Video technology vendor ActiveVideo has announced that Cable Bahamas will deploy its cloud-based, virtualized pay TV delivery system.

San Jose, California-based ActiveVideo is jointly owned by CommScope and Charter Communications. The latter uses the company’s CloudTV platform as the foundation of its Spectrum Guide video service, which virtualizes set-top processing and functions in the cloud, allowing operators to deliver next-generation TV experiences even to older set-tops.

ActiveVideo’s solution leverages Zodiac Systems’ software, including the Zodiac Stack set-top box software and Zodiac Matrix cloud integration platform, and is integrated with Minerva’s service management platform and client presentation engine. The end-to-end solution is branded REVGOPlay by Cable Bahamas.

“Our collaboration with ActiveVideo allows us to deliver world-class services across the Bahamas, by maximizing our existing capex and rapidly migrating our entire subscriber base to an advanced UI without needing to ship a new device to each and every home,” said John Gomez, COO of Cable Bahamas. "The flexibility of our virtualized platform will support agile and cost-effective growth as we introduce new services and devices.”

At the IBC Show in Amsterdam in September, ActiveVideo said that 18 million pay TV customers were using its cloud-based technology.

At that time, Charter issued a statement, seemingly aimed at reminding everyone that it’s still using ActiveVideo tech.

“Spectrum Guide has been deployed to millions of set-top boxes across our footprint providing a reliable, modern navigation experience, and virtualization has been key to that success,” said Jake Perlman, senior VP of software development at Charter. “Working with ActiveVideo allowed us to realize the promises of virtualization, deploy a world-class, next-generation TV service at scale and have a flexible platform that supports new features and services.”

However, Charter executives have conceded that they’re looking at Comcast’s X1 and are considering a white-label license of the video technology, similar to the one used by Cox Communications. 

ActiveVideo Networks, the technology company behind Charter’s Spectrum Guide cloud-based video delivery system, is expanding its act for pay TV operators who want to enable their customers to use Android-based OTT apps.

The San Jose, California-based tech company, jointly purchased in 2015 by Charter and Arris for $135 million, has announced the launch of AppCloud, a new cloud based video delivery system that allows users to tap into OTT apps based on Android APK, no matter how much in the way of computing resources their set-top has.

In Europe and, increasingly in the U.S., pay TV operators have been sating the subscribers’ desire for OTT apps by deploying thin-client, Android TV-based hybrid QAM/IP set-tops, which allow operators to deliver managed network services while simultaneously allowing the customer to tap into any OTT app found in the Google Play store.

Debuting at the IBC Show in Amsterdam this week, ActiveVideo’s AppCloud takes the concept one step further — now, the operator doesn't even have to replace the legacy set-tops.

ActiveVideo’s technology is based on having all app processing done in the cloud — what appears on the user’s TV is actually MPEG video virtualization fo the user interface generated in the cloud … and not the actual user interface.

“There are thousands of Android-based TV apps available today, and with ActiveVideo AppCloud, we bring an immediate breadth of TV apps to the operator,” said Jeff Miller, ActiveVideo CEO, in a statement. “Service providers can...maintain direct relationships with their subscribers, expand the services they offer, and drive new digital advertising approaches with the ActiveVideo AppCloud framework.

Notably, Charter has been in the market with Spectrum Guide since 2014. The cable operator put out a press release Thursday reminding everyone that ActiveVideo’s technology is already available in “millions” of its subscribers' homes. (In its IBC press release, ActiveVideo noted that it is already “delivering virtualized content in 18 million set-top devices.)

“Spectrum Guide has been deployed to millions of set-top boxes across our footprint providing a reliable, modern navigation experience, and virtualization has been key to that success,” said Jake Perlman, senior VP of software development at Charter. “Working with ActiveVideo allowed us to realize the promises of virtualization, deploy a world-class, next-generation TV service at scale and have a flexible platform that supports new features and services.”

Metrological and ActiveVideo, a joint venture of Arris and Charter Communications, said they are working together on a platform that enables pay TV operators to integrate OTT fare on existing set-top boxes.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

The technology link-up, they said, will give service providers the ability to deploy OTT content and advanced interfaces to older set-tops that “have limited resources and lack full HTML5 support.”

Early on, two operators in the Caribbean and Latin America region plan to launch the integrated solution next year, they said. They didn’t identify those operators, but Liberty Puerto Rico is among ActiveVideo’s existing customers in that region. Metrological, meanwhile, has already teamed up with Liberty Global to help the operator bring Netflix to IP-capable set-top boxes. Comcast has a similar agreement with Metrological. 

RELATED: Liberty Puerto Rico Socializes The UI

The vendors said the coming joint solution will tie together ActiveVideo’s CloudTV product with the Metrological Application Platform. They plan to demo the joint offering at this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo at the Metrological booth (#1638). 

