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.
We’re getting ready to fly over to London for IPTV World Forum next week. We were asked to write a guest blog for the IPTV World Forum official Show Blog on VideoNet (@videonetnews). It got us thinking about what all the operators out there need to do to differentiate themselves. Below is the blog we wrote with our thoughts about it (also on the VideoNet Official IPTV World Forum blog.
Flexibility is essential for operators and the middleware they use has to coexist with the STB, video server, encoder and other solutions that the operator is using. The need for a flexible interface is a necessity. The ability to support rapid development and add new hot features for the subscriber is the biggest concern for IPTV operators.
Some middleware vendors didn’t come from an IPTV background and they had to adapt for IPTV, sometimes at the expense of operators’ flexibility. We’ve noticed a trend where operators who already have one of these types of middleware solutions needs more flexible front-end solutions to integrate with their middleware providers’ back-end. Operators having a first generation middleware solution or a customized solution are often lacking the flexibility of doing changes in the portal, adding new applications or even to customizing the User Interface. This becomes increasingly important when competition among operators is getting tougher.
IPTV operators are confronted increased competition from cable and satellite. They are discovering that they need to add differentiating factors to attract and keep customers. What is lacking in most solutions is an administration tool that addresses this task and allows the Operator to be in control of both the Look-and-Feel and also the contents of the Portal.
Dreampark sees this opportunity for IPTV middleware solutions to create the most flexible solution available in order to help operators offer the best service to subscribers. We’ve taken the system one step further by allowing the operator to see the changes take effect in real-time on the actual device that is used by the subscribers, which they have noted is very important to them. Once the verification is done the Operator may publish the new additions and/or changes to all subscribers. Dreampark calls this “What-you-see-is-what-you-get.” Operators need to be able to create a business portal and push revenue generating opportunities to customers without a lot of help from the middleware provider. And, it’s easiest for them to do this if they can see what things will look like as they are adding to the portal in real-time.
Come visit us in Stand #169 at IPTV World Forum in London on March 23-25. We’ll be talking about our Front End solution designed to help operators get the maximum flexibility. Our front-end solution allows operators that already have a middleware solution in place to add new services in real-time and to really see what they are getting and exactly how it will look for the user. Operators running DreamgalleryTM software may fully control the business portal.
Visitors to IPTV World Forum will be able to demonstrate this solution and see how easily changes can be made to the Middleware instantly.
If you are interested in a meeting, please send an email to exhibition@dreampark.com.
If you are media or an analyst and would like to get a briefing from Dreampark at IPTV World Forum, please contact our PR representatives,
Alex Crabb or Jennifer Hicks at:
+1-617.956.2214 or +33 6 84 47 80 42
Alex@theinkstudio.com or Jennifer@theinkstudio.com
Twitter: alexcrabb and jennalee
Make sure you follow @DreamparkTV on twitter to get all our latest updates from the IPTV World Forum show floor and the inside scoop on whats happening inside our booth!
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.
In the complex world of broadband television, there is no single component that has as much impact on the success and cost-effectiveness of a service as the middleware. The selection of the middleware platform is a key milestone in service roll out success.
The role of middleware is essentially to serve up the user interface, connect client devices, video servers and encoders, provide the administration interface, implement the business logic, store and submit the usage information, interface with the legacy systems (billing, CRM, authentication, NMS) and offer a platform to sustain a completely reliable service. Middleware maintains the equilibrium between stabilizing a mission-critical service with zero-tolerance for failure and simultaneously supporting a dynamic service allowing operators to incorporate new STBs, new video servers, new business rules and applications.
We’ve noticed a trend where operators who already have a middleware solution need more flexible front-end solutions to integrate with their middleware providers’ back-end. Operators having a first generation middleware solution or a customized solution are often lacking the flexibility of doing changes in the portal, adding new applications or even to customizing the User Interface etc. This becomes increasingly important when competition among operators is getting tougher.
Operators need to be able to add and change applications. What is lacking in most solutions is an administration tool that addresses this task and allows the Operator to be in control of both the Look-and-Feel and also the contents of the Portal. The Dreamgallery™ system takes this one step further in allowing the Operator to see the changes take effect in real-time on the actual Device that is used by the subscribers. Once the verification is done the Operator may publish the new additions and/or changes to all subscribers.Dreampark calls this “What-you-see-is-what-you-get.” Operators need to be able to create a business portal and push revenue generating opportunities to customers without a lot of help from the middleware provider. And, it’s easiest for them to do this if they can see what things will look like as they are adding to the portal in real-time.
Dreampark has taken the opportunity to create a front-end solution that will allow operators that already have a middleware solution in place to add new services in real-time and to really see what they are getting and exactly how it will look for the user. Operators running Dreamgallery™ software may fully control the business portal. This is could be the best thing to ever happen to an operator with regards to middleware. Freedom and flexibility is everything.
Post By: Bjorn Lang, chief technology officer, Dreampark
Dreamgallery™ middleware platform. Serverado chose Dreampark to replace the Swedish middleware provider called MultiVision, formerly Northport.
