More Quality of Experience than Quality of Service

One of the biggest challenges for all the players launching their OTT service is about quality of service.

Not only because of the competition, but also because OTT consumers are now paying subscribers that will no longer accept buffering and low video quality to watch their favourite shows. As soon as content is displayed on the TV, the expectations in terms of quality are significantly rising, reaching a broadcast-like level.

Today, video delivery over broadband and unmanaged network needs to be as smooth as “traditional” broadcasting. Quality of Service is then one of the keys to a successful OTT service.

While Quality of Service can often be measured – we have percentages defining the Service Level Agreement between a technical provider and its client – an experience is something customized where the acceptable will be defined from the customer’s behaviour and judgement.

In the end what you want to provide is rather more Quality of Experience than Quality of Service.

There are many criteria that define Quality of Experience when watching online video. Resolution may be the first one we think of, but the worst enemy of video streaming is buffering: stalls in the playback of their content are what consumers hate most. Although a video is delivered in 1080p, viewers will give up if it buffers too much.

Another issue that is crucial is the latency or stream start time. There’s nothing worse than an awkward moment when nothing is happening and the consumer is feeling he’s wasting his time. The longer for the video to start, the more likely the viewer will leave.

Quality of experience is more of a compromise. Viewers can be more tolerant with a lower resolution provided there are no buffering interruptions.

Let’s take an example:

If a service is interrupted during three hours between 2 and 5 o’clock in the morning, what would the customers think? Most of them probably won’t notice. What if this same service is interrupted for ten minutes, at 9:15 pm? If you fail during prime time, even for a few seconds, a fire is bound to start on your social network accounts. Quality of Experience is what really matters to the end user.

The best OTT viewing experience will offer the best resolution with no stalls, and achieving such QoE requires a perfect knowledge of the value chain delivering the content to the audience.

Arkena – your partner in the content lifecycle

"Developing successful OTT with high quality of service requires technical expertise, know-how and excellence"

Ivan Dulguerian, Chief Marketing Officer, Arkena.

Arkena has been created as a new entity for almost two years now, as a result of the merger of the activities from Cognacq-Jay Image, PSN, Qbrick and SmartJog. With the aggregation of all the expertise from these TDF Group subsidiaries, Arkena is able to offer global end-to-end solutions to address the new challenges of the media industry.

A digital revolution is taking place within the entertainment industry. Workflows, in both production and distribution, have changed in order to meet the demand of a globalised market. The video content lifecycle has changed dramatically and is reaching very high levels of complexity.

For more than 10 years, the Arkena companies have been assisting production and distribution companies on different aspects of their workflow. Through the Cloud4Media solution, Arkena proposes a fully managed service that provides an easy workflow design interface along with secure, fast and reliable file transfer delivery, asset storage capability and cloud-based transcoding services to adapt content for multiscreen delivery. Cloud4Media and its brand new Business Process Manager called Harmony are at the centre of the workflows of leading content producers and broadcasters achieving significant efficiency improvements for these businesses.

Through the emergence of OTT, the B2C distribution of content has also significantly changed over the last few years. The increase of bandwidth availability to end consumers and multiplication of connected devices has led to new ways of distributing content across many new devices. OTT is changing traditional viewing habits by giving the audience greater control over the way they consume video content. All major broadcasters are developing on-demand services as a way to increase interaction and stickiness with their audience. OTT has created opportunity for niche thematic channels and large content distributors alike to offer easy-to-deploy services directly to their audience.

Developing a successful OTT service with high quality of service requires technical expertise, know-how and excellence. Arkena has proven to be a trusted and reliable partner with strong skills to offer turnkey OTT solutions. Arkena has a comprehensive knowledge of all the required components: from the back-office system to the transcoding features including live head-end. We have assisted many leading companies transforming their offering to include OTT: content providers, broadcasters, telecom operators, new pure-players…

OTT “broadcast-like” services require the highest levels of quality, availability and reliability. Thanks to its expertise and infrastructure, Arkena is uniquely able to provide and guarantee a complete end-to-end OTT solution.

