the importance of apps aggregation and the ability to scale apps availability. Asked about the decision to choose Android TV over a home-grown OS, he said: “You have to think about the trade-off between control of the user experience and scalability.”

Asked how Deutsche Telekom can differentiate in the super-aggregation function, he pointed to the need for “an excellent user experience for content discovery and the way you implement that with different [consumer/content] touch points.”

Touching upon non-STB device strategy, Bravo acknowledged that Deutsche Telekom was watching Sky Glass with interest. He did not rule out the possibility of DT making its Pay TV experience available through its own television sets, too. “We are tracking this proposition to see if it makes sense,” he told the London audience.

Jeroen Ghijsen, CEO of Metrological, says, “The Lightning-based Deezer app was built to provide the optimal music experience on TV. Now, our global operator customer base can seamlessly access Deezer’s extensive catalogue of songs, playlists, podcasts and more from the comfort of their living room.”

The version of Deezer in the Metrological App Library was developed in the open and lightweight Lightning app development language and Software Development Kit. “This SDK is tailor-built for developing high quality UX and browser-based TV apps with great, native like, performance,” Metrological says. “Lightning optimises the user experience for high-performance apps across next-gen, as well as memory constrained legacy devices.”

With a Deezer premium subscription, the Deezer music streaming app provides listeners with access to an audio catalogue of more than 73 million songs, podcasts and radio stations. Deezer is free, with a subscription then unlocking premium features.

Miall-d’Aout adds: “We want all our users to enjoy simple, highly relevant and personalised content no matter what platform they prefer to use. Deezer helps companies improve customer satisfaction and boost long term ARPU.”