The Egyptian telecommunications market generated US$6.4 billion in service revenue in 2010, having grown at 21% CAGR over the previous two years, according to Pyramid Reserach. And, while this period represents the peak growth phase, Pyramid suggests the country will remain one of the fastest growing markets in Africa and the Middle East going forward, mainly due to the promise of increased mobile broadband penetration and the value added services that high speed internet access can bring. Point Topic identifies a similar trend, indicating that the mobile telephony and broadband segments are starting to overtake all other telecommunication segments in the country.
In this busy emerging African market, our Dreamgallery™ middleware solution will power IPTV services from Egyptian Advanced Multimedia Systems, an Egyptian provider of IPTV services. The Nilesat Satellite will be used to transmit the multicast streams and VOD content to Regional Headends in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf area, and EAMS project is expected to implement an average of 50 regional head ends every year for the first five years of operation.
After numerous successful deployments in Europe and mainly in developed markets, we are excited to extend our reach to offer Dreamgallery’s flexibility for regionalized administration and customization needed for this type of operator such as EAMS. Based on the dynamic nature of our platform and its ability to fit a variety of deployments, we look forward to helping more and more service providers to offer an exciting multimedia and content experience to viewers across the region.
After deploying our middleware platform all around Europe, in Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, Latvia, Scandinavia and Denmark, another Swedish broadband TV supplier has decided to adopt our Dreampark Dreamgallery™ middleware platform. Serverado chose Dreampark to replace the Swedish middleware provider called MultiVision, formerly Northport.
The Swedish TV company, Serverado AB, which provides its viewers with an open choice platform, has decided to replace its middleware with our Dreamgallery. Serverado customers can choose freely from the available contents offered, while enjoying our user-friendly and intuitive middleware. Serverado AB has signed with several content providers, enabling customers to choose freely from all of the available content it offers; this makes Serverado AB the supplier of a very wide range of contents through broadband TV here in Sweden. Serverado AB selected our Dreamgallery™ IPTV middleware solution, as their goal is to give the customers a user friendly platform with numerous features and advanced functionality.
For us here at Dreampark it is very clear why our middleware is a perfect fit for Serverado’s variety of contents, since both companies aspire to give TV consumers maximum flexibility in selecting content to watch. We hope to continue and bring the future TV experience to every home Serverado AB reaches. Our platform allows consumers to browse and search the content that interests them quickly and easily, conduct VOIP conversations, watch VOD and more.
We are confident that this partnership with Serverado AB will successfully achieve Serverado’s goal in delivering real user experience with our dynamic solution on their Open Choice platform. We hope that the work with a new company will bring new demands to our doors. By trying to fulfill market demands and consumer expectations our product evolves.
Taking a quick look around the Internet, from Twitter to blogs to sites like Television Without Pity, it’s clear that people love their TV. And second to wanting unlimited great content choices, they want to be able to find the content they want quickly and easily. The middleware’s job is to help users find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
First, the middleware needs to be proactive. Rather than waiting for the user to search for a specific program or topic, the middleware can incorporate recommendations and provide an attractive and engaging UI that captures the user’s interests and leads them to relevant content.
Second, middleware needs to be intuitive. Just as navigation on the computer and on websites with great design is natural and enjoyable, TV navigation should let users focus on what they want to watch rather than how to get to it.
Finally, middleware should be unobtrusive to the user. Everyone says they have great ease of usability, but the interface needs to be hardly noticeable to the subscribers to that they feel right at home when they sit down and begin browsing programs and channels. The user shouldn’t even think about navigating the interface as it works seamlessly to get them where they want to be. We believe there are no limits to what can be achieved and that middleware should be able to do anything that can be done on the web.
Keeping in mind that TV Middleware is constantly asked for increased functionality, it is also extremely important that there is a way for operators to extend the offering. At Dreampark for example, we aim to meet this challenge by combining our Dreamgallery Portal Generator, a web-based What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editor with a Software Development Kit, a set of tools that place the control right at the Operators fingertips. Dreamgallery middleware is dynamic so it doesn’t compromise speed or flexibility. We know it is important for our middleware to remember the end user and for that reason we keep it simple and intuitive for them to use. This will make it possible to launch new features matching the above criteria with an aggressive time to market.
This blog was also posted on the Official IBC 2010 Blog by Video Net News (on twitter: @videonetnews) and can be viewed here.
Author: Bjorn Lang, CTO
As the CTO of Dreampark, Bjorn has extensive experience from 20+ IPTV and hybrid deployments throughout EMEA.
IPTV Global growth is estimated to reach 50.5 million subscribers this year with revenues topping $12.2 billion, according to Multimedia Research Group (MRG). IPTV News says that IPTV services will reach 70 million subscribers in the next 4 years more than double the end-2009 total of 26 million. IPTV has made watching TV in the living room more dynamic with a more incredible user experience. The worldwide IPTV market has been growing at a rapid pace but this year the promise and potential for IPTV will really come forth, especially for Dreampark.
Dreampark has been celebrating the many successes that 2009 brought. Despite the recession that has gripped the world over the past year, in 2010 we plan to expand the company with new hires by 30% in order to meet the demands from existing customers and respond to new business opportunities.
Dreampark has seen a huge demand for its Next Generation Portal, scheduled for release in Q1 2010. The Next-Generation Portal Generator brings the Dreamgallery Middleware “What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get” graphical user interface to a new level giving operators full control of their TV portals for customization and regionalization. Allowing operators to see changes take effect in real time makes it easier than ever for them to create a business portal and push revenue generating opportunities to customers.