“By leveraging the cloud to virtualize CPE functions, we enable operators to quickly deploy and easily manage new OTT services on the millions of STBs that already are in the field,” Joroen Ghijsen, Metrological’s CEO, said in a statement.

 “Working with Metrological gives operators a new way to unify the customer experience across their entire CPE footprint, by using cloud-based technology to bring the latest OTT content and applications to their subscribers,” added Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo.

Zodiac Interactive and ActiveVideo are pitching a joint solution that, they claim, can help pay TV of all sizes bring a next-gen interface/experience to any installed set-top box.

They said the joint offering builds on prior customer-specific ActiveVideo-Zodiac collaborations. Notably, Charter Communications’s Spectrum Guide for legacy set-tops as well as newer ones with IP connectivity use both ActiveVideo and Zodiac technologies. ActiveVideo operates as a joint venture of  Charter and Arris.

RELATED: Arris, Charter Close $135M ActiveVideo Acquisition

The joint solution being introduced this week and timed with the IBC show in Amsterdam, combines the cloud virtualization capabilities of ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform with Zodiac’s PowerUp Stack software and AMS cloud platform.

Cable Bahamas, which delivers service to about 250,000 set-top boxes, is on board to rollout the new joint solution in the second quarter of 2018, and will include a mosaic guide that displays live content from multiple channels, and unify an experience across multiple devices.

“Using the integrated solution, small or large pay-TV operators around the world can deliver the industry’s most advanced services to every subscriber in a matter of months,” Zodiac CEO Brandon Brown said in a statement.

ActiveVideo, the cloud video joint venture of Arris and Charter Communications, said it has notched a deal to help Japan’s J:COM roll out a new “web-like” VOD interface for the operator’s already deployed set-top boxes.

They said the new user experience will feature snappier response times and integrate personalized searches, without requiring J:COM to change out its set-top boxes.

J:COM is enabling it using ActiveVideo’s virtualized CloudTV GuideCast technology, which renders the HTML5 user interface in the cloud and delivers it to boxes as an MPEG video stream that can be supported by QAM-only or IP-capable boxes that are outfitted with the CloudTV Nano client module.

RELATED: ActiveVideo Gives VTR’s VOD Platform a Boost

The J:COM deployment is a significant one for ActiveVideo, which was acquired in 2015 by an Arris-Charter joint venture and also works with other MVPDs such as Altice USA, Liberty Global and Deutsche Telekom. Arris holds a 65% of the J.V. and serves as the sales channel for ActiveVideo's CloudTV platform outside of sales to Charter.

RELATED: Arris, Charter Close $135M ActiveVideo Acquisition

J:COM serves about 5.28 million homes in the Sapporo, Sendai, Kanto, Kansai, and Kyushu-Yamaguchi regions. It's been a known customer of ActiveVideo's, but today's announcement marks the deployment phase of their relationship.

“The user interface is the customer’s point of entry to our on-demand library,” said Masaaki Agaya, GM, service planning division at J:COM, in a statement. “The power of the cloud has enabled us to offer our subscribers a next-generation UX that overnight is opening the door to engaging new viewing experiences on the same familiar set-top boxes.”

“J:COM’s success is further proof of how STB virtualization allows operators to rapidly transform user experiences for every subscriber by enabling delivery of faster, larger and more intuitive user experiences,” added Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo.

VTR, the Chile-based MSO and Liberty Global subsidiary, said VOD usage has doubled after deploying a new user interface for new and old set-tops based on ActiveVideo’s cloud-powered platform.

The new UI features richer graphics, plus the ability for subscribers to search for shows and movies by genre, actor or title.  The ActiveVideo platform, which relies on a cloud-based browser and a small set-top client, is now supported on boxes serving about 95% of VTR’s customers with digital TV.

Since the launch of the new VOD UI, which is now available to more than 1 million VTR customers, on-demand views have risen by 138% year-over-year, alongside an 11% bump in the number of customers that access VOD, and an 83% rise in views per subscriber, according to the companies.

“It just shows that UX [user experience] matters,” Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo, said, noting that the new UI was deployed across VTR’s footprint in a period of about four months.

ActiveVideo’s work with VTR follows other deployments with Liberty Global properties, including Ziggo, which is using the vendor’s platform for a new VOD UI for legacy boxes, the implementation of a mosaic guide with Liberty Puerto Rico, and enabling YouTube to run on set-tops deployed by UPC in Hungary.

ActiveVideo is jointly owned by Arris and Charter Communications, which is using the vendor’s platform to underpin a new cloud-based Spectrum Guide that will be supported by the MSO’s full complement of set-tops.

Charter Communications has expanded the rollout of Spectrum Guide, its cloud-based user interface that relies on ActiveVideo technology to deliver it to older QAM-locked set-tops as well as its newer IP-capable devices.

