Sony uses IPTV to lure buyers

YESTERDAY'S launch of Sony's new range of Bravia televisions neatly summed up a marketing puzzle facing the consumer electronics and entertainment group: how to sell 2D TVs in a year in which all the hype is about 3D.

Sony Australia is hoping part of the answer is Bravia Internet Video, a content platform that will deliver 15 new internet protocol TV channels over a household broadband connection direct to the TV set. It will be available on 21 of 26 new Bravia models from next month and marketed under the slogan "TV on your terms". Models that play 3D will not be available until July.

Sony Australia chief Carl Rose said the launch was a "defining moment" for Sony, which will become the first TV manufacturer to launch IPTV content in

Australia. Local video-on-demand channels from Billabong, Yahoo7 and SBS will join global brands including video-sharing site YouTube, how-to channel eHow, and golfing brand Golflink on the Bravia Internet Video platform.

Several brands associated with global magazine publisher Conde Nast, including tech publisher Wired, fashion brand Style.com and food channel Epicurious, are also available as video channels.

In the same presentation, the company said the full 3D experience in the home (including 3D movies or games, a 3D player, a 3D TV set and the 3D glasses to see it) would not be available until July.

Sony consumer products executive Toby Barbour said there was not enough 3D content today to drive 3D TV sales.

"July is the right time for the 3D experience from the word go," he said yesterday.

Meanwhile, TV manufacturers are expected to turn to the FIFA World Cup in June to help drive sales in the first half of the year.

Sony's Bravia platform will enable viewers to watch highlights packages of games they may have missed on SBS's IPTV channel instead of on a computer.

Yahoo internet widgets, which allow information such as sharemarket prices, sports scores and weather, will also be available on several Bravia models.

Credit to TheAustralian.com.au

Sony's IPTV puts Catch Up TV on the big screen

Sony's IPTV deal with Network Seven's Plus7 marks the next major step in the way Australians watch television.

As I said last week, I'm very impressed with Plus7 and it puts Nine and Ten's efforts to shame. I ended up calling on Plus7 this week after my TiVo skipped a beat and for some reason failed to record Lost on 7TWO. I'm taking the "28 day 7TWO Lost challenge", to see if I can tolerate time-shifting free-to-air rather than using the BT channel.

I realised about 10.30pm Wednesday that the TiVo had failed to record Lost at 8.30pm and I was about to head over to Isohunt when I thought it might be worth checking Plus7. There was Lost, ready to play. I used my Media Centre to watch it full screen on my 46-inch Bravia and the picture was shabby but watchable - certainly not as crisp or smooth as a decent BitTorrent download. Plus7 drops in one advertisement at every ad break that can't be skipped, which is annoying but bearable if you mute the sound. I'd much rather do that than pay Apple $2.99 an episode from the iTunes store.

Of course Plus7 is designed for watching on a computer, not a big television. Sony's "Bravia Internet Video" IPTV service looked much sharper on the big Bravias at this week's launch in Sydney, all but indistinguishable from an SD broadcast. I'm guessing it's encoded at a higher rate than the clips on the Plus7 website.

Shows from SBS are also available via Sony's IPTV service and negotiations are underway with the ABC's iView - which would be brilliant. The Freeview consortium is also working on its equivalent to iView, which hopefully will come to the Bravia Internet Video service as well. Sony is even working on a Movie on Demand service, which would be the icing on the cake.

Bravia Internet Video will also come to the PlayStation 3 and Sony Blu-ray players later this year - which is great news for people who don't want to buy a new television just to access what is clearly Australia's best free IPTV service. It's just one more excuse to buy a PlayStation 3, and I might finally cave in later this year (just don't tell my friend Al, a diehard PS3-fanboy, or I'll never hear the end of it).

The truth is that your average person doesn't want a computer in their lounge room, no matter what the entertainment benefits. As Sony makes IPTV available directly from its televisions, Blu-ray players and games consoles I'm certain IPTV will see mainstream adoption in Australia - perhaps turning people away from piracy. Sony and Seven have thrown down the gauntlet, let's see how the other networks and manufacturers respond.

Credit to Adam Turner, Hidrapinion

Year One Anniversary of IPTV Commercialization

On Dec 12, the one-year anniversary of the launch of Internet Protocol television (IPTV), which has been hailed as the driver of interactive services and a next-generation growth engine, was celebrated with fanfare. The number of subscribers to IPTV services provided by KT, SK Broadband and LG Telecom topped 1.5 million.

