Remote storage DVR likely next step in ‘anytime, anywhere’ content delivery
The days of planning your time around your favorite television program are long gone. Consumers of visual media have shifted habits to an “anytime, anywhere” expectation. And providers of television and video programming are looking for new ways to deliver accordingly.
Content is now created for and distributed across multiple platforms—on air, streaming video to PCs, episodes for mobile devices, and video on demand (VOD). Cable and satellite providers offer on-demand lineups, and viewers can tap in to over-the-top (OTT) services such as iTunes, Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix. And, of course, the ability to record programs by using a digital video recorder (DVR) is a significant step toward when-you-want-it programming.
But in a world of “right here, right now,” how can providers deliver better? What’s next in this rapidly-changing industry? And what is driving this explosive growth?
Preparing for the new era
of content
Instead of gathering around the set to watch programs at a set time, viewers are deciding when, where, and how they want to experience them. This shift has profound organizational and technology implications. HP explores what it will take for content companies to thrive in the new, on-demand media environment.
Download the Viewpoint paper to learn more
Time and place shifting
The force enabling this “time and place shifting” is the rapid deployment of powerful mobile devices and expansion of wireless and wired network capacity. These put greater viewing power and options in consumers’ hands. Further, social media is transforming how people interact and how they retrieve and share content. This instant access to information, products, and services drives consumers to expect the same responsiveness everywhere—and television is no exception.
The Nielsen Company, a global leader in media intelligence, has seen consumer demands within the last year coming from two directions:
- A 32 percent increase in “time-shifted” television viewing—that is, watching content based on the viewers’ schedule or “anytime”
- A 70 percent increase in mobile subscribers watching video in a “place-shifted” manner—“anywhere” on mobile phones, smartphones, or computers instead of a traditional television set.
This rapid paradigm shift means a need for rapid IT advancement just to stay in the game.
Record and watch anywhere, anytime
Media planners and content creators are looking at practical ways to reach an increasingly broad audience and deliver content at the time and place of the viewers’ choice. Remote-Storage DVR (RS-DVR) is a service designed for just that. The developing technology builds on the concept of a set-top DVR—recording content digitally and playing it back—and takes it to the next level.
RS-DVR will allow users to record content from their service provider’s network and store their recorded content on the provider’s server. They will then be able to access this content “anytime, anywhere”—drawing the video through the Internet to the device of their choice and at their convenience.
From a subscriber perspective, this is tremendously appealing. On the delivery end, however, the reviews are mixed.
Challenges and benefits
Media enterprises understand that their technology must evolve and adapt at a pace significantly faster than most other industries. Innovations are what will keep a company on the leading edge in this business. Emerging concepts that meet accelerated demand, like RS-DVR, are thus met with initial enthusiasm.
The outcomes are promising. RS-DVR is a growth engine, allowing the provider to:
- Sell access from more locations.
- Sell more services (delivery of recorded content OTT, mobile) and across three screens.
- Expand advertising potential.
- Dedicate less capital and fewer staff to maintaining existing in-home set-top DVR solutions.
But can it really work? Or are the organizational and technical challenges too much to overcome? For example, studios and networks may need new operating and financial models to capture revenue from multiple delivery channels. And allowing users to store content online means a need for massive amounts of storage space on the network. Data center footprints, energy impact, and enterprise readiness for cloud are other possible barriers.
Practical innovation
The question then becomes whether an idea like RS-DVR is technically and economically feasible. Innovation in the industry is critical, but it also must be realistic to implement. HP ensures cable companies can take advantage of the latest advancements in network attached storage, grid computing, and video processing technologies. This makes for a highly-flexible and powerful engine with a very small footprint to store and deliver content.
HP’s RS-DVR solution eliminates the equipment in the home and provides a managed service for the storage and play-out of broadcast content. Capabilities are similar to the DVR; they include recording and play-out, quota management, pausing of live TV, and permanent locker boxes for users agreed upon during contract. We can also provide full OSS capabilities for fault and system performance, capacity, system configuration, inventory, asset management, and APIs for integration to CV SRM/BMS systems.
Another innovative aspect allows multiple ingest sources and the ability to deliver to multiple devices (television set-top box, personal computer, mobile phone) efficiently and quickly. The solution can also create a “media chain” that allows the addition of value-added services during the delivery process, such as advertising insertion, real-time trans-coding and scaling, and interactive overlays. These features help service providers create new revenue streams, increase advertising dollars, reduce subscriber churn, and open up the potential for new services.
An industry leader
With our industry expertise, we provide you with a business advantage in this content-driven world. We bring you specialists who have worked closely with the world’s most renowned media and entertainment companies and combine their industry knowledge with HP’s technology bench strength to help you achieve better business outcomes.
In a market where everything and everyone is connected—anytime, anywhere—we’re working every day to help our clients achieve outcomes that matter.
»Learn about HP Enterprise Services Media & EntertainmentDownload the Preparing For the New Era of Content Viewpoint PDF