Charter said it has introduced Spectrum Guide to video subs in Fort Worth, Texas; Reno, Nev.; and St. Louis, Mo., and that it will soon start to launch its new World Box, a platform that will support the new UI, an array of apps, and feature a downloadable security platform. Technicolor, which acquired Cisco Systems’ CPE business in November 2015, and Humax are the known suppliers of the World Box.

Speaking Thursday on Charter’s Q1 call, company CEO Tom Rutledge said the MSO expects to have the UI rolled out to most legacy Charter markets by the end of 2016.

“It continues to scale well, and is resonating with consumers,” he said.

He said managing the all-digital transition of the acquired systems will be a “key priority,” hopeful that Charter can complete the process across all 36 million homes passed by TWC and Bright House by the end of 2018. Charter is still working on the rollout plan of Spectrum Guide in the acquired systems, Rutledge said.

Early into the all-digital process after the deals close, Charter will “briefly pause” new digital rollouts in the legacy and newly acquired systems, and then restart the effort by deploying two-way set-tops everywhere, and discontinuing the deployment of one-way Digital Transport Adapters (DTAs), Rutledge said.

TWC has been using DTAs, which don’t inherently support two-way services like VOD, to help fuel its all-digital initiative. Charter will remove DTAs from the market “in a natural way” as new customers sign up for service and existing ones upgrade, Rutledge said. “We’re not going to force them out.”

On the call, Charter was also asked to discuss the advantage of the ActiveVideo joint venture with Arris (the J.V. acquired ActiveVideo in mid-2015, with Arris nabbing a 65% stake).

Charter EVP and CFO Chris Winfrey called it a “productive relationship,” noting that Charter is treated as an “independent third-party vendor inside the relationship with ActiveVideo” with the ability to see inside the product pipeline and have some oversight on product development.

“That ActiveVideo technology platform allows us to use existing set-top boxes and put a state-of-the-art user interface on those already deployed boxes and not have to replace those boxes, so that they essentially become state-of-the-art boxes,” Rutledge added. “That’s the capital advantage of having that vendor relationship.”

During the call, Rutledge also discussed some other operational efforts that are bearing fruit. In Q1, Charter saw a 15% year-on-year reduction in billing and service calls, and a 19% reduction in service truck roll volume. About 80% of service truck rolls at Charter are now insourced, up from 50% in 2012, he said, adding that call center activity is now 90% insourced.

In April, Charter added an electronic disconnect capability in lieu of physical truck rolls. That is also helping Charter to scale its self-install practices, Rutledge said. 

Almost a year after the deal was announced, Cablevision Systems said it has begun to distribute Hulu, the over-the-top subscription-based video service, to the MSO's Optimum TV customers. 

Under the integration, subs can access Hulu via the Optimum TV interactive program guide on channel 605 via "all current-generation set top boxes." 

Cablevision is distributing Hulu to the set-top using ActiveVideo’s CloudTV StreamCast, which that converts user interfaces, video and other content from Web formats to formats that can be rendered and displayed by non-IP or incompatible IP set-tops. UPC Hungary, for example, is also using StreamCast to offer YouTube and other apps on set-tops. ActiveVideo is now part of a joint venture of Arris and Charter Communications formed last year.

Cablevision subs with Hulu subscriptions can access it on the set-top using their credentials. Those without a Hulu account are in line with a free trial and can also subscribe to it via channel 605 or by logging in to optimum.net (a Web page dedicated to the offering is here). Hulu offers two services – one with limited commercials for $7.99 per month and a commercial-free option for $11.99 per month, but the Cablevision-Hulu site currently references only the $7.99 tier. 

Financial terms of the Cablevision-Hulu distribution deal were not announced, including how much of a cut Cablevision will get from Hulu subscriptions it helps to generate. 

The Hulu addition comes amid Cablevision's distribution deal for HBO Now, the premium programmer’s $14.99 per month standalone OTT service that launched a year ago today, and the MSO’s  introduction of service packages tailored for cord-cutters.

Cablevision is the first MVPD to integrate Hulu at the set-top level. Hulu has also announced distribution deals with several other MVPDs and ISPs,  including AT&T, Armstrong, Atlantic Broadband, Mediacom Communications, Midcontinent Communications and WideOpenWest (WOW!).

“As Hulu’s first cable distribution partner, Optimum is pleased to also be the first provider to offer the unique ability to access Hulu directly from the program guide,” said Tom Montemagno, Cablevision’s executive vice president of programming, in a statement. “This new delivery of Hulu, facilitated by ActiveVideo cloud technology, provides Optimum customers with a truly unparalleled experience when accessing their cable and Hulu subscriptions from their television.”

“We are thrilled that Optimum customers can now access Hulu’s content library without having to leave their cable TV environment” addedTim Connolly, SVP of distribution and strategic partnerships at Hulu. “We are pleased to partner with Cablevision and ActiveVideo to bring Hulu’s breadth and depth of content and experience to Optimum TV customers.” 