Join Arkena at Africa's premier show discussing the future of broadcasting: TV Connect Africa

Neotion: An insight into Africa

1- ASO in Africa is planned in 2015… 

The African market has always been one of the top regional targets for NEOTION. We’ve been working with many local players so far and we never underestimated its true potential. The move toward full digitization in 2015 is a real opportunity for our core business. With a real background on digitization transition across extended Europe, we attempt to use this experience to support digital TV players and still develop partnership with TV makers specifically in the region. 

Figures are quite attractive for the coming years with a digital penetration which will exceed 50% of the TV households in 2015 and will reach 95.5% in 2020 (with a total of 49 million of digital TV HH). According to the 4th edition of Digital TV Research report, pay-tv revenues will reach $ 6.22 billion in 2020 up from $ 3.54 billion in 2014 with for half-part a main contribution from South Africa and Nigeria among the 34 countries covered. 

The main African TV homes reception modes are DTT (+ 100M) and Satellite (+62M) where fixed infrastructures such as cable is a minority (1M). Satellite is playing a key role in digitization of emerging markets, boosted by increased media contents (500 TV channels in 2008 expected to grow to 3000 TV channels in 2023). Satellite accounts for the main pay-Tv revenues (92% in 2014) where DTT is taking-off with new competition and the multiplication of cheaper DTT packages.

Digitization will in any case boost equipment renewal or acquisition but one of the challenges for pay-tv operators is to found out the suitable and cost-effective solution. NEOTION secure solutions are designed to match with high-level security requirements (broadcast content protection first) while offering the best for TV viewers (rich and simple TV experience too).

2- The CI Plus CAM, a dedicated device for the African Digital TV Market.

The NEOTION CI Plus Conditional Access Module (CAM) range is specifically developed to work whatever the reception mode is: satellite, terrestrial or cable. Our in-house secure chipset ensures the latest high-level security requirements implementation from the Conditional Access (CA) vendors where anti-piracy is a constant fight – even more in emerging markets - for any pay-TV operator delivering premium content. 

Note that NEOTION already confirmed its strategic position in Africa over DTT reception mode with MultiChoice Africa. The offer has been welcomed by many “GOtv” subscribers across 9 sub-Saharan countries listing Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria and Zambia. The “GOtv Africa” TV viewers widely adopted the NEOTION CAM for its user-friendly interface while the operator MultiChoice Africa enlarges its portfolio (DTH and DTT offers).

When the satellite platform is a main part of pay-Tv revenues contribution, NEOTION allows the Satellite pay-TV operator to perform a full installation and customized channel listing of all its broadcast services using the CI Plus 1.3 Operator Resource in the CAM. NEOTION contribution in Africa in partnership with pay-Tv operators and TV manufacturers is not to be any more questioned!

3- Africa has been a key STB market but the Neotion CAM have his space… and soon the Neotion STB !

NEOTION is largely aware of STB competition within digital TV landscape – mainly the battle of the lowest price - but the NEOTION CAM has its place as a secure, cost-effective and ergonomic alternative solution to set-top-boxes. A CAM is able to work in a set-top-box too! And the main benefits of the CAM – small, smart and green – remain key values in Africa region: no additional cable, lower consumption, easy to install and easy to use. 

Africa keeps growing and NEOTION is quite sure that the region will follow the European technological model. Indeed we trust the success of DVB-CI TV-sets arrival in Africa – looking at the data: 

- More than 2.6 million DVB-CI and CI Plus TV-set will be shipped in Africa in 2015 – with an installed base of 10.2 million units,

- The shipment of CI Plus TV will almost double between 2015 and 2017, 

- The installed base will grow by 50%. 

NEOTION has always worked closely with TV makers and targets to reinforce its well established partnership beyond Europe in Africa. Key factor for main success stories across Europe passed by the bundle of a CI Plus iDTV and a CAM, ensuring pay-Tv operators to keep control over content usage and deployment with labeled TV platform. NEOTION is really the partner to merge both pay-Tv operators and TV manufacturer’s requirements to deliver the suitable solution to African TV viewers. And end of 2015, beginning of 2016, Neotion will be able to propose a complete range of STB in complement of our CAM range for Tv Operators seeking for booth devices, to address their markets, with different level of offers, adapted to every TV set, with or without a CI interface ! 

