The pre-integration means video platforms can offer consumers YouTube playlists and event-based content and choose topic-specific content clusters – grouped around areas of interest – that have been pre-curated by YouTube. Categories could include fitness or business, for example, or trending content, new music or sports news, etc. There is a long list of pre-qualified entertainment content curated by YouTube. YouTube APIs will surface and deep-link YouTube content recommendations across screens.

Allente, the leading Nordic Pay TV provider with 1 million subscribers, will be among the first to leverage the YouTube integration within the 3Ready platform. The operator will be able to visually curate YouTube content to enrich the customer experience across multiple devices. YouTube curated content is expected to shorten the time it takes for users to find engaging content, 3SS suggests.

3SS is a highly regarded provider of software solutions for the entertainment market. Its 3Ready Control Center helps service providers efficiently manage and optimise UI/UX in a unified way across STBs (Linux, RDK and Android TV), Smart TV, web, mobile devices, and in-car entertainment screens, all in a highly visual and intuitive manner.

“We’re extremely excited that YouTube has selected 3SS as a partner to scale YouTube across operator and carmaker platforms,” declares Pierre Donath, CPO & CMO at 3SS. “Our trailblazing integration enables service providers including car OEMs to seamlessly curate content that people love across screens.

“With 3Ready, our operators benefit from dramatically reduced integration and certification efforts, and with the integration of YouTube Recommendation API it’s easier than ever to centrally manage, curate and deliver a content-first user experience across devices. This brings us closer to the vision where entertainment super-aggregators, whether telcos, Pay TV providers or carmakers for in-vehicle entertainment, can deliver holistic, user-centric content discovery and access.”

The 3SS/YouTube integration will be showcased at IBC next month.

Editor’s comment

Super-aggregation (closely entwined with being the most trustworthy content discovery guide) is central to the Pay TV future and operators are starting to focus on content that has not traditionally been integrated into their core UX, like FAST channels. This 3Ready YouTube integration is another example of how operators can expand their content offer.

“There is a real advantage in acquiring content in the bundle model because we have some predictability in the volumes we will deliver. It’s then easier to negotiate segregation with providers. Once we know what we can commit to, we can trade volume for wholesale discounts. It allows us to deliver value upstream to providers, who can count on a certain revenue, which in turn enables us to deliver value downstream, to our subscribers. It’s a win-win deal.”

Explaining consumer needs (and what Pay TV providers must deliver for them), Adam Nightingale, Chief Commercial Officer at 3SS, summarised it in one word: simplicity. “TV is entertainment, where you go to stay informed or to distract yourself, and it’s crucial to make it easy. Ironically, we build huge user experiences but we don’t want people to use them – we want to get viewers watching TV as quickly as possible.”

Nightingale also emphasised the importance of personalisation in a bid to appeal to younger users. “It’s important to understand what kind of user experience appeals to the individual, and make sure what they’re seeing on TV is relevant for them. There is no one size-fits-all.

“Aggregation is key, and non-traditional content sources, such as TikTok, YouTube or local content are all important; but making sure you have them in the right format, in front of people they most appeal to, is what matters. Then comes super-personalisation: understanding, monitoring and tweaking what works and what doesn’t. It’s a never-ending editorial task, but having the means to manage user experience at a fairly granular level will be increasingly important if you want to remain relevant.”

Nancy Goldberg, EVP and Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at NAGRA Kudelski Group, also pointed to the power of personalisation, including as a way to combat the attraction of pirate services. “Piracy means users can find content easily for free, so keeping them [consumers, on Pay TV] will be harder. We must give them added flexibility, value, experience. There can’t just be one thing everybody wants; it must be hyper-personalised. The adage, give them what they want, whenever they want, couldn’t be truer today.”

Andy Waltenspiel, Managing Director, Waltenspiel Management Consulting, moderated the Connected TV World Summit panel, ‘Pay TV in the 2020s – keeping subscribers and channels onboard’. You can see the discussion here.