“Today’s announcement of the integration of Hulu into the Cablevision Optimum TV experience shows how both online services and pay-TV are continuing to sharpen the user experience to provide the most inviting environment available,” ActiveVideo’s chief marketing officer Murali Nemani explained in this blog post that provides a bit more background on the integration, its use of cloud virtualization, and how it bridges Hulu’s digital rights management format and Cablevision’s conditional access system.

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.

Industry analyst Craig Moffett remains a big fan of Charter Communications’s cloud-based video strategy, agreeing with the MSO’s notion that the plan, which relies heavily on ActiveVideo’s platform, will enable the operator to significantly reduce capital spending, particularly at the set-top level.

Moffett, principal and senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, placed an emphasized on that approach in a report on Charter’s capex prospects as the operator pushes ahead with its proposed acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

Moffett said “the most interesting number” in Charter’s pro forma projections for those deals is 11.8% -- the MSO’s “aggressive” pro forma capital intensity forecast for 2019E.

“Charter sees the number not as a short term blip but instead as an indication of a fundamentally different long-term capital intensity profile for the business,” he wrote.

Moffett, which has raised his price target on Charter to $230 to $210, believes that projection for lower capex intensity is “plausible” for Charter, “at least for the residential segment of their business.” For its part, MoffettNathanson’s own analysis of Charter envisions a 12.2% capital intensity, slightly above Charter’s forecast.

A big part of that decrease in capex intensity centers on Charter’s plan to move toward a cloud-based approach with ActiveVideo’s technology (an Arris-Charter joint venture acquired ActiveVideo in May for $135 million) that will allow the MSO to offer its new Spectrum UI and new apps across its footprint to both new IP-capable, such as its emerging Worldbox, as well as to legacy QAM-based boxes that don’t speak IP.

“[W]e believe Charter’s aggressive software and cloud-based approach will lead to a dramatic reduction in…CPE spending,” Moffett noted. “The potential capex savings from the transition from a hardware-based platform to a software-based one appears to be genuine, and make us incrementally more bullish on Cable, particularly on Charter.”

By comparison, he said Comcast, which has conducted some trials with ActiveVideo but has not committed to anything beyond that, will also enjoy a reduction in CPE capex as it expands the reach of the X1 platform, but that Comcast’s approach, which centers on the deployment of IP-capable devices, “will remain more capital intensive than Charter’s.”

Moffett also outlined the four “key” components of a cloud-based guide build: the server costs, seen as the most expensive element, as well as engineering/installation costs, network upgrade costs and app development costs.

With that as the basis, he estimates $2 billion in five-year total capex for a cloud-based guide build compared to $8.4 billion – a 77% reduction in capex -- for IP-enabled boxes for a company the size of pro format Charter.

Speaking on Charter’s Q3 call in October, president and CEO Tom Rutledge noted that Charter was about six weeks behind its original rollout schedule as the MSO irons out software issues.

While that pushes Charter’s prior target of launching its new cloud-powered UI to 1.6 million boxes by the end of the year, “a delay of only six weeks for a footprint-wide rollout should be viewed as very good news,” Moffett said, adding that Charter could have a fully interactive UI in front of all its customer within a couple of years.

Looking ahead, Moffett believes that cable will gain video share thanks to improved platforms and experiences. As for pro forma Charter, he sees it adding about 130,000 net video subs in 2019E. 

Net2TV, the company behind the Portico TV service for Roku players, smart TVs and browsers, confirmed that the company is seeking a sale of its engineering platform and intellectual property.

Portico TV is a free, ad-supported streaming-TV service that features full-length shows (stitched together from a database of video clips) from brands such as Time, Newsy, Popular Science, Sports Illustrated and Cooking Light. Portico TV recently joined the Opera TV Store, giving it access to connected devices from Sony, Hisense and TiVo, and building on its reach on Roku players, Amazon Fire TV, tablets, smartphones and PC browsers.

Net2TV had also struck a deal to gain distribution on Arris’s set-top box platform via its OTT “market,” and, as  Net2TV CEO and founder Tom Morgan told Next TV in this Q&A (subscription required), the company was working on some deals with MVPDs.

But despite being available on 40 million screens, Portico TV found it challenging to build and scale an audience.

“We felt we did a very good job curating [content] and proving the point that you could take digital-first stuff and turn it into quality programming,” Morgan said Friday.

The challenge, he said, was how to distribute that content in app stores on smart TVs.

“That proved much harder than we thought,” Morgan said. “We thought that the stellar brands we were using could cut through a lot of the clutter. And there's a lot more to it than just that. Building audience is still the name of the game." 

And gaining attention and eyeballs amid a sea of apps remains a big challenge for all OTT providers. Securing proximity to the most popular apps certainly helps.

