capacity of digital distribution channel is also likely to facilitate greater investments by broadcasters toward niché, targeted and HD content. All the above will have a direct impact on diversification of revenue streams for cable operators and other associated players.
Similarly, set top boxes with enhanced capability to provide TV apps or gaming services through the internet shall emerge. Technologies such as Slingbox already exist which can allow users to remotely view and control their home cable, satellite, or personal video recorder (PVR) system from an Internet-enabled computer with a broadband Internet connection.
With the emergence of digital cable, service providers will be able to provide interactive services, because two way communications between the consumer and the cable provider will be possible. Viewers will be able to use multiplayer interactive services such as games where they will compete with other viewers. Educational interactive services will be provided to customers for their children.
Digitization will also help niché channels, which have selected viewers to come up in India.
Digitization of a cable networks shall however require significant investment for digitizing the network, providing set-top boxes to the customers and implementing software to enable interactive services. Precision in addressability of end consumers will also result in payment to broadcasters becoming more transparent. However, cable operators might be forced to absorb investment in the short term as consumers might not be ready to pay for a service more than the current service charges.
Video-on-Demand
In the traditional television delivery mechanisms the user is a passive participant who receives what the service provider offers. However, Video on demand empowers the viewer with the flexibility of viewing content that he/she wishes to watch at the time of his/her convenience. The Internet, DTH and several other networks can be used to deliver Video on Demand services. With the digitization of cable television networks, spread of DTH and IPTV networks, this pay-per-use or pay-per-session, real-time, on-demand concept is being used by countries worldwide.
Video-on-Demand (VoD) can be broadly classified as VoD through a middle platform (e.g. Set top boxes) and VoD through internet. Let us look at the various technologies that can drive the VoD concept.
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12 KPMG, an Indian R
egistered P
artnership and a member firm of the KPMG net
w
ork of independent member firms af
filiated
with KPMG International Cooperativ
e (“KPMG International”), a S
wiss entit
y.
All rights reser
ved.
VoD on Internet
VoD on internet is one of the most flexible VoD service available and widely used in countries with high speed connectivity. In India, there is lack of proper connectivity; VoD over the internet will take time to develop. Video-on-demand can be delivered over the internet to computers, laptops, mobile phones,TVs and other digital media devices such as mp3 players. However, providing such a service over the internet with the traditional client/server architecture leads to lack of scalability, long startup delays, latency problems, and streaming continuity issues.
As a result, there have been many proposals to provide scalable video streaming services. Current popular video services mainly rely on content delivery networks (CDNs) and local streaming proxies to increase system scalability. In India, popularity of VoD over the internet has a long way to go. Even though ISP’s have started providing higher broadband speeds, there are speed variations faced by most of the internet users in India which affect such VoD services. In the coming future, as service providers improve their internet speed reliability, VoD over the internet will be available to the customers.
VoD through IP Networks
IP networks enable VoD for customers to browse catalog, view trailers, movies and select the desired recording for themselves over a dedicated internet connection. A point- to-point unicast connection is set up between the STB’s and the delivering server. With RTSP (real time streaming protocol) the user can be facilitated with native functions like play, pause, forward etc. The most common formats used are MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and VC-1. Security has been a major point of concern in the delivery of the content. The Internet protocol-based platform offers significant advantages, including the ability to integrate television with other IP-based services like high speed Internet access and VoIP.
The IP network also allows for the delivery of more content and functionality. The customer can select from the choices which the telecom, cable or a satellite company have to offer. Content remains in the network, and only the content the customer selects is sent into the customer’s home. This frees bandwidth, and the customer’s choice is less restricted by the size of the “pipe” into the home. But one disadvantage with VoD over IP Networks is that the customer has a selected set of video content to choose from server. In India, as cable moves to its digitized form, IPTV services like interactive programs and VoD services will be available to the customers.
VoD on DTH
DTH has come a long way in the past few years by showing swift growth. However, with cable TV networks getting digitized, DTH operators are looking at value added services such as VoD to maintain their appeal to the subscriber. Though DTH service providers call their video service as VoD, there are quite a few differences between real time VoD and DTH based ‘Near VoD’. DTH transmits content from a satellite to subscribers directly, as a result, the satellite’s transmission bandwidth gets divided. Thus transferring large packets of data in real time, like full movies to customers becomes expensive. To tackle this, DTH service providers usually provide for secondary storage within their set-top boxes. When customers select the movie from the schedule, the set-top box buffers the movie from the satellite and is played out to the customer from this buffered video. Therefore DTH based VoD service is not ideally real time and the customer has to select the time of the movie from the schedule provided by the DTH service provider.
© 20
12 KPMG, an Indian R
egistered P
artnership and a member firm of the KPMG net
w
ork of independent member firms af
filiated
with KPMG International Cooperativ
e (“KPMG International”), a S
wiss entit
y.
All rights reser
ved.