By 2014, IPTV penetration will be above 10% of TV households in 17 countries around the world, according to the report from IPTV News. At Dreampark, we’ll do our part by staying committed to being the most deployed IPTV Middleware in Europe.
IPTV is a just a technology, transferring video over IP. So, how can a technology, IPTV, become a part of a new consumer TV lifestyle? Can it change the way we relate to the TV or more importantly, how we interact with the TV.
We believe all the elements are in place and you will start to see them become a part of the IPTV offering and deliver a new TV lifestyle to the consumer.
Endless amounts of content: New capabilities such as Video on Demand (VOD), client and network PVR, web sites offering video and the availability of digital content are making the world flat. Content can be offered from any place on the globe at any time. The concept of channels and schedule is becoming almost meaningless to most TV consumers today.
Rich user experience: Goodbye to boring programming guides, hello to new visual guides. Users demand a great user experience from everything they do on TV. They have come to expect it. They want to navigate the TV the way they do on their computer. It must be clear, crisp end enjoyable. Operators who seek ways to differentiate their service offering will need flexible software and SDK to allow them to change every bit of the way their TV looks and feel.
Personalization: With vast content resources users will need new ways to navigate around. The holy-grail is search-less search. Smart recommendations, tags and subscribe-notify mechanisms will be the way to let users find what they want without typing a single word. A lot of intelligence is now invested in trying to guess your needs and help you find your needle in the pile of content.
New type of applications: Dreampark’s Portal Generator allows operators to easily evolve and to support fast introduction of new services. Using an intuitive What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editor will empower the operators to also customize and renew existing services and look and feel to keep the subscribers engaged with their offerings.
Blended services: IP infrastructure allows easy mixing of services from different domains. Voice, video, data and mobile can be stitched together to create new type of applications. Caller ID on TV, Informational widgets on TV and mobile picture to TV are just a few such examples.
Home networks: Multi-room TV and local programs, music and pictures will become a part of the household assets. See your household content wherever you like it, stop it in one room and continue in another or share a clip across all screens in the house is becoming a viable option with new standards for home networking.
Web 2.0: Communities, social networks, recommendation sharing and new types of user-generated content will all be part of the new wave of Internet applications. Expect to find many of these new ideas migrating from the computer to the IPTV environment and changing the way people interact with and consume their TV services.
Any device: TV on any device is a worldwide mantra. You will someday be able to see your TV on PC, Mobile or any device you can imagine and do it anywhere in the world.
As we have stressed, IPTV has what it takes to become a new and incredible experience for TV watching. While some of these elements above will be available only in the future, they still represent the powerful benefits that IPTV can bring to the television viewing experience. Dreampark is on the edge of innovation with its own Dreamgallery™ middleware to help operators make IPTV a more dynamic and user friendly experience. Dreampark remains committed to providing user friendliness, openness, flexibility and a unique TV application feel.
Dreampark’s first-class IPTV middleware and television applications have been the preferred choice by many television operators in Europe. Today these operators are exploring a new alternative in television viewing. Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming enables viewers to watch more of their favorite shows or programs via multimedia and open public networks.
OTT is considered the latest solution in streaming media and telecommunications networks and allows for a broader scope of television, video content and social media offerings to subscribers. It facilitates multi-platform TV offering, as well as those service providers who do not have access to the appropriate network infrastructure but aim to provide continuous content directly to existing and prospective customers. Building comprehensive entertainment services has to be carried out using guaranteed standards, while at the same time adapting to new technologies and viewer demands.
Dreampark is committed to provide an integrated OTT solution as a new offering available via Dreamgallery™, our software suite. With such developments in television viewing, service providers, telcos and MSOs alike, would benefit from utilizing the flexibility and adaptability of Dreampark’s products in order to provide the best possible solutions to their subscribers.
Post by: Marcus Bristav, Head of Research & Chief Architect, Dreampark
One of the tricky aspects for vendors providing TV portals in the digital TV industry is the fact that the technology that is developed and introduced to the market affects the various players in the chain, as well as the end customer, of course, who is portrayed in each and every one of us. Each time a new feature or service is contemplated for the TV middleware, numerous considerations are involved; technological feasibility, complexity and integration efforts, user demand for the specific service, and pricing strategies, just to name a few.
The technological hurdles are relatively easily resolved. Operator flexibility and performance are maximized by taking advantage of the powers of open standards, such as HTML and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), to give operators full control of their TV portals for customization and regionalization. The same thing applies for integration when working with a leading vendor, whose TV middleware is pre-integrated with a wide range of set-top boxes, video servers and CA/DRM systems. The most challenging factor remains: how to increase user adoption of new interactive services and willingness to pay for these services. In order for the new service to be appealing to the customer, it has to bring an added value, or a new type of entertainment that has not yet been introduced. Another important element is the ease in which the user can experiment with the service and start using it. Complicated menus or unclear instructions are bound to deter viewers from adopting new services.
Current standard offering as far as TV middleware is concerned, have gone a long way since the inception of digital TV, yet a lot of services remain underdeveloped and untapped. These include gaming applications, mobile PVR and more. Consider being able to exercise PVR control with mobile devices, giving you the possibility to use a web page or a mobile device to remotely control a PVR Set Top Box in your home. Additional appealing features are personal channel lists, start over functionality and more.
Advanced television and broadband video services will flourish and influence the next generation of entertainment applications only if enough consideration is given to user demands. After all, increasing customer willingness to pay for advanced television features and for a personalized TV experience will further drive the evolution of digital TV, and the operators’ incentive to invest in introducing these services.
Dreamgallery™ middleware platform. Serverado chose Dreampark to replace the Swedish middleware provider called MultiVision, formerly Northport.
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