ITV

Tag: VOD

  • BBC Worldwide clinches new VOD deal in South Korea

    BBC Worldwide clinches new VOD deal in South Korea

    MUMBAI: On the second day of BBC Worldwide’s Showcase in Liverpool, BBC Worldwide Asia has inked a Video on Demand (VOD) deal with BTV, an IPTV service in South Korea provided by one of the country’s largest telco operators, SK Broadband.

    The two year deal comprises over 600 hours of content ranging from drama, factual and natural history titles.

    This is the first time SK Broadband has procured BBC dramas for their TVOD service, and the first time BBC’s programmes will be available on the service. It is also the first time SK Broadband has acquired BBC landmark natural history titles including Africa and Life Story.            

    Dramas that will be made available to BTV’s VOD subscribers include War and Peace, a modern reworking of Leo Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece following the lives of three privileged aristocrats starring Lily James, Paul Dano and James Norton; Doctor Who (S9), which sees Peter Capaldi returning alongside with Jenna Coleman and guests including Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams, after his record-breaking debut series as the Doctor. More available drama series on BTV’s VOD services will be announced later.

    BBC Worldwide in Northeast Asia general manager Soojin Chung said, “We are committed to bringing great quality programming to viewers in Korea. SK Broadband is a valued partner and we are excited to be working with BTV to bring award winning and the best programmes from the BBC to their VOD subscribers, to watch them at their convenience.”

    “We are excited to further develop our partnership with BBC Worldwide Asia to provide high quality programming to our BTV subscriber. With content from BBC Worldwide, we are confident that the VOD service on BTV will help to cement SK Broadband’s status as the leading IPTV service in South Korea,” added SK Broadband head of media business HQ You Chang Wan.

    As the largest distributor of TV programming outside of the US, BBC Worldwide Showcase sees the BBC’s commercial arm generate programme sales on behalf of the BBC and independent producers providing a major boost to British television exports.

  • nexGTV strengthens VOD portfolio with #fame integration

    nexGTV strengthens VOD portfolio with #fame integration

    MUMBAI: Subscription-driven, video-entertainment app – nexGTV, has enhanced its portfolio of exclusive, premium, digital content by integrating the digital entertainment network #fame on its platform.

    The initiative marks the first time that entertainment app, which comprises 150+ Live TV channels, a slew of movies, TV Shows and Videos on Demand content, has integrated content from another pure-play ‘digital’ entertainment network into its portfolio.

    As part of the agreement, #fame will create and ‘premiere’ content exclusively on nexGTV prior to publishing it on alternate channels. The arrangement also covers its Karan Johar-hosted series Lakme School of Style. In addition to premiere content, nexGTV viewers will also get access to #fame’s existing repository of original digital content from its other channels and properties including #fame comedy, fashion, music, food, websinger etc.

    nexGTV COO Abhesh Verma said, “We make constant efforts to bring contemporary content on the app for our users. nexGTv is the preferred mobile entertainment destination for a host of consumers since years and while Live TV is what we are best known for, our association with #fame will strengthen our Video on Demand portfolio. It’s important for us to return the trust and time our subscribers spend with us making sure that the most relevant content is available on our platform. We are hopeful that content from #fame will work well with both our existing and prospective customers, helping us retain our fresh & edgy appeal.”

    #fame content will be available for all nexGTV subscribers under a special category by the same name.

  • nexGTV strengthens VOD portfolio with #fame integration

    nexGTV strengthens VOD portfolio with #fame integration

    MUMBAI: Subscription-driven, video-entertainment app – nexGTV, has enhanced its portfolio of exclusive, premium, digital content by integrating the digital entertainment network #fame on its platform.

    The initiative marks the first time that entertainment app, which comprises 150+ Live TV channels, a slew of movies, TV Shows and Videos on Demand content, has integrated content from another pure-play ‘digital’ entertainment network into its portfolio.

