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The NDS Unified Headend™ which is being showcased at IBC this year (September 7-11, Hall 1 Stand 1.171) helps make real convergence possible. By enabling operators and content providers to manage all their services and content usage rights centrally, the NDS Unified Headend reduces management overhead. It also ensures that they can create attractive, cross-network business offers that keep their customers satisfied.
As entertainment platforms converge, network operators and broadcasters face the increasingly complex challenge of delivering a consistent service to customers who expect the same high quality, regardless of the device they happen to be using to access content at any given time.
The challenges include ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) and securing the content and digital rights. But with challenges come opportunities, which center on the ability to add value and new create business models through the tighter integration between back-end systems.
“Part of the solution is an end-to-end converged platform that allows operators to integrate their digital rights management (DRM), conditional access (CA) systems and other services in the back-end,” says Elad Manishviz, NDS Director of Product Marketing. “This takes place while meeting consumer demand for consistent cross-platform access to the content they are paying for.”
“The world is changing and our customers are looking for infrastructures that will enable them to deliver content securely across a wide range of devices – mobile phones, PCs, PMPs (Portable Media Players) and set-top boxes,” he says.
Delivering content to a variety of devices
The NDS Unified Headend enables pay-TV providers to go beyond the set-top box to deliver broadcast and on-demand video services to a variety of devices. “What the Unified Headend does is enable TV businesses to deliver new services that build subscriber loyalty and increase revenues,” Manishviz says. At the same time it helps deliver the flexibility subscribers want, so that they can view content anytime, anywhere on any device.
“Delivering content just to the STB is no longer sufficient. Operators also have to be able to deliver their content to PCs, mobile phones, PMPs, and other devices,” Manishviz says. “If they don’t, their competition will.”
The NDS Unified Headend delivers cross-platform business scenarios. For example, subscribers can be entitled to watch movies for up to 24 hours on any of the receiving devices they own using any delivery method (VOD, download, or streaming).
Operators that are still managing separate services for each type of device are finding this is both expensive and limiting. “What the Unified Headend does is help operators optimize their content investment by delivering it to any device,” Manishviz says. This creates additional revenue opportunities.
What attracts operators is that the Unified Headend provides a cost-effective way to extend their pay-TV service. It also creates the foundation for advanced services such as:
• Recommendation: pushing content to supported CE devices
• Personalization: creating special offers that are unique to each subscriber
• Advertising: reaching the audience in new ways
• Communication: users interacting with each other on the network
• Gifting: purchasing viewing rights for a friend to watch a particular program.
Seamless user experience
“Because it is designed to support different delivery models for CA and DRM across multiple devices, the Unified Headend is a significant ‘next step’ for operators and content providers,” Manishviz says. “What it enables them to do is integrate with third-party applications such as content management, scheduling and interactive services – as well as interfacing with billing systems and customer care applications.”
”It is essential for subscribers to a mobile movie or sports channel to have the same user experience -- and the same content and metadata -- whether they are using a mobile handset, a laptop or a digital TV,” Manishviz says. “This is what the NDS Unified Headend offers.”
“This is a huge market. Our aim is to provide more than basic services for mobile and television operators whose long term ambition is to have an infrastructure that effectively creates the glue between their various divisions and will help them generate some common leverage.”
Reduces cost of development, operations
Manishviz explains that operators today often have their broadcast services in divisional silos: mobile, PC, television and so on – with content re-purposed for each platform. “A unified approach gives them the chance to support their platforms jointly,” he says. “This reduces the cost of development and operations, while giving them the infrastructure to deliver content in more versatile ways than the one-dimensional ‘push’ model.”
“For example, in addition to providing a wider general range of enhanced, value-added services, it also allows operators to virtually manage the user’s domain, delivering services that are based on the fact that they know precisely who their subscribers are and what they want.”
Personalized offering; a key differentiator
“One element of NDS’ converged solution is software that resides on the end device - whatever the device - and reports back to the operator how customers are using it and what content they are watching,” Manishviz explains. With the customer’s permission, that information can be analyzed and used to recommend further content and target appropriate advertising.
“Operators may not be looking for that degree of personalization and targeted information from the beginning, but it will eventually become a key differentiator for service providers and will only be possible with a high level of back-end convergence,” Manishviz says.
Both existing and new operators are actively looking for this kind of solution as a foundation for their future strategies, Manishviz says. “If a converged platform is implemented at launch, the operator will eventually find it much easier to introduce a variety of access devices on different networks.”
“This unified approach is a milestone in the evolution of IPTV,” Manishviz says. “It is a new approach to convergence that will bring together operating systems and services on a single, end-to-end converged platform. This will help operators protect their broadcast content and deliver it securely to the standard that their customers expect, whatever device they are using.”
Visit NDS at IBC (Hall 1, Stand 1.171). See the new Unified Headend and other demonstrations that prove that with solutions from NDS, operators can bring convergence home.
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