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.

“We believe that if a user needs more than 120 seconds to find content, they are likely to think that ‘there is nothing to watch on TV today’ and move on to a different service, or do something else. Some months we are within our 120-second KPI and other months we are not, partly depending on what’s on TV. In those months we are learning so we can improve performance.”

In a world increasingly full of catch-up, VOD and recordings, let alone hundreds of linear channels and streaming apps, the 120-second benchmark is an ambitious target, but careful content curation (by a curation team) and personalisation are keys to the success so far. Technical optimisations also help, with the live TV player and VOD player optimised for their respective consumption models, for example. The EPG shows now-and-next but also goes back in time so viewers can browse backwards for catch-up TV.

Allente is the result of the merger between Viasat Consumer and Canal Digital in May 2020 and Allente 1 was the first set-top box platform built for the new entity, with a streaming dongle following in February this year, with the latter aimed primarily at streaming-only customers but also available for use in DTH and IPTV homes. Allente 1 is based on Android TV Operator Tier and the streaming hub runs on Google TV.

Allente 1 achieved a significant first by using Google Common Broadcast Stack (CBS), which is designed to simplify integration with broadcast signals in hybrid boxes of this kind (Allente 1 is designed for use across DTH and IPTV homes, with streaming in parallel). “All the technical heavy lifting on CA and middleware integrations are already done (with CBS), so we can spend our time developing an awesome UX for customers,” Nergård said.

He told the London conference that Allente also made “a little tweak” to allow this STB platform to work without an Internet connection. “Some of our DTH customers, especially, do not have Internet, so that is something we had to support. We managed that, running on Android TV.”

Nergård described Allente 1 as “the king of our hardware” and also noted how consumer marketing for Allente 1 presents the Pay TV offer as the king of entertainment. Like other major Pay TV providers (Allente has approx. one million subscribers), the operator pulls key streaming services into the experience and the content discovery journey is designed to allow fast entry to those streaming apps, with a single log-in (connected to the Allente ID) smoothing the process.

Nergård explained how Allente is also experimenting with what he called ‘content worlds’, which can be categorised by genre or other properties. ‘Action’ is one example. “We gather everything [content] that is classified as ‘Action’ into one area. We could take that further: sport is a big part of our offer and a sports content world is where users could access the next matches, and matches that have already been played. It would be where you can follow your teams. There can be related content, like football documentaries, including from third-party applications. You can gather everything inside one area.”

Allente 1 is not just a consumer product – it is also the hardware for Allente’s impressive B2B offer, which numbers more than 8,000 customers, including pubs and clubs. The company is exploiting the obvious opportunity to upgrade the hospitality entertainment experience in hotels [where most in-room systems are way behind the advanced content centric UX, super-aggregation and personalisation seen in the consumer market]. The new B2B offer was unveiled in July 2021. “We are modernising how you deliver a TV service in hotel rooms across the Nordics, making it cheaper and more efficient for hotels to onboard, while delivering the same UX you see at home,” the Allente executive confirmed.

A key principle throughout the development of Allente 1 and the new streaming hub was that Nergård’s team should focus on value-add development like the UX, with the use of Android TV and Google TV making lower-level middleware and hardware functions less of a burden.

“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.

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.