    As part of the agreement, #fame will create and ‘premiere’ content exclusively on nexGTV prior to publishing it on alternate channels. The arrangement also covers its Karan Johar-hosted series Lakme School of Style. In addition to premiere content, nexGTV viewers will also get access to #fame’s existing repository of original digital content from its other channels and properties including #fame comedy, fashion, music, food, websinger etc.

    nexGTV COO Abhesh Verma said, “We make constant efforts to bring contemporary content on the app for our users. nexGTv is the preferred mobile entertainment destination for a host of consumers since years and while Live TV is what we are best known for, our association with #fame will strengthen our Video on Demand portfolio. It’s important for us to return the trust and time our subscribers spend with us making sure that the most relevant content is available on our platform. We are hopeful that content from #fame will work well with both our existing and prospective customers, helping us retain our fresh & edgy appeal.”

    #fame content will be available for all nexGTV subscribers under a special category by the same name.

  • Tata Sky equips STBs with internet browsing apps

    Tata Sky equips STBs with internet browsing apps

    MUMBAI: Direct to home (DTH) companies are stepping up on their game in a bid to offer more specialised technological services to subscribers so as to stay relevant in the fast changing times.

    Soon after Videocon d2h revealed its plans to launch HD smart set-top-boxes (STB), which converts existing LED TVs into a Smart TV as well as allows browsing from social media, VOD and OTT apps, competitor DTH company Tata Sky has made known its plans to bring internet browsing applications on their STBs.

    This new addition will enable Tata Sky subscribers to browse and interact on certain applications through the STB on almost all TV sets without the requirement of a smart TV.

    The service will be available at no additional cost to Tata Sky subscribers and will be launched in the coming months.

    Tata Sky CEO Harit Nagpal said, “We don’t look at ourselves as a DTH operator. We are a content distribution platform. The scope of that is defined by what content, which medium, what screen the subscriber wants. That is the level of convergence that Tata Sky is looking at achieving.”

  • Tata Sky equips STBs with internet browsing apps

    Tata Sky equips STBs with internet browsing apps

    MUMBAI: Direct to home (DTH) companies are stepping up on their game in a bid to offer more specialised technological services to subscribers so as to stay relevant in the fast changing times.

    Soon after Videocon d2h revealed its plans to launch HD smart set-top-boxes (STB), which converts existing LED TVs into a Smart TV as well as allows browsing from social media, VOD and OTT apps, competitor DTH company Tata Sky has made known its plans to bring internet browsing applications on their STBs.

    This new addition will enable Tata Sky subscribers to browse and interact on certain applications through the STB on almost all TV sets without the requirement of a smart TV.

    The service will be available at no additional cost to Tata Sky subscribers and will be launched in the coming months.

    Tata Sky CEO Harit Nagpal said, “We don’t look at ourselves as a DTH operator. We are a content distribution platform. The scope of that is defined by what content, which medium, what screen the subscriber wants. That is the level of convergence that Tata Sky is looking at achieving.”

  • TVF, Ola Cabs & the Permanent Roommates association

    TVF, Ola Cabs & the Permanent Roommates association

    MUMBAI: One of India’s popular YouTube channels and digital producers, The Viral Fever (TVF), is back with the second season of its flagship web series Permanent Roommates . And how!

     

    Touting it as the best web series that TVF has put together so far, TFV CEO and founder Arunabh Kumar has high hopes from this ambitious project. The company is making this production in association with call taxi service Ola Cabs as of Permanent Roommates season 2.

     

    While Kumar refused to divulge any details, a source close to the development guesstimated that Ola has shelled out  an eye-popping Rs 2.5-3 crore for backing the production.

     

    Slated to go online on TVF Play and TVF’s YouTube channel on Valentine’s Day, the new season will consist of eight 30 – 40 minute long power packed episodes.

     

    It will take off from where season one left off — the drama in the lives of Internet’s most-loved fictional characters Tanya (Nidhi Singh) and Mikesh (Sumeet Vyas). The episodes are scheduled to air fortnightly. And the theme is “The Third Kind of Love.”