While viewing Roku as “by far the best in the industry” when it comes to building an audience due to its promotional capabilities, Morgan said Portico TV, which is still operating, had “stellar performance” on the Philips TV platform because the service was “one button away from Netflix.”

“We came to a conclusion. you either had to have an existing media business -- a local television station , a network , a media property -- or you had to have a large pool of resources like what Jason Kilar's doing (with Vessel, which has raised more than $134 million)…and go with heavy digital spend,” Morgan said.

Net2TV tried to create a software-as-a-service platform, but found that it’s not set up to be an enterprise company. “We just ran out of runway,” Morgan said.

Net2TV is close to a sale, expecting to complete it next month, but isn’t discussing who it’s in talks with. However, the aim is to sell its IP and engineering platform, which includes a curation and playlist system and a content management system. Morgan also hopes to find a buyer that’s interested in taking over the Portico TV service as well. The content libraries developed for Portico TV are expected to go back to Net2TV’s partners.

Net2TV hasn’t said how much it had raised, but the company, founded in 2012, was funded by Gary Lauder Partners, which sold ActiveVideo to a joint venture of Arris and Charter Communications earlier this year for $135 million. Net2TV also uses ActiveVideo’s cloud video platform.  Morgan said Lauder was “patient and supportive” with Net2TV.  

Before Net2TV started to push for a sale, one of the things it was working on was adapting its platform to support more localized syndications.

Interestingly, Net2TV’s OTT platform did not lean heavily on adaptive bit rate, a technique that allows the bit rate and resolution of a stream to adjust based on the available bandwidth. Morgan, who is late of ABR pioneer Move Networks (acquired by EchoStar in 2011), said the networks and video players are getting good enough to eschew ABR.

“What we found is that the play-listing and sequencing of a series of videos and…ad insertion were more important,” Morgan said of what Net2TV had learned. 

Liberty Global used the IBC confab to show off Horizon Lite, a version of its next-gen video platform that’s made to run on older set-top boxes that don’t support IP connections.

According to Broadband TV News, Horizon Lite will be introduced in some of Liberty Global’s central and eastern Europe systems.  The approach should allow Liberty Global to rapidly expand the reach of its Horizon platform on older boxes even as it continues to deploy new, IP-capable gateways.

The image of the Horizon Lite demo shown above was supplied to Multichannel News by a person in attendance at IBC in Amsterdam.

On its Q2 call, Liberty Global said it added 62,000 new Horizon TV subs in the period, and that it had added almost 600,000 new subs to the platform over the prior 12 month period. It ended the quarter with nearly 4 million “next-gen TV setups,” a figure that factors in Liberty Global’s deployment of TiVo-powered devices.

The report also speculated that Horizon Lite will rely on cloud TV technology from ActiveVideo that can support advanced services and interfaces buy delivering them to boxes in an MPEG stream.  ActiveVideo declined to comment. Liberty Global has been asked to comment on the technical underpinnings of Horizon Lite and the MSO’s rollout plan.

But ActiveVideo and Liberty Global have some business history. UPC Hungary, a unit of Liberty Global, is using ActiveVideo to deliver YouTube to older set-top boxes. Liberty Puerto Rico is also using the vendor's tech for a Social Content Navigator that presents a slate of live TV channels based on their popularity using near real-time viewership data.

Support for Horizon Lite would represent a big win for ActiveVideo, which was acquired in May for $135 million through a joint venture of Arris and Charter Communications. Arris owns 65% of the J.V., though ActiveVideo is operating independently of the companies.  Charter is also relying on ActiveVideo for a new cloud-based Spectrum Guide that can run on the MSO’s entire set-top box footprint.

According to Broadband TV News, Liberty Global also showed off a new “Connect Box” that will be deployed by end of year by Ziggo, Telenet and Virgin Media.  More technical details on the device/gateway, which apparently includes a high-speed modem and integrated WiFi, will reportedly be announced in the next few weeks.  It’s not yet known if the new device will be made to support DOCSIS 3.1, the emerging multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks.

In August, Liberty Global said it was testing D3.1 in the lab, and was preparing for live trials in a subset of its markets in early 2016.

As Charter Communications’ proposed acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks move forward (see Cover Story), expect the angst among suppliers to build as they position themselves for the outcome.

Some could find themselves on the outside looking in, while others are firmly in the catbird’s seat. For still others, notably Arris, it presents a mixed bag.

The future is not set, of course, but here’s a snapshot of some potential winners and losers from the deal.

CABLE MODEMS/ROUTERS/GATEWAYS

Winners: SMC Networks, Cisco Systems, Netgear

On the residential end, SMC Networks and Cisco Systems are Charter’s primary suppliers of cable modems, sources have said. Netgear, meanwhile, has locked in a slot to supply Charter subs with WiFi routers, including a new high-octane model that uses 802.11ac outfitted with Charter-specific middleware.