Any aspect of the UI/UX (including content and colour) can be tested live, and the pre-integration of Think360 finetunes and analyses the resulting data for actionable insights. These insights can then be leveraged to instantly deploy adaptations using the platform’s “easy-to-use” dashboards.

The companies say the collaboration “transforms user experience testing and optimisation” and helps operators to boost viewer engagement and reduce churn. They also highlighted that the platform does not requires users to have any technical expertise, thereby lowering costs and quickening time-to-market. 3SS and ThinkAnalytics will debut the pre-integrated solution at IBC 2022.

Samuel Sweet, ThinkAnalytics CEO of EMEA and AP, said: “Delivering a superior, truly personalized user experience is what every operator strives to do, but actually achieving this is a highly complex endeavor. Now with the collaboration between ThinkAnalytics and 3SS, we’re creating the dream team of highly functional UX manipulation capability paired with powerful recommendations and analytics to understand what really resonates with customers and what makes them love their video service.”

3SS Pierre Donath, 3SS CMO & CPO, commented: “Helping operators to become more data-driven and deliver their viewers leading edge experiences is what we at 3SS do every day. Now, together with ThinkAnalytics, we’re excited to share with IBC visitors this new, integrated approach to understanding behavior and contextual personalization.

“By combining intuitive, flexible UX optimisation tools with proven world-class recommendations and analytics, operators can give their customers the entertainment UX they truly desire.”

The 4K dongle was developed by Smart hardware company SEI Robotics, and delivers a combination of streaming apps (including Netflix) and TV channels. Tele2 says the OTT offering will “satisfy subscribers’ need for the latest TV experience, combining linear with OTT.”

Niclas Rosendahl, Director of Entertainment at Tele2, said: “At Tele2, we always strive to give our customers the very latest. When it comes to entertainment, we want them to have the best experience whether they want to watch linear  channels, or use streaming services. With the new Tv Hub Mini, we make it even easier with a dongle without cables that works via wi-fi.

“Compromising on quality was out of the question; so we selected a top-spec SEI Robotics device, and once again we turned to the UX experts at 3SS.”

These key themes were echoed in two sessions at the event: first in a discussion with Matt Jones, Chairman & President of COVESA and Director of Global Technology Strategy at Ford Motor Company, and then in a panel discussion featuring Pierre Donath, Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at 3SS, Robert Dube, Head of Product TOGGO at Super RTL, and Amanda Phillips, Regional Client Lead Europe at WPP | Ford. Dr Bernd Riefler, Founder and CEO, veed analytics, chaired the discussion.

Though the idea of sitting back and watching TV in a car may seem a long way off for most people, the space is ready to explode, and there is an abundance of in-vehicle entertainment systems already in existence. “There are many new car brands coming to the market and they have to come up with a clear differentiation,” Donath expanded. “And I think they are looking towards entertainment as one differentiator.”

Phillips agreed, noting how car manufacturers are looking beyond selling “just metal, and instead thinking about a whole user experience”. But some panellists were concerned that this could lead to further market fragmentation which could negatively affect user experience. “It’s a new cake, and everyone wants a piece of that cake,” Dube said. “But the problem is that many companies don’t look from a user perspective. They see the new business opportunity and go for it, and then the product does not serve user needs. I really fear that customers will face some issues within the next ten years.”

As part of COVESA – the Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance – Ford’s Jones is at the forefront of creating standardisation in the sector, and he said collaboration between both traditional OEMs, new vehicle manufacturers and tech companies can help create a high-quality universal entertainment user experience. “We need content aggregators, content producers, the people that understand how to create a compelling set of interactions and user experiences participating actively within COVESA.”

On the subject of content, Phillips speculated that automotive companies will look towards local providers, especially as they build out content that fits around the specific setting of the car. “This is a revolution of dead time,” she asserted. “​​If you have either ten minutes or 20 minutes available, it would be great if we could actually select content based on that. So, there’s an opportunity to really look at content, both the partnerships, and also curation and creation … for specific use cases.”

Dube agreed that specialised content types could be created for a car setting and that access to the unique data points within vehicles can help content creators to tailor their output for this new environment.