     

    Kumar expects viewership to touch four – five million per episode, which hardly comes as a surprise given last season’s success.

     

    Launched in October 2014, the web series grossed over 12 million views for five episodes that aired on YouTube, with every episode having more than a million views making it the (claimed) second most watched online long form content in the world.

     

    “Our target is to cater to and retain the three million viewers who already follow Permanent Roommates and maybe expand our viewership by a couple of more million. We have weaved the content so that it is not only a youth-based love story but also has elements of interest for the entire family. We have some surprises for all of them,” adds Kumar.

     

    What’s more, with a big chunk of sponsorship money in, the pressure is on the creative geniuses to up the ante now. Season One had CommonFloor as the brand partner; hence, the home was one of the main protagonists.

     

    Will season 2, see them going around in taxis or make mentions of them using the service like the duo does in the promo that released today?

     

    “We do work really hard in trying to integrate the brand’s value through the storytelling and send across the brand statement through the narrative rather than a product placement in a 10-second shot,” says Kumar.

     

     

    If the guesstimated sponsorship amount of Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 3 crore is right, then TVF has a budget of Rs 30-35 lakh per episode at its disposal, which is far higher than the commissioning fees for fictional TV shows on GECS which are in the range of Rs 7 to Rs 15 lakh per episode.

     

    “We generally take six to nine months to complete a production. We pay attention to detail and operate on a crew of almost a hundred people,” explains Kumar, adding that one can’t compare it to television as television mathematics work completely differently.

     

    The latest teaser released by TVF has already created a buzz amongst netizens with over a lakh views in just a few hours. Fans can expect a longer promo from 4 February onwards leading up to the show’s launch on 14 February.

     

    Surprisingly, with a scale this high, TVF continues to confidently depend on word of mouth and social buzz to increase its audience.

     

    “We don’t have any solid marketing strategy in place. We will do what we usually do, post messages on our respective social media accounts and our ever attentive fans will spread the word,” Kumar says confidently.

     

    Having said that, TVF is also looking at dabbling in conversational marketing by collaborating with several partners and maybe go beyond digital and make the shows presence felt offline.

     

    In the new content ecosystem, everything goes, doesn’t it?

     
  • TVF, Ola Cabs & the Permanent Roommates association

    TVF, Ola Cabs & the Permanent Roommates association

    MUMBAI: One of India’s popular YouTube channels and digital producers, The Viral Fever (TVF), is back with the second season of its flagship web series Permanent Roommates . And how!

     

    Touting it as the best web series that TVF has put together so far, TFV CEO and founder Arunabh Kumar has high hopes from this ambitious project. The company is making this production in association with call taxi service Ola Cabs as of Permanent Roommates season 2.

     

    While Kumar refused to divulge any details, a source close to the development guesstimated that Ola has shelled out  an eye-popping Rs 2.5-3 crore for backing the production.

     

    Slated to go online on TVF Play and TVF’s YouTube channel on Valentine’s Day, the new season will consist of eight 30 – 40 minute long power packed episodes.

     

    It will take off from where season one left off — the drama in the lives of Internet’s most-loved fictional characters Tanya (Nidhi Singh) and Mikesh (Sumeet Vyas). The episodes are scheduled to air fortnightly. And the theme is “The Third Kind of Love.”

     

    Kumar expects viewership to touch four – five million per episode, which hardly comes as a surprise given last season’s success.

     

    Launched in October 2014, the web series grossed over 12 million views for five episodes that aired on YouTube, with every episode having more than a million views making it the (claimed) second most watched online long form content in the world.

     

    “Our target is to cater to and retain the three million viewers who already follow Permanent Roommates and maybe expand our viewership by a couple of more million. We have weaved the content so that it is not only a youth-based love story but also has elements of interest for the entire family. We have some surprises for all of them,” adds Kumar.

     

    What’s more, with a big chunk of sponsorship money in, the pressure is on the creative geniuses to up the ante now. Season One had CommonFloor as the brand partner; hence, the home was one of the main protagonists.

