NAGRA’s OpenTV Video Platform will help operators monetise service aggregation and address new business models and customer experiences, underpinned by AI and behaviour-based analytics.

The company is also showcasing the latest ‘Super App’ innovation that takes content aggregation to the next level “by offering a more immersive, personalised and consistent consumer experience with embedded loyalty, digital and financial services all available as a single platform”.

Operator service diversification, where they make themselves even more important to subscribers, is a compelling focus for innovation. When you think about where service providers could play a role in our digital lives, the need for someone to make the smart and automated home a holistic, reliable and secure experience springs to mind. In a world that is increasingly focused on digital identity and digital privacy rights, service providers might be able to help consumers take control of their digital identity, too.

NAGRA is one of a small group of vendors thinking seriously about what happens ‘beyond video’.

“The quality of ThinkAdvertising’s first-party data fills an important need in the market as advertisers face the consequences of a post-cookie world plus the need to target the correct audiences to maximise the results from their ad spend,” declares Peter Docherty, Founder and CTO, ThinkAnalytics. “The results speak for themselves: ThinkAdvertising has delivered uplifts of over 100% for customers.”

Smart Navigate also automatically adapts scenarios to new menu OS updates, saving testers dozens of hours previously spent manually updating them.

The company is also unveiling a Script Writer feature that streamlines the test scenario setup process, using set templates based on a customer’s specific use case for Witbe’s test technology. Script Writer reduces scripting workload by automatically creating the test scenario, populating associated KPIs and testing contexts, simplifying the process of editing multiple elements at once, and creating a cleaner interface.

“Our enhanced Script Writer transparently guides teams through every step of the process, allowing test scenarios to be written faster and more efficiently than ever before,” says Witbe, who can be found at Stand 5.D76.

“Pioneered by our growing Portugal office, which recently assisted in launching a major streaming service across Europe, our enhanced Script Writer and the new Smart Navigate AI-powered algorithm are both perfect examples of how our technology uses the latest advances to increase productivity for our customers,” says Marie-Véronique Lacaze, President and Co-founder of Witbe. “They have already been implemented for several of our customers to great success, and I’m pleased we have the chance to introduce them to a new audience of video service providers at IBC.”

In general, the variation among apps across different devices was minimal but Accedo offers this advice to keep app energy requirements down:

• Consider using darker aesthetics.
• Implement energy saving features such as ‘Skip Intro’ or ‘Are you still watching?’
• Reduce the volume of animated content.
• It even suggests media companies could prompt consumers to switch devices or perhaps more realistically, adjust backlight settings.

The study found that set-top-boxes only use a small amount of energy (Amazon Fire approx. 1.5W, Sky Puck 3W, YouView 10W), while gaming consoles use around 70 watts of energy. It notes that watching direct on a Smart TV removes this energy component.

Smart TV energy consumption rises dramatically if backlight settings are increased. The study shows that with default backlight settings at 80%, LG WebOS TV would use around 120W and Tizen 2016 would use around 130W during playback. Switching energy saving off increases these further to around 170W for LG TV and around 200W for Tizen.

Looper Boost provides a visual solution for collaboration on planning merchandising strategies for New Release titles, ensuring compliance of campaigns and full tracking of merchandising performance. It gives the marketing department a comprehensive understanding of their content’s performance and impact, and a dynamic interface showcases past, present and future merchandising efforts, the vendor explains.

Media Placement Value, part of the Looper Boost offer, “provides marketers with a deeper understanding of the true value of content placements across the whole product lifecycle, encompassing buying, renting, subscribing and advertising VOD,” Looper Insights adds.

The company is exhibiting on Stand 5.A60 but will specifically unveil Looper Boost to IBC attendees at 14:30 on Sunday on Stage 2 (Stand 5H.75).

“As global video consumption grows, InterDigital’s solution makes small reductions in pixel brightness, which cannot be perceived by the viewer, amounting to colossal energy savings across billions of screens and devices worldwide,” the company suggests.

“Introducing the possibility of software baseband processing, the bridge functionality also offers superior video performance and extended international reach with full software-based watermarking insertion and premium frame rate conversion based on motion compensation,” the vendor says. “This capability is crucial for transmitting major international sporting events across countries using different frame rates.”

Ateme, which specialises in video compression, delivery, and streaming solutions, says the new feature, with support for JPEG-XS or NDI, confirms software as a viable option for ultra-low latency connections. “It offers service providers the flexibility of switching easily between different encoding methods, for smooth and efficient video delivery.”

Forthcoming functions include SDR/HDR conversion and audio-immersive manipulation.

EPG Correction Distillery resolves one of the most common problems facing aggregators and their subscribers – namely the lack of accurate time markers in broadcast and the consequent discrepancy between actual and scheduled EPG start and end times of TV shows. By analysing broadcast content in real-time and across multiple channels, EPG Correction Distillery instantly detects the actual start and end times of the programmes, and adjusts the EPG margins accordingly.

The deployment at Magenta Telekom follows a successful PoC. EPG Correction Distillery is currently rolling out and will go live on Magenta’s most popular TV channels in Q3 2023.

In earlier deployments with other operators, the introduction of EPG Correction led to a drop in customer complaints related to replay, recordings and EPG by as much as 75%. EPG Correction Distillery recently reached the milestone of 1,000 activated channels.

The key advantage of this solution is that its innovative architecture uses the existing system browser (WPE or Android Webview) instead of having to add another browser to support HbbTV. This reduces system complexity, software footprint and subsequent resource requirements.

The HbbTV solution by DTVKit (IBC exhibitor, 1.D61) is executed primarily in Javascript, providing flexibility and ease of development. The use of reusable C++ components further enhances performance and reliability. “This combination enables OEMs and developers to leverage their existing expertise in these widely used programming languages, reducing the learning curve and simplifying the development process,” DTVKit explains.

“By utilising DTVKit’s fully integrated version of the ORB solution, OEMs can significantly reduce their time-to-market for launching HbbTV-enabled services,” the vendor adds.

As with all DTVKit software, the ORB HbbTV solution is available with full source code access and is royalty-free for DTVKit members.