A dark horse winner in this category is French supplier Sagemcom, said to have Charter’s gateway business for smaller business customers and to be gearing up for an aggressive residential play.

Losers: Arris, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive

These three vendors are the approved gateway suppliers for TWC’s residential broadband service, so their hold could loosen should Charter apply a modem-plus-router strategy while continuing to eschew the use of integrated wireless cable modem gateways.

SET-TOP BOXES

Winners: Cisco, Humax

They are the initial suppliers of the Worldbox, Charter’s new set-top box platform that will support cloud-based apps, including the MSO’s new Spectrum Guide, and a new downloadable security system that will enable the device to run on any Charter system.

Possible Losers: Humax, Samsung and Arris

Humax finds itself in both camps, because it has also been tapped to supply TWC with its first set-top client based on the Reference Design Kit, the software stack for Internet prototcol-capable devices being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and TWC. Charter has not divulged any specific plans for the RDK, at least not yet (expect something on this in next week’s issue).

Samsung is a known supplier to TWC and Bright House, but has not announced anything involving Charter’s Worldbox program. However, it does supply boxes to Cablevision Systems that utilize the same “open” architecture that Charter is using in its Worldbox platform.

Arris has been supplying TWC with a souped-up six-tuner “enhanced” DVR for the MSO’s “TWC Maxx” upgrade initiative. It’s not yet known how those rollouts will continue once Charter expands its Worldbox strategy.

MISCELLANEOUS VIDEO TECH

Winners: Cisco, Arris, ActiveVideo and Zodiac Interactive

They’re all involved in the video end of Charter’s Spectrum initiative, Cisco (downloadable security), Zodiac (set-top software stack), and ActiveVideo (user interface cloud TV platform), which is now co-owned by Arris and Charter.

Also sitting pretty is Michael Willner-led Penthera, which last week announced deals to supply its secure video-downloading platform to Charter and TWC, while reupping its agreement with Comcast.

Time Will Tell: Envivio

Envivio has bet a lot of chips on TWC. On last week’s first-quarter earnings call, the multiscreen video specialist said it received significant orders from Comcast and TWC, and that those two customers represented 57% of revenue in the period.

BILLING AND CUSTOMER CARE

Winner: CSG Systems

It’s coming off a new deal with Charter that’s good through the end of 2019, and includes a framework that, presciently, allows for the consolidation of additional customers that Charter might obtain through M&A activity. CSG also has existing deals with TWC and BHN.

Arris and Charter Communications said Friday that they have wrapped up their combined $135 million acquisition of cloud video specialist ActiveVideo Networks under a joint venture.  

Arris owns 65% of the J.V. ActiveVideo will operate independently of Arris and Charter, with Arris serving as the sales channel for ActiveVideo's CloudTV platform outside of sales to Charter, which is using the technology to underpin its new cloud-based Spectrum Guide for set-tops that use IP as well as MPEG-based transport. 

Update:  Charter has been testing Spectrum Guide in Fort Worth, Texas. The MSO expects to introduce it in other markets, including Reno, Nev.; and St. Louis, “in the coming months,” Tom Rutledge, Charter’s president and CEO, said Friday (May 1) on the company’s  first quarter earnings call. “Results in the test market have been positive,” Rutledge said, noting that Charter is also working to boost the number of on-demand titles it offers on set-tops and the Charter TV app by a factor of three.

Rutledge also noted that devices outfitted with the cloud-based Spectrum Guide will also be paired with a “small resident guide” to ensure that customers can still access a user interface “if the boxes ever lose connectivity to the server.” He also said Charter is also expecting to will expand into several markets the rollout of its hybrid QAM/IP “Worldbox” (Humax and Cisco Systems are the initial suppliers of it) that supports Charter’s new downloadable security platform.

Jeff Miller will continue to lead ActiveVideo as CEO. The ActiveVideo board is comprised of both Arris and Charter execs. The deal was announced on April 14.

In addition to Charter, ActiveVideo customers include Cablevision Systems, Liberty Global, Deutsche Telekom, Time Warner Cable, J:COM, Philips, and Roku, among others.

“We expect to be able to scale [ActiveVideo’s] business and take the technology and deploy it more ubiquitously around the world,” Bruce McClelland, president of Arris’s network and cloud and global services division, said in a recent interview about the deal.

A Q&A with Gary Lauder, the managing director of Lauder Partners and former chairman of ActiveVideo, will be featured in the May 4 issue of Multichannel News. 

While Arris and Charter Communications are putting up $135 million to acquire ActiveVideo through a new joint venture, they intend to keep it on a relatively long leash and let the cloud video tech specialist operate relatively independently.

“It will run as a separate company with the two partners…and the idea is to keep the [ActiveVideo] team nimble and able to innovate,” Bruce McClelland (pictured), president of Arris’s network and cloud and global services division, said in an interview.