     

    Will season 2, see them going around in taxis or make mentions of them using the service like the duo does in the promo that released today?

     

    “We do work really hard in trying to integrate the brand’s value through the storytelling and send across the brand statement through the narrative rather than a product placement in a 10-second shot,” says Kumar.

     

     

    If the guesstimated sponsorship amount of Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 3 crore is right, then TVF has a budget of Rs 30-35 lakh per episode at its disposal, which is far higher than the commissioning fees for fictional TV shows on GECS which are in the range of Rs 7 to Rs 15 lakh per episode.

     

    “We generally take six to nine months to complete a production. We pay attention to detail and operate on a crew of almost a hundred people,” explains Kumar, adding that one can’t compare it to television as television mathematics work completely differently.

     

    The latest teaser released by TVF has already created a buzz amongst netizens with over a lakh views in just a few hours. Fans can expect a longer promo from 4 February onwards leading up to the show’s launch on 14 February.

     

    Surprisingly, with a scale this high, TVF continues to confidently depend on word of mouth and social buzz to increase its audience.

     

    “We don’t have any solid marketing strategy in place. We will do what we usually do, post messages on our respective social media accounts and our ever attentive fans will spread the word,” Kumar says confidently.

     

    Having said that, TVF is also looking at dabbling in conversational marketing by collaborating with several partners and maybe go beyond digital and make the shows presence felt offline.

     

    In the new content ecosystem, everything goes, doesn’t it?

     
  • AP & Telangana MSO VSML opts for Nagra’s OpenTV content protection

    AP & Telangana MSO VSML opts for Nagra’s OpenTV content protection

    MUMBAI: As the Indian cable television landscape gears up to get fully digitised by the end of this year with the Digital Addressable System (DAS) in place, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana based multi system operator (MSO) Venkata Sai Media Private Limited (VSMPL) has taken a step forward and opted for Kudelski Group’s Nagra anyCAST and OpenTV solutions for the launch of its digital cable and high-speed broadband offering.

    Nagra is an independent provider of content protection and multiscreen television solutions. The launch marks the first commercial deployment of OpenTV middleware and the first user interface to support Telugu language with a cable operator in India. Nagra’s anyCAST content protection and OpenTV middleware technologies were selected by the operator in the context of the government-mandated transition to digital, to provide local cable operators in the state of Andhra Pradesh with access to a variety of digital TV services under the brand name ‘Media Vision.’ These will include 276 SD and 24 HD services with plans to introduce value added services (VAS) like video-on-demand (VOD), home shopping and more. “We are excited to deliver these new digital services to local operators as part of the ongoing digitisation efforts in India. Nagra was the vendor of choice in this effort providing pre-integrated conditional access and set-top box software solutions across multiple chipsets. This was a key factor in helping us deliver the services quickly and efficiently,” said VSMPL. “VSMPL has acted quickly to meet the digitisation timeline set forth by the Indian government and is now able to reach more local operators with our pre-integrated, scalable and fast time-to-market solutions. We are pleased to have been able to support them in this effort helping them deliver advanced functionalities and robust content protection to whole new cable market. We wish them much success with their new platform,” added Nagra SVP sales – Asia-Pacific Jean-Luc Jezouin. VSMPL’s new service will enable a new generation of digital TV services for local cable operators. It boasts built-in features powered by OpenTV middleware such as PVR and targeted advertising and a user interface adapted to the region’s multi-lingual landscape. Robust content protection is provided by the Nagra anyCAST Security Services Platform, which supports a range of services from basic free-to-view to enhanced content like 4K Ultra HD. VSMPL claims to have close to one million subscribers in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

     

  • BARC India eyes digital measurement; calls for global RFIs

    BARC India eyes digital measurement; calls for global RFIs

    MUMBAI: The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India has issued a global Request For Information (RFI) as it readies itself to expand audience measurement to the digital space.

