Quickline will use AirTies’ Remote Manager cloud-based optimisation tool, which is designed to provide real-time information about subscribers’ WiFi performance.

This enables remote diagnostics and troubleshooting and provides service providers with insights and analysis on connected devices and data consumption patterns.

AirTies’ Mesh Extenders, powered by its Smart WiFi Software, will also be available to Quickline subscribers throughout Switzerland.

The Smart WiFi Software directs consumers’ devices – including laptops, smartphones, games consoles and smart home devices – to the best available WiFi channel and band based on network conditions.

Meanwhile, AirTies’ hybrid cloud-local architecture uses embedded intelligence and cloud-based analytics to improve responsiveness, scalability, and performance – useful for high-bandwidth, low-latency services like UHD video and videogame streaming.

“With AirTies, we can deliver whole-home WiFi in a scalable and cost-effective way that maximises performance,” said Quickline Product Manager, Ulrich Schwob.

AirTies CEO, Philippe Alcaras, said: “By combining network intelligence from the home network and the cloud, innovative providers such as Quickline can benefit from improved coverage, performance, and the insights needed to differentiate their service and delight their customers.”

Synamedia’s video network technologies, security offerings, and Infinite cloud-based platform are designed to help customers overcome major obstacles to delivering premium D2C services.

These include streaming broadcast-quality live programs cost-effectively and at scale; helping to overcome streaming piracy; and helping customers to build a sustainable and profitable business.

Synamedia claims its video network technologies deliver close to broadcast-equivalent latency and quality for live streams and is continually refining its technologies to reduce latencies.

In terms of streaming costs, the company’s Smart Rate Control encoding algorithms minimise bandwidth requirements, while its private CDN platform lets customers reducing or remove their reliance on third-party public CDNs. Synamedia also offers on-premise, public cloud and hybrid deployments.

On the security front, Synamedia will use IBC to unveil enhancements to its security portfolio, which includes its Streaming Piracy Disruption managed service, its Operational Security service and Credentials Sharing Insight.

Meanwhile, its Infinite platform supports both new market entrants and D2C providers upgrading first-generation solutions, and is already used to power OTT services by major pay-TV customers.

Infinite supports cloud-based content aggregation and search and recommendations for a personalised user experience. It also allows service providers to operate multiple franchises and brands.

“The D2C streaming market is in a massive state of flux. Big names are entering the fray, intensifying competition for eyeballs,” said Jean-Marc Racine, chief product officer, Synamedia.

“At IBC we will showcase how we can help customers build a profitable streaming business that scales effortlessly across borders and devices – and will outlast the competition.”

The company will show how its SSIMPLUS VOD Monitor Inspector can provide viewer scores for Dolby Vision source and output files, with the VOD Monitor Inspector designed to help customers know exactly what viewers will experience on any screen, using frame-by-frame and pixel-by-pixel ratings.

SSIMWAVE monitors the quality of Dolby Vision content across the distribution ecosystem, enabling media companies to quickly identify and resolve quality issues in VOD workflows.

At IBC the company will also demo its SSIMPLUS VOD Monitor Production tool, which uses the SSIMPLUS algorithm to optimise quality for high volumes of video assets across complex delivery chains.

“We are proud to play an important role in the Dolby Vision ecosystem. Our company and our advanced technology exist to preserve artistic intent, so that the consumer receives the ultimate viewing experience,” said SSIMWAVE president and co-founder, Abdul Rehman.

The ‘STB is dead… long live the STB’ report describes over-the-top television as both a challenge and an opportunity, with Pay TV operators responding to new TV viewing habits and increased competition by adapting their offers with broader product and service portfolios.

Outlining its “bottom line” findings, the report says that Pay TV bundles are expected to be a key driver for growth during the next five years, with the Pay TV industry optimistic about their role as super-aggregators, despite often maintaining costly legacy systems.

Neotion and SmarDTV highlighted Android TV as “currently the most effective solution to get OTT offers on a STB and cope with the proliferation of offers direct to the consumer.”

However, it also said that replacing all STBs in order to add new features or services is “hugely costly,” claiming that its SmarDTV X-Over offering can provide viewers with access to OTT services via legacy set-top boxes.

“SmarDTV Global is the trusted partner to ensure connectivity, quality of service, continuous software upgrading, maintenance and development throughout the STB life cycle in a private and dedicated operator environment,” said the company.

Overall, the report cites a number of studies and research findings and focuses on a number of areas, including: the expected growth of Pay TV; key smart STB market figures and growth rate; media consolidation; and the viewer experience as a “key driver”.

Neotion is a French technology company that has been providing digital TV solutions since 2000. Combined with SmarDTV, the company claims more than 100 customers across Western and Eastern Europe, and an enlarged portfolio of CAM, STB and OTT solutions.

The White Paper ‘STB is dead…long live the STB’ can be downloaded here.

The company, in partnership with multiple regional ad tech and ad service providers, will highlight server-side dynamic ad insertion (SSDAI) – a solution that’s integrated into its TV everywhere OTT video service.

With SSDAI, Globecast clients are able to deploy automated dynamic ad insertion with limited CAPEX infrastructure investments, supplying targeted ads automatically to OTT viewers.

At IBC, Globecast will also debut its Managed Cloud Network (Globecast MCN), which allows multiple feeds to be distributed globally via the cloud, without the additional cost of fibre- or satellite-delivered content.

Globecast MCN also provides a simple way to deliver content without the need for onsite transmission logistics, with processing and management complexity handled in the cloud.

Amsterdam-headquartered Media Distillery provides an AI-based solution that automatically labels audio-visual media to identify the true start and end times of TV programmes so that viewers can start watching back immediately.