4- The needs of the African Consumer could be covered by some Neotion new innovative solutions: HbbTv, OTT and Neohome 

Value-Added-Services are not limited to new technical services but are also in Quality of Service (QoS), relationship, sales support and customization… NEOTION motto is to first understand market needs through its partners, partners’ customers and standards evolution, cooperating with its customers to deliver the joint suitable and personalized solution to end-users.

NEOTION, as a member of HbbTV consortium, is closely following its potential in Africa region even if OTT matter is at its early stage: few trials initiated in South Africa and the HbbTV standard still under evaluation elsewhere in the region. However, according to Httv and TeVolution, at Africa COM - November 2014: “the analog switch off in Africa comes at a time where OTT can be more easily implemented… Africa is the first continent where OTT will become the main distribution standard for On Demand contents and thematic channels”. NEOTION is able to provide African pay-Tv operators a solution combining connected iDTV and CI Plus 1.3 HbbTV CAM to merge broadcast and broadband content in a secure single device.

Meanwhile, NEOTION is focusing on an innovative gateway solution with home automation capability and a wide range of home automation devices under its new 'Neohome' brand. This solution will enable operators and broadcasters to combine broadcast content (linear and Pay-TV), broadband services (OTT) with home automation features and evolve to a full Smart Home solution which will also securely enable the distribution of video and audio in a multi-screen and multi-room environment.

Please note that Neotion will exhibit at TV Connect Africa, 

Stand TV4 with some live demos

INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL THEBE, CEO, UHURU TV

Today we speak to the passionate Daniel Thebe about Uhuru TV and his vision for South African broadcasting!

IP&TV News: Hi Daniel. What’s the vision behind Uhuru TV?

Daniel Thebe: Uhuru is an HIP TV station that supports multi-device screening and also OTT features – right now we are going to be focussing on sub Saharan countries, just in terms of the content sourcing.

Daniel Thebe, CEO, Uhuru TV

What’s the ethos of this new platform?

The reasoning behind it is – we think we understand how to come up with content relevant to Africans because we actually speak in their mother tongues, meaning the vernacular tongues.

Anyone can speak Swahili, but it has to be authentic. If the content provider, producer and media owners really understand that lifestyle, then they can come up with authentic content. That’s our conviction.

What’s the wider significance of this kind of ‘authenticness’?

The idea isn’t to re-write the past, but to re-write the future. We still wait for CNN, for Bloomberg, to tell us what’s happening with our next door neighbour, when actually the proper person to tell the story of what’s happening here is someone local. If we are able to tell the stories to the rest of the world, then that mind-set will start to change.

The end goal is to enhance the national brand identity, as media / film always has done.

Why is South Africa in need of this kind of enhancement?

The bottom line is that South Africans don’t have a brand identity. We’re not unified. The brand identity of South Africa – which used to be that of the ‘rainbow nation’ – is lost.

In having content that speaks directly to the heart and mind of the consumer, you will hopefully have, in five or ten years, a generation that is more intrinsically proud to be a citizen and this will be reflected in their lifestyle. Take the USA, criticise them all you want but in the US, people are loyal to the flag, to anything American, and this is what I’m trying to instil in South Africa.

What obstacles do you have to contend with here?

The stumbling block thus far has been infrastructure, because broadband here can be a nightmare. It’s an issue. We were at the last TV Connect Africa, where we encountered a company called Nexx TV: we are partnering up with them to help in this area.

We are also looking for content makers, film distributors, whom we can licence content from.

Besides networking opportunities like this – what are the advantages of attending an event like TV Connect Africa?   

Never mind the connections you can make, just being there you get to learn about new equipment, infrastructure, people – it should be part of any African government’s budget to be part of AfricaCom 2015, at least those governments that want to push the communication, IP, TV sectors of their countries.

PAY-TV REACHES 21% OF EAST AFRICAN HOUSEHOLDS

The five countries of the East African Community (EAC) had a total population of 146.89 million end-2014, with 33.61 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 23%.

Kenya is the most developed market in the region with 12.04 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 32%. Uganda has 7.35 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 25%, followed by Tanzania with 9.8 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 17%.

