Netgem, the customer premise equipment and middleware provider, has introduced a new hybrid set-top box and a ‘pay as you grow’ business model targeting Tier 2 and Tier 3 service providers who want to introduce Pay TV services as a pure-play OTT offer. The new DuoTV solution is designed to help operators deliver lower cost Pay TV in an increasingly competitive market, while minimizing their risks.
Netgem will rent operators the set-top boxes on a per-user fee and therefore take them back if there is low customer uptake or high churn. The company can negotiate any variation of a purchase/rental model, so the operator can decide what CapEx/OpEx balance it wants.
“Lots of T2 and T3 operators in Europe face increasing competition and need to launch TV services quickly but do not want to make a huge commitment to buying 50,000 set-top boxes up front,†Christophe Aulnette, Netgem’s CEO, explains. “The upfront payment model does not work for some operators anymore. We are ready to share the risk.â€
Netgem reckons there is a large number of consumers in Europe who want a lower cost Pay TV service, have already cut the cord or who have always been watching free-to-air content but would upgrade to the right low-cost package. Aulnette says EUR 10-15 is a price point that will appeal to this market although it will vary in each country.
DuoTV combines a DVB front-end (the focus is on DVB-T and DVB-C today) with IP. One smart feature that will appeal to consumers is the ability to stream SD or HD content to a tablet (without transcoding). There is only one tuner so you will have to choose whether you use the STB to feed the portable device or your TV, but there are already plans for a version with two tuners.
Operators can also call upon Netgem to source content for them, which is why the company is also referring to DuoTV as a ‘TV as a service’ offering. Earlier this year Netgem acquired Videofutur, the French video rental chain and OTT/multiscreen VOD service and the company is leveraging the content expertise and content management capabilities it gained to offer backoffice support rather than ‘just’ the customer premise equipment.
During IBC Netgem was also demonstrating its TotalTV solution, which is aimed at the higher end of the Pay TV market. This is built around the 8Series Media Server, which has four tuners and will deliver four streams of HD to any screen around the home. TotalTV harnesses the server-client model with Remote User Interface and it also features 150 millisecond channel changes, which Netgem claims are the fastest in the world.
The company is using algorithms to anticipate what channel someone is going to tune to next, although in the simplest case this is likely to be the next channel up or down on the programme guide. The gateway starts tuning to, and decoding, that channel in advance so that when you zap to the channel the picture will appear faster than would otherwise have been possible.
The 8Series Media Server comes with a 1Tb hard drive and Netgem believes operators could use this capacity to automatically record popular channels and so create a local version of a catch-up TV service.
Netgem also announced its own tablet, called Moonstone Video Tablet, to accompany the gateway as part of TotalTV for operators that want to offer a bundled CPE package. The tablet could then be used as a standalone device or as a TV companion. It is an off-the-shelf Android tablet but comes with Netgem middleware.