San Jose, Calif.-based ActiveVideo has about 100 employees.  “For the most part, the team will stay intact; at least that’s our hope, anyway,” McClelland said.  Arris and Charter have already said that Jeff Miller, ActiveVideo’s current CEO, will continue to lead the company.

McClelland said the acquisition is “pretty strategic for us,” noting that it will give Arris the opportunity to work more closely with what will be the second-largest North American cable operator in the wake of several pending transactions, including the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger and Charter’s planned $10.4 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks.

But beyond that, McClelland said interest in acquiring ActiveVideo has increase as the company proved in recent years that its technology has matured and proved to be scalable at an enterprise level following deployments with MSOs such as Cablevision Systems, Liberty Global and, most recently, with Charter.

“They’ve kind of turned the corner,” McClellan said of ActiveVideo. “We expect to be able to scale that business and take the technology and deploy it more ubiquitously around the world.”

While ActiveVideo’s original claim to fame was the ability to refresh the experience on legacy, lower-end boxes by stitching the interface to the video and delivering it to QAM-based boxes in a single MPEG-based transport stream, their technology also plays well on newer IP-capable devices, such as Charter’s new Worldbox, McClelland said.

He said Arris is also eager to help MVPDs integrate OTT apps such as YouTube and Netflix to set-top boxes at a higher rate of speed using StreamCast, a new component for ActiveVideo’s flagship CloudTV platform.

Integrating those native clients, even on next-gen IP devices, is still not an easy task. “Using HTML browsers as a unifying technology is nice on paper, but it still presents a challenging implementation,” McClelland said. He knows that from experience, as Arris has successfully been able to weave Netflix and other OTT apps into its own set-top platform for operators such WideOpenWest. 

ActiveVideo’s virtualization engine to run OTT services and other apps in the cloud in tandem with a small software client app running on a set-top, Roku box, or even a smart TV “makes that integration effort much simpler,” he said.

Although ActiveVideo’s technology can help virtualize the functions of a set-top, Arris views it as “very complementary” to the company’s traditional set-top/CPE business.  “They are not mutually exclusive,” McClelland said.

UPC Hungary, along with vendor partners ActiveVideo and Metrological, shared the Cable Europe Innovation Award, presented Thursday at the Cable Congress event in Brussels.

Cable Europe announced the selection on Twitter. 

Cable Europe also announced that Stephen Kelly, communications architect at Liberty Cable, won the the Cable Europe Fellow Award, recognized in part for his role in the launch of the Virgin Media London Underground Wi-Fi solution, deployed in advance of the 2012 Summer Olympics, and, more recently, for defining Liberty Global’s Pan European Wii Architecture. He is has also been a key contributor to CableLabs’s development of industry-wide WiFi specifications and standards, Cable Europe said. 

UPC Hungary, ActiveVideo and Metrological, meanwhile, were recognized for the recent launch of a cloud-based platform that enables the MSO to offer a wide range of apps, including YouTube, on legacy, non-IP set-top boxes. The set-up is supported by StreamCast, a new component for ActiveVideo’s CloudTV system that converts interfaces, video and other content from Web formats to versions that can be rendered on older set-tops, and Metrological’s app platform. Watch this video for more.

According to the awards entry, UPC Hungary launched the offering to 520,000 set-tops in two phases, noting that 68% of subs have tried the service, and 83% have returned for additional views, and that customers are streaming more than 1 million minutes per day of YouTube content.

Other finalists for this year’s Cable Europe Innovation Award included a cloud video engine for the real-time generation of interactive channels by R, R, Syntheractive & Cinfo, and OptimizAIR 2.0, a system from Celeno Communications that Telenet is using to turn home routers into community WiFi hotspots.

TransGaming said it has struck an expanded its relationship with Liberty Global that enables it to bring its GameTree TV offering to boxes that power Horizon, the MSO’s IP-capable, next-gen video platform.

With the deal, GameTree TV is now offered by Liberty Global in The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Poland and Hungary. Earlier this month, Liberty Global announced that Horizon had surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark.

"The addition of Liberty Global is a pivotal next step towards expanding GameTree TV's services to a larger international audience," said Dennis Ensing, COO & Interim CEO at TransGaming.

ActiveVideo Networks, one of Liberty Global’s technology partners, announced a deal late last year that will enable ActiveVideo to offer titles from TransGaming via its cloud-based platform to a wide range of set-tops, including those that are not IP-enabled. 

TransGaming also has partnerships with Dish Network and DirecTV, FREE, Air Tel and Reliance.

ActiveVideo Networks has struck a deal with TransGaming that will enable ActiveVideo to offer a slate of on-demand games via its cloud-based platform to pay-TV partners worldwide.

Under the deal, ActiveVideo use its CloudTV software platform to offer GameTree TV and its set of premium games to set-top boxes and IP-connected devices. ActiveVideo claims that its CloudTV platform has already delivered more than 500 million game sessions, with engagement times in the neighborhood of 30 minutes per session.