Donath added: “The car has unique data like speed of drive, time until destination is reached, and these can be used to personalise or adapt the experience. So, if I am taking a journey for five hours, I will get a completely different set of recommendations than if I was just taking a 10-minute trip to the office. This is something that is very unique.”

Advertisers can also take advantage of these new inputs, creating something that is palatable and satisfying rather than distracting, Phillips stated.

With 1.5 billion cars on the roads, the opportunity is there for in-car entertainment to elevate the car to a second living room, but all panellists agreed that user experience must be seamless and effective if it is to become, as Phillips put it, “an extension of our life”.

3SS – a provider of software solution for set-top-boxes (STB) and multi-screen entertainment  – engineered the TOGGO app for web, iOS and Android mobile service. The company created a gamified experience with each page having its own context-specific background, and users being able to see previews of games by hovering over ‘game cards’. Additionally, 3SS developed the “Interaction module” for the app – giving the broadcaster the ability to ask questions live to viewers and have the viewers submit their answers in real-time.

SUPER RTL can manage all TOGGO apps and curate content in real-time from the 3Ready Control Centre. The platform is also deploying the 3Ready Mediation Later – a cloud-based component that acts as a universal interconnection between SUPER RTL’s system elements and the platform. According to 3SS, this “allows TOGGO’s system components to be managed more efficiently and enhances service scalability.”

Robert Dube, Head of product TOGGO Digital at Super RTL, said: “TOGGO is made just for kids. Very frequently in our industry, entertainment offerings for children are, at their core, services for grown-ups which have merely been tweaked.

Bringing top-quality original content to children’s TV is a long-standing core value for us at Super RTL. We built TOGGO from scratch, based on extensive research, keeping kids’ needs front-of-mind all along the way.”

Kai-Christian Borchers, 3SS Managing Director, commented: “We are so proud that SUPER RTL continues to trust us to help deliver amazing products and services to young people”.

By leveraging Infinite for its OTT service, Etisalat can “process, secure, distribute and monetise video to all consumer devices” with the choice to offer SwitchTV subscription packages alongside other movie rental models. The cloud DVR solution provided by Synamedia gives viewers the ability to record programs and watch them later any device they choose.

Etisalat is also leveraging the TV software specialists’ end-to-end video network portfolio. Synamedia has said that this will reduce latency for the service at every stage of the video workflow, while minimising the bandwidth requirements, giving users a “highly reliable, consistently high-quality viewing experience with no interruptions or buffering.”

Jean-Francois Pigeon, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Synamedia, said: “Switch TV has been a game-changer for viewers across the UAE region. A contributing factor to this success is that Etisalat has taken advantage of our technology’s flexibility to add new devices, features and business models, all underpinned by data analytics. Working with 3SS, we have ensured that the smart TV and Apple TV apps for Switch TV feature the same high-end user experience as on STBs as well as the high levels of security Etisalat requires.”

Synamedia collaborated with 3SS on developing the OTT video platform, integrating the latter’s front-end solution to support the Smart TV app’s UX with both left and right navigation, to accommodate Arabic and Asian languages, in addition to English.

Kai-Christian Borchers, 3SS Managing Director said: “Smart TV platforms are becoming increasingly important for operators to complement their next-gen STB; it is vital for any successful brand that the user experience on both be seamless, high-quality and unified. We are very proud to support Etisalat, and to continue to collaborate with Synamedia to deliver advanced experiences to more and more smart TV viewers.”

Jonathan Haysom, VP of Commercial Products at Etisalat, commented: “Since the launch of Switch TV in 2020, we have continued to enhance the service with new functionality and a choice of service levels to suit different budgets. We saw an opportunity to launch apps on smart TVs and Apple TV when choosing Synamedia and 3SS as our deployment partners because their expertise in this field is second to none.”

SwitchTV has now launched in the UAE, with different subscription tiers (including a free version). The service features a library of content from providers including BBC, MBC, Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures.

The set-top-box’s middleware is fully integrated with the Android TV software stack, enabling new pre-certified Android TV capabilities. Among these is Custom Over-The-Air Update which the company says “accelerat[es] the introduction of new appealing features”. Allente has also said that PVR functionality will be rollout with the deployment later in 2022.