The company’s EPG Correction service uses real-time ‘Deep Content Understanding’ analysis to provide automatic scheduling adjustments to TV programmes as they’re broadcast, offering a “smarter programme guide” for YouSee customers.

YouSee plans to roll the technology out in phases across 130 TV channels, making it available in up to 1.2 million Danish households.

“One of the main challenges on our replay platform is the correct start and end times”, said Henrik Harder, Senior Director at YouSee.

“Thanks to the Media Distillery solution, YouSee is now confident that replay usage will boost when times are correct. Offering a better user experience across all of the channels is key to increase our customers’ engagement.”

Media Distillery CEO, Roland Sars, said: “Enabling television providers and service providers to offer enhanced services and superior user experience is vital to increasing customer loyalty and minimising subscriber churn.”

Media Distillery’s Deep Content Understanding solution generates next-generation metadata and the company has been providing its artificial intelligence technology to global brands, TV and media companies since 2014.

YouSee, which rebranded from TDC in 2016, claims to offer entertainment to more than half of the households in Denmark and is the country’s largest provider of high-speed broadband.

Realtek will integrate Vewd’s HTML5 SDK for connected TV devices, Vewd Core, along with essential Core modules such as Vewd’s hybrid TV module, its standalone media player, and its Freeview Play support module.

The Vewd Core software supports hybrid TV technologies including HbbTV 2 and the company was one of the partners that powered the first launch of an ATSC 3.0-based service in the US in 2018.

“With HbbTV in Europe, hybrid TV offerings will become critical for smart TVs over the coming years,” said Realtek Vice President and spokesperson, Yee-Wei Huang.

“By pre-integrating Vewd’s technology with our Android TV chipsets, we give manufacturers a complete turnkey solution to cover their smart TV needs.”

Vewd CEO Aneesh Rajaram said: “We’re proud to collaborate with Realtek to significantly reduce a manufacturer’s time-to-market and eliminate costly Capex from one-off integration projects.”

Vewd claims that “more than 80% of the world’s Android TV-based smart TVs already ship with Vewd software”.

Cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployments will be showcased to illustrate how service providers, broadcasters and content owners originate and distribute their video channels.

Harmonic’s approach to video delivery includes cloud-based SaaS solutions designed to speed up the launch of new services – including live OTT channels – increase business agility, and enhance video experiences.

Harmonic will showcase a range of workflows that allow customers to launch skinny bundles, create new pop-up channels, deploy disaster recovery and stream live sports in Ultra HD – all powered by its virtualized Spectrum X media servers and VOS360 SaaS.

The company will also highlight its CDN-enabled Primary Distribution solution, which lets programmers deliver linear channels to traditional pay TV and broadcaster distributors or virtual MVPDs.

Harmonic’s video SaaS solutions let operators deliver targeted ads and optimise ad campaigns in real time and this technology will also be on display at IBC. Harmonic’s solutions provide operators and advertisers a unified approach to reach audiences over hybrid broadcast and broadband delivery networks.

Finally, the company will demonstrate 8K video delivery on 8K connected TVs and legacy mobile devices with EyeQ content-aware encoding (CAE), which is designed to reduce required bandwidth by up to 50%.

AI-based video compression will also be demoed and Harmonic executives are due to speak at the Future Zone Theatre about AI Video Compression, 8K and 5G.

“The video market is highly dynamic and consumer demand for live OTT services is growing,” said Tim Warren, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Harmonic.

“Harmonic’s expansive solutions portfolio and enhancements in cloud, targeted advertisement and 8K technologies, with a SaaS business approach, are designed with a sharp eye to help our customers stay one step ahead of the video evolution.”

The company will showcase its Streaming Piracy Disruption service, which has a single workflow for both broadcast and IP streaming and now lets customers disrupt leaks without waiting for third-party takedowns.

Synamedia also lets companies encourage viewers of pirated content to become paying subscribers by replacing takedown warnings with notices urging them to sign up.

At IBC, the company will highlight is Intelligent Piracy Monitor analytics service, which includes intelligence about piracy provided by Synamedia’s Operational Security (OpSec) team.

This team’s anti-piracy service uses Synamedia’s forensics lab and has an expanded team that includes psychology and criminology experts working alongside engineers, intelligence analysts, cyber- and field-investigators.

Synamedia is also unveiling enhancements to its Credentials Sharing Insight offering, which aims to combat casual and for-profit credentials sharing. New security responses for compromised accounts are tailored differently for the account owners and the account sharers.

Finally, the company will highlight its platform-agnostic approach by showcasing deployments on RDK, Android TV and Synamedia Evo.

The company’s security software has been integrated into set-top boxes from firms like Sagemcom and Arris and used by operator customers such as Vodafone Deutschland.

“The next chapter in our battle with piracy is to double down on our efforts to ensure the entire video ecosystem works together to reduce consumer confidence in pirated services so demand falls away fast,” said Jean-Marc Racine, Synamedia’s Chief Product Officer.

The LiveU AI offering provides contribution and AI-based video indexing tools for searching and accessing live or file-based content.

Operating within the LiveU Central cloud management platform, LiveU AI will enable editors to quickly find footage, easing their workload and making real-time production more efficient.

At IBC, LiveU will also showcase its latest Remote At-Home Production applications for sports and live event producers.

These updates include: Tally Light, which brings live studio experience to the field; and LiveU Graphics, a professional cloud production tool for adding dynamic graphics to live streams.

Users can select from ready-to-use graphic templates or create their own design and stream directly to social media platforms or CDN. AV sync offers support for up to eight audio channels, while LiveU Control enables remote control of LiveU units via smartphones.