Pay-TV/ FTA Broadcasting in East African Community highlights that pay-TV services accounted for approximately 1.61 million households end-2014, meaning that free-to-air (FTA) broadcasting is still the primary access method in over 79% of TV households. Tanzania had the largest Pay-TV base in the region with 592,700 users end-2014, accounting for 36% of the EAC total. Kenya was second with 561,000 users, followed by Uganda with 359,000, Burundi with 62,500 and Rwanda with 38,000.

Analogue terrestrial was by far the largest access method for the 6.16 million FTA users across the EAC end-2014 accounting for 68% of total users. DTT had a 26% market share, followed by DTH with 6%. Rwanda was the only country to have completely turned off analogue end-2014, followed by Tanzania in February, 2015, and Kenya in March.

Click here for more info on TV Connect Africa (17th – 19th November 2015 Cape Town Convention Centre, South Africa), Africa’s premier show on the future of broadcasting

NBC: “NAMIBIA IS NOW AT 70% DTT COVERAGE”

17 June 2015 marked the ostensible deadline for the digital TV switchover: however in many African countries full DTT looks a very long way off.Namibia, however, is an exception: the country already boasts 70% coverage. To find out how it has been so successful, IP&TV News spoke to Aldred Dreyer, TV Connect Africa keynote, CTO at the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation and the man responsible for the implementation of the digital migration project in Namibia.

IP&TV News: Namibia’s had huge success with DTT, but the original launch date was delayed wasn’t it?

Aldred Dreyer: The aim was to launch in December 2012, but by that time we were not yet ready with the commercial aspect of DTT, especially regarding the shops and outlets needed to sell the decoders.

The other reason we couldn’t launch then was that, while we had 20,000 decoders in stock, the regulations were not in place yet. That was the big hurdle. And some of the frequencies that we needed for the transmitter sites were not available also.

So we did a technical switch-on, a symbolic start of the project. That was in December 2012, and then in October 2013 we commercially launched DTT in Windhoek. We are now at 70% DTT coverage, surpassing the 66% analogue coverage by 4%.

50% of the previous analogue covered viewers have also now been fully migrated to digital. These viewers now only receive a digital signal.

How did people work together on this?

There was a DTT forum set up nationally, chaired by the permanent secretary of the ministry of information, communication and technology. The stakeholders on the forum were the NBC, One Africa Television, as well as TBN, which is the community broadcaster.

And then obviously the ministry and communication regulations authority of Namibia were also part of that team. We also had DStv (the private TV operator operating on the African continent) on the forum.

How has the project itself functioned?

The project is fully funded by the government. The decoders are all subsidised. We ordered 100,000 decoders. We are currently sitting on 48,000 decoders sold as of May 2015.

We are selling the decoders for $199 Namibian, and then half of that price for pensioners, disabled persons and war veterans. There were discussions around an income based help scheme but we opted for the simpler subsidy option.

We do have a TV license system in Namibia, so people need to have proof they’ve paid their TV license in order for them to buy a decoder. That’s one way to get more compliance on the TV license side of things.

And what about distribution?

Initially we went out to tender and got an outside provider to do the decoder distribution for us because it’s not our core business. Now recently we opened up the distribution to any company that is interested. We also made an arrangement with SME bank, the small micro enterprises bank in Namibia, so that anyone that wants to be a distributor could get seed funding to procure the first batch of decoders. Distributors then earn commission on the sale of each decoder.

At the moment we have 14 distributors. We’ve also have 7 regional offices throughout Namibia that we sell decoders from. Recently we also signed up the post-office as well. They’ve got 144 post offices nationwide. That’s quite a big distribution network.

What do you see as the main impediments to the same success in the rest of the continent?

I think a big issue is government priorities. When a minister of finance of a country needs to decide, okay there’s this thing called DTT, and there’s a ministry of health wanting to increase healthcare: what are they going to choose?

I think another problem concerns the strategy of a public broadcaster; how do I operate in a multichannel, multiplatform environment? The digital multichannel/multiplatform environment is very different to a single channel analogue environment. It requires different approaches to its management and organisation. The other big concern currently is content availability to fill these DTT multiplexes. You can’t build a highway and have a donkey cart ride on it. You need to develop strategies to create more content to fill the new highway!