The move represents the latest collaboration between Allente and 3SS. The Nordic Pay TV operator’s first 3SS enabled satellite and OTT service – OnePlace – was launched by Canal Digital in 2018. This new deployment adheres to the “SAFe” (Scaled Agile Framework) – a practical experience-based software development framework, brought to Canal Digital first by 3SS.

Kai-Christian Borchers, Managing Director of 3SS said, “In making its super-aggregated service available to consumers in so many ways, Allente is yet again demonstrating its abiding commitment to providing a superior entertainment experience to all subscribers, on satellite, OTT and IPTV. Allente is at the vanguard of technological innovation and customer focus, and we are extremely proud of our long and ongoing partnership.”

Jon Espen Nergård, CTO of Allente said, “We’re very excited to now offer our next-generation service to subscribers via satellite, IPTV and OTT streaming. We thank our amazing partners KAON and 3SS, and all our technology collaborators, in helping us provide our customers with a rich array of content, including their favourite apps, all wrapped in a world-class 3SS-enabled experience and delivered on KAON’s powerful STB.”

Tom Buhl, Executive Vice President of KAONMEDIA commented, “We congratulate Allente for going live with its next-gen TV offering, which is bringing a truly advanced service, abundant with top entertainment, to viewers across the Nordic region.”

Allente was established by a merger of Canal Digital and Viasat Consumer in 2020, and is owned 50/50 by Telenor Group and NENT. It provides TV and broadband services to over a million customers in Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden.

Service providers will be able to manage user experience in real-time using the 3Ready Control Center which 3SS describes as the “key” to UX flexibility, facilitating application/content curation and, according to the company, increasing operational efficiencies. Integrated into the product is Cinemo Play Anywhere – a solution which delivers apps from a vehicle’s play store and synchronises visual content across screens, whether video entertainment or gaming content.

“Cinemo solutions are deployed in millions of automobiles worldwide” said Pierre Donath, 3SS’ CPO & CMO, “As such, its established APIs and technology solutions are trusted by car makers. Using Cinemo’s products and technologies, we look forward to bringing the same high-quality experience consumers enjoy on the sofa at home or on their favorite mobile devices to vehicles”.

Tomasz Dzikowski, Product Owner Automotive at 3SS stressed that the company aims at creating a “third living space” for travelling viewers. With the movement towards electrification and the automation of driving, the company believes UX and content discovery can become a salient differentiator between brands.

He said: “Critically, next-level in-car entertainment must be seamless and integrated with the living room experience, while adding new flavor with the vehicle’s specific ecosystem and environment context. It’s an exciting new area to explore, together”.

3SS enables TV UX for Pay TV operators with a combined reach of over 35 million homes. Its customers include A1 Telecom Austria Group, Swisscom, Tele2, Vodafone, Eutelsat, and O2/Telefonica.

The offering brings together Kaltura’s Cloud TV platform and its machine learning-enabled Targeted TV technology with 3SS’s 3READY front-end, which includes an adaptable user interface and user experience.

The pre-integrated offering is designed to help content owners, broadcasters and network operators to quickly launch customised, branded IPTV and OTT multiscreen services.

These services can be monetised by a combination of ads, subscriptions and transactional payments and content can be promoted via the home screen, content recommendations and search suggestions.

“We are excited to bring together our Targeted TV offering with the innovative 3READY solution from our partner 3SS,” said Shay David, Kaltura’s Co-founder, President and General Manager of Media and Telecom.

“This partnership provides marketers with ground-breaking tools for targeted in-app campaigns and UI adaptability that help increase retention and monetisation.”

3SS Managing Director, Kai-Christian Borchers, said: “Today’s market is highly competitive, and knowing how to stand out from the crowd is essential… Through our partnership with Kaltura, we are taking the uncertainly out of launching new Cloud TV services.”

Kaltura and 3SS are debuting their joint solution at NAB in Las Vegas this week, with demos available at the Kaltura stand, SU7110.