At the celebration of the one-year anniversary of IPTV, held at COEX in Samsung-dong, the Korea Communications Commission and Korea Digital Media Industry Association declared December 12 to be IPTV Day. Industry insiders celebrated the fact that the number of IPTV subscribers reached 1.5 million in such a short period of time, in the face of strong competition from the cable TV market that boasts 15 million subscribers.

Some, however, beg to differ, pointing out the worse than expected performance of IPTV as the number of IPTV subscribers fell far short of the initial target range of 2.5 to 3 million. The Korea Communications Commission has urged operators to come up with active marketing strategies with the aim of boosting the number of IPTV subscribers beyond 2 million.

Credit to Korea IT Times

….while World’s IPTV forecasts issued

The latest IPTV forecasts from MRG have just been published. MRG’s numbers include a forecast for IPTV subscribers, service revenues, and system revenues from 2009 to 2013. By and large last year’s predicted numbers have already been achieved.

Because the 2009 subscriber total exceeded the last forecast by 2 million, the new forecast* indicates that global IPTV subscribers will grow from 28 million in 2009 to 83 million in 2013, a compound annual growth rate of 31%. The European region will continue to lead in IPTV deployments in 2013 with a 48% share, followed by Asia, North America and Rest of World.

“Now that the economy seems to be improving, and Service Providers are still reporting solid growth, this latest edition has adjusted the forecast accordingly,” stated Jose Alvear, MRG IPTV Analyst. “This was done in response to the better-than-expected growth exhibited by the major Service Providers around the world in 2009.”

Total service revenue for 2013 is projected at US$38 billion, also up sharply from the last forecast. MRG’s new report includes added information on strategies and new services being added to IPTV offerings. “Consumers are beginning to understand the advantages of IPTV,” says Gary Schultz, MRG President. “Simultaneously, IPTV operators are facing more competition, driving rapid investment in both infrastructure and new services.”

The four regions analyzed include a breakdown of capital spending, service revenue, and DSL & IPTV subscribers; and seven discrete IPTV system sectors, including Access Systems, Video Headends, Video-on-Demand, Set-top Boxes, Middleware, Content Protection/Digital Rights Management, and System Integration/Professional Services.

Credit to RapidTVNews

AT&T adds more HD channels nationwide to its U-verse IPTV service

Subscribers to AT&T’s U-verse TV service got an additional 5 HD channels today, bringing the number of high-definition channels from the service to at least 115 in every U.S. market. New international channels were also added to U-verse, including Filipino and Cantonese programming.

The new HD channels include Cartoon Network HD, MSNBC HD, TV One HD, and TBN HD (Dec. 15). The fifth addition is available to HD Premium package customers who will now get WFN: World Fishing Network HD.

AT&T has also added VivaTV Plus as part of the Filipino Package — providing movies, concerts and TV shows in Filipino. For Cantonese viewers, TVBe provides news from Hong Kong, entertainment news, and additional Cantonese-focused programming for $17 a month. Both of those channels are available only in standard-definition.

AT&T added over 60 HD channels this year, keeping them up to speed with Verizon’s FiOS TV and surpassing cable TV HD channel counts in most markets they serve.

The company also reached a milestone 2 million U-verse TV subscribers as of last Wednesday, half of them added within 2009.

Credit to hdreport

AT&T Tops 1.8 Million IPTV Customers

AT&T added 240,000 more U-verse TV subscribers to its service in the third quarter, to stand at 1.816 million at the end of September. Although the telco continued to produce strong wireless gains it also shed 803,000 residential phone lines in the period.

Chief financial officer Rick Lindner, on AT&T's earnings call Thursday, said he expects revenue from U-verse services to exceed $2 billion this year. As the legacy services decline, he said, AT&T is taking cost out of those lines of business while increasing margins on new products.

For the IPTV service, AT&T's penetration of eligible living units was more than 12%. In areas marketed to for 24 months or more, overall penetration now exceeds 20%, according to the company.

AT&T's wireless segment continued to surge, with a 2.0 million net increase in total wireless subscribers - the highest third-quarter net gain in the company's history -- to reach 81.6 million. That included 3.2 million iPhone activations in the quarter, the highest to date.

Meanwhile, residential phone lines ended the quarter at 25.2 million, down 11.8% from a year ago, as revenue in the wireline segment fell 7.1% to $16.3 billion.

"The pattern is getting grindingly familiar. Wireless results were good... wireline results, not so much," Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a research note. "And like so much of corporate America in this recession, solid earnings were the result of better-than-expected cost management against a deteriorating top line."

U-verse services are now available to more than 20 million living units. The telco said that U-verse TV's broadband attach rate continues to run "well above" 90% , and that its U-verse Voice attach rate continues to run above 60%. More than three-fourths of U-verse TV subscribers have a triple- or quad-play option from AT&T. The telco had 735,000 U-verse Voice subscribers at the end of the quarter, up from 104,000 in the year-ago period.

