François Moreau de Saint Martin, CEO, Viaccess-Orca and speaker at CONNECTIONS Europe provides insights on new developments in smart home and entertainment services. François will participate on the 1:15 pm Session, Multiscreen Services and TV Anywhere, on November 12.

The panel, moderated by Brett Sappington, Director, Research, Parks Associates, includes the following participants

Michael Lantz, CEO & Founder, Accedo
François Moreau de Saint Martin, CEO, Viaccess-Orca
Daniel Riddell, VP - Operations, SmartOTT | Wild TV
Lisa Skelton, Head of Marketing, Content Delivery, Ericsson
Bram Tijdhof, Senior Strategy Manager, Ziggo

1) What do you feel is the biggest obstacle to growth in entertainment services and/or smart home services?

One of the biggest obstacles for content providers is obviously piracy. Piracy represents a constant threat to content service providers’ revenues. If the service providers’ revenues are compromised, the value of the content itself is also in jeopardy. Service providers who are unable to protect the content they deliver, will not be able to license premium content in the new multi-screen paradigm forcing us all to live in an eternal loop of Seinfeld reruns. Therefore Piracy management and security renewability from a multi-screen service standpoint thatremain a strong expectation/requirement for content owners. Viaccess-Orca has developed solutions to defeat this threat: VO ‘s Dynamic Sentinel (cardless solution) as well as our Connected Sentinel (DRM solution) incorporate the experience gained from over two decades of securing premium content over a wide range of distribution networks and effectively fighting piracy. VO has also been since years at the forefront of designing and running security services for its major Pay-TV customers targeting advanced forms of piracy such as subscription sharing (i.e., card and internet key sharing) with real-time security operations.

Another obstacle is the user experience complexity: due to the multiple devices availability and particularly what we call the second screen, service providers need to leverage the connected nature of these devices in order to relieve this complexity. If you want an exclusive, committed relationship with your subscribers, you need to show them you care by paying attention and providing a persistent, personalized and consistent user experience.

We also believe that the growth in the entertainment industry is possible thanks to an effective business model. One major question today is “how to monetize OTT services”? How to increase revenues out of these services?

The OTT revolution has opened the door for new type of monetization opportunities and business models. At VO we introduced some of these models in our latest developments, such as context aware monetization, branding opportunities for via T-commerce (TV commerce) and advertising. The goal of these monetization methods is always to increase content consumption by the users and extend the purchasing offerings through a personalized and engaging experience.

2) What features should service providers focus on to convince consumers to sign up for new services?

Obviously it is important to bring consumers to sign up for new services but we believe that the main focus is to engage the consumers. Engaging the user will allow content providers to increase their revenues and create loyalty. Enhanced customer experience is addictive. Once customers are hooked on you, luring them away is a challenge!

Viaccess-Orca sees the engagement world* as the following building blocks:

The premium content protection through technologies such as CAS and DRM to enforce business rules and protect the value of this content for the Pay TV operators

The middleware or service delivery platform (SDP) as the first and most basic generation to allow for services such as VOD, EPG, etc.

The content discovery and personalization platform as a second generation, which will include recommendations, algorithms, and business rules smartly embedded into the service’s user interface.

And the engagement + enrichment platform which represents the next generation to deliver the ultimate engaging experience for the user.

Blending these building blocks into the service will take an operator’s service to the next level and ensure the highest level of loyalty and engagement of subscribers.

*Check our CEO blog post about it

3) How is your company helping to excel growth in the connected home in Europe?

With integrated products and innovative, business savvy solutions, Viaccess-Orca helps content service providers gain a competitive edge in this market of unmanaged networks and IP-connected devices. Since the user experience (UX) is a critical success factor for operators today, Viaccess-Orca’s solutions focus on delivering engaging experiences on all platforms for a new entertainment world. The company assists service providers in creating long term loyalty on the customer journey to discover, choose and consume content in a secure manner.

In order to help content providers /Pay TV operators to grow, VO proposes:

  • A comprehensive TVE solution offering a unified backend, along with an off-the-shelf suite of applications that create a secure, personalized and consistent user experience.
  • Personalized – intuitive, easy navigation customized for each screen, with integrated content discovery. Users can enjoy relevant and compelling content across their devices.
  • Support for managed and unmanaged (OTT) video delivery services – enabling end-to-end workflow management.
  • Advanced content and rights management – across all content types and device types, including usage of various video codecs and native DRM solutions.
  • A unique combination of Pay TV and IP video experience – Viaccess-Orca’s expertise guarantees a well-adapted solution, today and in the future
  • Solutions to monetize OTT services : the OTT revolution has opened the door for new types of monetization opportunities and business models. We introduced some of these models in our latest developments, such as context aware monetization, branding opportunities for via T-commerce (TV commerce) and advertising. The goal of these monetization methods is always to increase content consumption by the users and extend the purchasing offerings through a personalized experience – DEEP is a 2nd screen application, which compliments TV viewing by offering a unique way to discover content and explore themes related to the video service. DEEP’s UI enables an intuitive browsing among thousands of automatically created digital magazines about movies, TV shows, actors and themes. The magazines are engaging, interactive and rich in content, and are based on data aggregated from various quality enrichment partners. We use advanced technology to automatically identify the most interesting topics related to the TV content, thus transforming data into interesting stories to tell the magazine readers.
  • Delivering the right user experience : OTT services enable easy access to second screen apps and the ability to creatively. develop new concepts for content consumption that were once limited to the TV set only. Once an operator has a very strong and compelling second screen app, the engagement is increased by definition resulting in an improved experience for end-users and new monetization opportunities for operators.

4) What is one key issue that people can’t stop talking about regarding entertainment or smart home services?

Ref. question 1 :

  • Security / DRM
  • Consistent user experience across devices thanks to an intuitive user interface, enabling seamless viewing from one device to another.
  • Monetization