Arris and (in a roundabout way) Charter Communications are supplying some technology that’s helping to drive a new locally-focused video offering from Sling TV, Dish Network's OTT-TV service for cord-cutters.
Cue the Bill Murray: It's another example of strange bedfellows and "coopetition" in the rapidly-shifting pay TV landscape.
ActiveVideo, the cloud video company acquired last year for $135 million via an Arris-Charter J.V., is enabling an app from The Weather Channel for Sling TV that delivers hundreds of unique weather programs that are being distributed over IP, Bruce McClelland, president of Network & Cloud and Global Services at Arris, said Wednesday at the company’s Investor Day in New York.
McClelland didn’t offer up much additional technical detail, but the offering likely uses ActiveVideo’s Cloud TV technology, which is also underpinning a next-gen video offering from Charter that features a new cloud-based UI.
As for the service being enabled at Sling TV, it certainly ties into Local Now (the image above comes from RokuGuid.com) , a new, currently ad-free channel from The Weather Channel that provides current, localized news, weather, sports and traffic updates on a local level, and localizes those feeds based on the Sling TV customer’s IP address.
Sling TV recently extended its Local Now service to Roku devices, complementing existing support on other platforms such as the Amazon Fire TV, Android mobile devices, Android TV products, the Google Chromecast and Web browsers. Support for Local Now on other platforms, such as the Xbox One, iPhones, iPads and the Channel Master DVR+ product are on deck.
