Inview Technology used a demonstration on a low-cost AMTC connected television at CES to demonstrate how its Connected TV platform can be used on virtually any device, thanks to a low processing and memory footprint. The company is targeting the Tier-2 Connected TV market, covering sets and set-top boxes, and CE products featuring its platform will start appearing in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Poland in the first half of this year. The platform is based around a full EPG and a selection of stand-alone apps, plus recommendation and search functions.
Inview built its business on providing EPGs for the UK free-to-air market and is used by 24 brands and a total of 94 products today. According to Mark Rooney, Director of Media at the company, this broadcast heritage explains the low processing footprint.
The company claims CE manufacturers can add the connected software platform without increasing its bill of materials, and the software is provided royalty free. Inview is also responsible for aggregating the content and this is where it will make its money, courtesy of revenue shares with video apps providers and possibly, in future, advertising around the User Interface. It wants to provide a mix of free and paid content.
A key market for Inview is retailers who want to provide own brand televisions. The Inview software is integrated on the system on chips (SoCs) that go into the televisions, which are mainly sourced in the Far East. Rooney is confident that retailers and other Tier-2 CE brands will not want to develop their own software platforms. He thinks the ability to build in a Connected TV platf
The information bar on the Inview user interface
orm at zero cost will be compelling, especially when $1-2 can make a big difference to a bill of materials in these lower cost devices. Inview expects a market for both the primary household TV but also sets destined for the second or third room.
In the CES demonstration in Las Vegas last week, the company showed a full programme guide with typical features but one nice touch is the ‘Schedule View’, which shows recommendations but more importantly, lists the recommendations against time in the same way that you expect to see linear programmes listed according to time. So in this view, you might be given three recommended linear TV viewing options for Wednesday 1400-1500, but also recommendations from the on-demand content as well. Inview provides its own recommendation engine, which draws upon viewing habits and any explicit information viewers want to provide about themselves.
The guide information bar shows Now/Next details but also features an elite selection of around six popular apps. There is also an ‘App Folder’. In the CES demo, one of these was Dailymotion, the popular French user generated video sharing site. The 240p video loaded in three seconds, which Inview claims is very fast, even compared to what you will see on expensive connected TVs. The television uses geo-location to determine the apps you see and what you might see inside them; thus for Las Vegas the weather app was sunshine every day!