     

    After gathering this information, BARC India will issue a subsequent Request for Proposal (RFP) that is realistic in its scope.

     

    The television ratings measurement body aims to measure all forms of online video advertising, including ad breaks in live streams, pre-roll and mid-roll videos, and targeted/addressable advertising linked to the content on broadcaster sites or social media or any other website/apps.

     

    “At BARC India, our aim is to continually evolve in a way that suits the ever changing content viewing habits. After rolling out the television viewership measurement in the country, we are now ready to take the next leap, that of measuring digital viewing,” said BARC India CEO Partho Dasgupta.   

     

    In the RFI, applicants have been asked to outline how their offerings work, the types of video, devices and platforms the company is able to measure and the level of detail. The RFI must also highlight whether the approach requires third party action.

     

    This comes after television becoming a cross-platform medium, available through a variety of distribution systems, including broadcast, IP, mobile networks and a growing number of connected screens through, which audio-visual content is consumed.   

     

    The RFIs will facilitate understanding of the capabilities of online video advertising and content measurement techniques with regards to panel and census measurement across video types, devices and platforms.

  • Zeop deployes Broadpeak to improve video delivery

    Zeop deployes Broadpeak to improve video delivery

    MUMBAI:  Broadpeak, a leading provider of content delivery network (CDN) technologies and live and video-on-demand (VOD) servers for cable, IPTV, OTT, hybrid, and mobile TV operators worldwide, today announced that Zeop, the first and leading fiber operator based on the French island of Reunion, has deployed Broadpeak solutions to improve video delivery. Using a combination of Broadpeak’s BkS400 cache servers and BkM100 CDN manager, Zeop can cost-effectively distribute VOD content via a content provider located in France, while providing an exceptional quality of experience (QoE) and quality of service (QoS) to end users.

     

    “Recently, we wanted to offer subscribers a wider choice of content. Under standard video delivery architecture, this would have been extremely challenging in terms of the transit and CDN-as-a-service costs incurred. We needed an optimized video delivery solution,” said Zeop CTO Martin Vigneau. “Broadpeak’s video caching technology dramatically reduces our transit and contribution link costs, allowing us to deliver a wider range of popular video content at a fraction of the cost of traditional CDN methods, while providing a better quality of experience and service.”

     

    Broadpeak pre-provisions popular video content in a local cache server, located in the operator’s network in Reunion. Each time an end user requests video content, it is directly streamed by the BkS400 local server, without needing to reach the content provider’s origin server. The technology is deployed on virtual machines, optimizing Zeop’s costs even further.

     

    Broadpeak’s BkS400 servers deliver video content via adaptive bit rate (ABR) technology, guaranteeing a high level of video quality. The presence of a local cache removes any latency that could take place between the origin server and the edge network. This mechanically benefits the QoS, and also the QoE, since higher video profiles will be streamed more often. Broadpeak’s BkS400 server offers broad format support (e.g., Apple HLS, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Adobe HDS, and MPEG-DASH) so that operators can deliver video content anytime, anywhere, on any device. Zeop is also delivering content in the Microsoft Smooth Streaming format.

     

    Broadpeak’s cache servers also collect analytics about end user sessions, allowing Zeop to identify trends in audience behaviors. Zeop can monitor a full range of statistics related to video streaming, including bit rate per source, cache status percentage (e.g., cache hit, cache miss), requests per second, average time to serve, and HTTP status codes per second. By employing a solution with sophisticated analytics, the operator can provide detailed information to marketing, operations, and support teams to assist them with strategic decision-making.

     

    “Using Broadpeak’s solution, Zeop can now negotiate with other content providers to offer a wider choice of content to their subscribers,” said Broadpeak CEO Jacques Le Mancq. “Broadpeak’s solution also enables Zeop to interface with other CDN service providers and deliver content in a wide range of ABR formats to address all growing consumer demand for high-quality video content on every screen. The end results are lower video delivery costs, more flexibility, and a better QoS and QoE for end users.”