In the third quarter, AT&T's more advanced U-verse DSL broadband service had a net gain of 252,000 subscribers, which offset a decline in traditional DSL connections for a 90,000 net gain in wireline broadband connections. The telco had 13.55 million DSL subscribers as of the end of September,compared with 13.45 million three months prior.

AT&T lost 15,000 satellite subscribers in the period, ending the quarter with 2.195 million. The telco dropped its reseller deal with Dish Network as of January and now offers DirecTV service in areas where it has not deployed U-verse. AT&T's total video subscribers, which combine the company's U-verse and bundled satellite customers, were 4.0 million at the end of the third quarter, representing 14.9% of households served.

Overall, AT&T's third-quarter revenue was $30.86 billion, compared with $31.34 billion in the year-earlier quarter. Net income was $3.19 billion, down 1.2% year over year.

Credit to Multichannel.com

BitBand Technologies Forecasts IPTV Trends

The power of producing and distributing content no longer belongs solely to studios and technology vendors it has shifted to the consumer and consumer communities that produce, utilize and interact with the large volumes of content available today.

Analysts predict around 50 million IPTV subscribers worldwide by 2010. As viewing habits evolve from a passive consumption of TV to an interactive user experience, IPTV service providers need to quickly recognize and exploit the market opportunities that lie ahead.

BitBand’s IPTV technology serves more than 40 commercial IPTV deployments worldwide, including such pioneering IPTV deployments as Tele2 in Holland, ON Telecoms in Greece, FASTWEB in Italy and Connexion in the U.S., among others. BitBand partners with system integrators and suppliers of other components in the IPTV value chain to provide operators with a complete end-to-end solution.

BitBand expects to see the following key trends in IPTV in 2008:

• Eastern Europe as an emerging market. With quad and triple-play heavily embraced by new players implementing technology and business lessons learned in Western Europe, carriers and service providers in the region will take advantage of the industry’s accumulated expertise and skip efforts to modernize legacy equipment or infrastructures suitable for IPTV delivery.
• HDTV is on the rise and shifting from early adopters to mainstream viewers, creating strong demand for the highest level of subscriber quality of experience. Technology has to be developed to ensure the QOE levels that now become mandatory.
• Networking in the home. Technology advancements in consumer premises equipment and the IPTV supply chain in general will enable increased connectivity between the various components in the home, targeting the enhanced digital lifestyle with such services as instant messaging and progressive download. Through a combination of the service provider and home networks, a small server residing in the house will provide content services to a variety of devices within or around the premises, over a variety of wired and wireless networks.
• Niche content is king and long-tail content is becoming a reality. Service providers will be required to make accessible huge volumes of content, while employing intuitive and simple access methods. The full content life cycle will need to be managed in a flexible way, making room for innovative CDN platforms -- a key factor in the success of IPTV services.
• Support for multiple viewing platforms. Consumer mobility drives the need to support a variety of end devices (terminals) to which the content is fed. Users’ viewing experiences should be automatically adapted for the different devices and networks so that the best experience on each device is guaranteed. Remaining issues to be resolved include the size of video data and content rights.
• New entrants create segmented markets. More alternative service providers are offering IPTV services, opening up the market and driving growth and competition. Traditional communications players will be forced to present a differentiated offer, either through the introduction of new value-added services or competitively priced entertainment packages.
• User-generated content. TV “of the people, for the people” will continue to grow in popularity. Users are driving content and will want to incorporate that content as part of their traditional TV experience.
• TV and Internet will continue to merge. The drive to turn the TV into an Internet-capable device is likely to continue, despite the failure of many prior attempts. The key drivers to success are simplicity of access and emphasis on the group experience of TV consumption.
• Advertising will drive revenue. Targeted advertising is another phenomenon making its way from the Internet to the IPTV experience, providing another tool for revenue generation and subscriber retention.
• The shift to On-Demand. The trend of increased migration of TV consumption from linear to non-linear TV (TV On-Demand) will pick up pace, driven by innovative new ways of serving TV in a time-shifted manner and excess bandwidth available in the Next Generation networks. We expect significant increase in concurrent viewers of such services.
• Beijing 2008. The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will be the dominant driver for IPTV expansion and adoption across China. Beijing’s efforts to leverage this event for the world stage, coupled with the desire of service providers across the globe to deliver Olympic events to subscribers in all forms and on all devices will prompt service innovation, technology development and regulation flexibility, speeding up the pace of change and stimulating even more progress in the IPTV space.

Source : TVOver.net