What is ONTV?

ONTV provides an end-to-end platform that allows broadcasters to optimise and upgrade their current offering by combining their OTT and broadcast solutions into a single, state of the art, UI.

Based on 4 modular components, a low-cost STB, a remote control transferred into an advanced remote app by integrating a SDK, and a powerful and flexible backend, ONTV provides both a basic zapper for unconnected STBs as well as a fully connected solution with incredible interactivity between the components for a next-gen TV experience. ONTV can also plug to already deployed solutions and all the modules are available independently according to broadcasters requirements.

What spurred the concept?

Innovative SVOD players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu backed by advanced tech solutions have shifted the way the audience consumes content. Personalised environment, advanced content suggestion, in-depth search and many other craved features are now part of the standard experience. With regular OS updates and new models coming out every year, mobile devices now allow more possibilities and help drive these changes at a quicker pace.

Despite access to an unrivalled content diversity provided by hundreds of channels and licensed VOD content, broadcasters environments seem to remain under huge constraints. First of all, the race for ever more complex STBs puts operators under heavy pressure to guarantee commercial success and profitability. More complex boxes then automatically leads to stiff and less secure environments quickly ramping up maintenance requirements, which were already naturally increased by handling another environment in parallel in the OTT app.

So in a market where adaptability and pace are becoming the main competitive advantages in order to keep up with new market trends, broadcasters do not seem agile enough and geared with the right tools to remain competitive and ultimately attract new generations to guarantee future successes.

Therefore, how can broadcasters finally take back advantage of their great video quality and access to editorial rich content as well as leveraging an easier implementation of 4K?

How does ONTV help broadcasters?

ONTV built a solution with the broadcasters in mind and aimed at providing all the tools required to continually upgrade subscribers’ experience and solve the content discovery problem linked to traditional linear TV.

In three distinct phases, ONTV helps broadcasters merge all their environments into one single experience that includes Linear TV, OTT and VOD services to both expand subscribers benefits and business models:

Simplify STBs to improve agility

Stripped out of the application layer and thus the heavy and memory consuming elements, ONTV STB acts like a very simple zapper box. The interface is transferred into the remote application for smartphones allowing to both create an experience much closer to current consumption modes as well as making the whole environment more agile. Service updates, new features implementations, new content integration etc… are much simpler to handle from an app point of view rather than when directly hosted into the STB.

Unify all your offering into a state of the art UI

As all the interface has now been moved from the STB into the remote application, merging OTT services and linear TV becomes much simpler. Maintenance is greatly optimised as well and heavy investments into user acquisition for OTT services can now widely benefit all parts of the offering.

Check out how ONTV UX can help your subscribers find content allowing to both increase engagement and retention here.

Extend your offer & Develop new business models

Personal usage of the remote app creates opportunities for targeted and synchronised advertising on the second screen, referenced products, in-depth granular analytics for media groups and many more…
With more leeway on revenue streams also comes the flexibility to rethink relationships with content providers and create new business models that accommodate both sides of the table.

Why is ONTV a no brainer

Agility

Moving the intelligence from the STB to the remote app, ONTV created the most agile solution on the market. Any component is available independently while the whole lot together provides much more powerful tools to help upgrade your solution. From regular feature updates all the way down to bundling features into subscriptions, your offering always adapts to customers’ requirements. Smoothly transition and expand your offer and let it evolve effortlessly with new market trends.

Cost-Efficient

Specifically created to alleviate broadcasters pain points, ONTV also strongly improves both:

CAPEX: A very light middleware in the Set-Top Box directly helps reduce the production costs while the comprehensiveness of ONTV solution alleviates broadcasters from long and risky development phases to create complex Set-Top Boxes.

OPEX: Merging the whole environment navigation into one single app, ONTV also optimises typical workflows compared to maintaining both the OTT app and the STB environments. A simpler software means less security challenges and patch updates compared to Android TV or other open source solutions. And finally, collecting meaningful data and implementing new features also benefit from a centralised solution which fully integrates with your existing systems.

Analytics

Granular analytics regarding content consumption, user journeys and profiles will provide broadcasters with invaluable insights about their subscribers’ behaviours and help them get a clear view on usage and potential improvements of their offering.

Security

ONTV is a proprietary solution built on trusted hardware chain. Its simplified software architecture drastically reduces the surface for attacks. It is by essence a secured platform, more hermetic to external threats (malware, spyware, repurpose, etc…) than any open source solution.

Time to market

Thanks to off-the-shelf features, a turnkey app and a simplified middleware build, ONTV provides a ready-to-deploy solution drastically reducing time to market down to 6 months. Quality assurance (QA) and key pre-certifications are included.

In summary

By involving the smartphone into the consumption journey, ONTV not only provides much simpler tools for customers to find and watch content, it also creates a major stepping stone for broadcasters to expand the audio-visual experience in a more interactive way. Thanks to the second screen, new services around the content can easily be implemented to offer a whole new dimension when watching TV.

In addition to improving their customers experience, operators get access to in depth granular analytics enabled by the individual usage of the remote app. TV content suggestion becomes more accurate and a better segmentation is available to increase customers’ behaviour understanding.

The final benefit for broadcasters then lies in the ease of access to the solution. Moving the intelligence away from the STB allows to drastically decrease the cost of production making it one of the cheapest boxes available. The time to market is also significantly reduced and thus offers operators an efficient solution in all aspects.

Download the brochure or get in touch with us, we would be thrilled to discuss with you.

More case studies: Broadcaster without OTT services, how ONTV help broadcasters’ transition?