Transgaming claims that GameTree TV already has a total addressable market of more than 60 million homes worldwide, as it’s already available through existing partnerships with Dish Network and DirecTV, FREE, Air Tel and Reliance.

The agreement with ActiveVideo should help Transgaming expand that pie. ActiveVideo said it expects operator deployments to start in early 2015, noting that its existing customers represent more than 15 million set-top boxes and connected devices. ActiveVideo’s customers include Cablevision Systems, Liberty Global, Deutsche Telekom, Charter Communications, Grande Communications and Time Warner Cable. Comcast has been working with ActiveVideo on a VOD interface trial for QAM-only boxes.

 “This strategic partnership with ActiveVideo is an important milestone in the broad scale delivery of video games through TransGaming’s GameTree TV platform since it immediately brings us many major operator opportunities,” said Vikas Gupta, CEO & President, TransGaming, in a statement.

 “With rapid evolutions in device ecosystems, fragmentation in new or existing set-tops has historically prevented pay-TV operators from monetizing gaming opportunities at scale,” added Murali Nemani, CMO, ActiveVideo. “CloudTV introduces a new paradigm that unlocks the global potential of rich HTML5 casual gaming libraries on any STB or connected device, regardless of local device resources.”

The global ambitions of the Reference Design Kit, the integrated software stack for set-tops being managed by three major MSOs, could get a big boost from a big telco in Germany.

Deutsche Telekom is monitoring the initiative and weighing whether it could complement its own efforts involving virtual set-top boxes and cloud-based user interfaces, CSI Magazine reported this week, citing DT exec Oliver Friedrich, who spoke at the CDN World Summit in London.

“RDK is a good example of how operators can push browser developments. We are definitely looking at it in the next weeks already,” Friedrich said, according to the report.

DT has not responded to requests for additional comments on its future plans involving the U.K. RDK LLC, the joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Liberty Global that is managing the stack, declined to comment.  

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs unit has been working with ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform to power field trials of a “virtual” set-top initiative. ActiveVideo, which has been touting the economics of set-top virtualization, recently joined the RDK club as a licensee, extending an application and service framework that could potentially ride on top of the RDK and give the platform a way to utilize a cloud-based browser.

More than 160 companies, including an array of set-top box makers, silicon vendors, and test and integration firms, have licensed the RDK. More than 15 pay-TV operators, including Comcast, Liberty Global, TWC, and Kabel Deutschland, are among those that have licensed the RDK.

But an operator doesn’t need to license the RDK directly in order to take advantage of the platform; they can also rely on a third party, such as a systems integrator or a set-top manufacturer to get access to it.

DT appears to be taking this partnership path to RDK, at least early on. In March, Cisco Systems announced that it had implemented an RDK-based IPTV system for a pilot project for DT subsidiary Hrvatski Telekom, the largest operator Croatia. At the time, Cisco touted it as the first RDK-based IPTV deployment and Europe’s first successful implementation of the RDK.

UPC Hungary’s decision to use ActiveVideo's cloud-based platform to bring YouTube content to set-tops that don’t speak IP has proven popular in the early going.

The MSO announced Thursday that customers have been watching more than 1 million minutes per day of YouTube content in the first three months after the MSO introduced a set of apps for the set-top box. Of the more than 20 apps on offer (others include Google Maps, Picasa and Flickr), YouTube has been the most popular so far, with 75% of them being repeat visitors and spending 45 minutes per YouTube session on average.

But, as indicated by UPC Hungary data illustrated in the chart above, YouTube usage falls off a cliff during prime time hours.

Following the initial phase of the rollout, the MSO plans to offer UPC TV Apps to all 1.5 million homes in its footprint by the end of 2014. More than half of UPC customers with HD boxes have started to tap into the apps so far.

HBO GO, the popular multiscreen TV Everywhere service, could soon show up on cable set-top boxes in Europe after the premium programmer struck up a partnership with ActiveVideo, maker of a cloud-based platform that delivers apps and services to IP- and non-IP devices.

Under a partnership announced at the IBC show in Amsterdam, HBO Europe said it plans to bring HBO GO (its content and the interface) to set-tops, both young and old, using ActiveVideo’s CloudTV StreamCast platform.

Introduced in April, the new StreamCast component for ActiveVideo’s CloudTV converts user interfaces, video and other content from Web formats to versions that can be rendered and displayed by non-IP set-tops. That conversion and bridging process covers elements such as content protection and content delivery. As designed, the system delivers an MPEG/QAM or H.264 stream packed with the content as well as the UI.

HBO Europe, which operates in 14 territories in eastern and central Europe and the Netherlands, said it intends to bring HBO GO to full footprints of existing set-top boxes, targeting existing HBO GO affiliates.

HBO and ActiveVideo didn’t announce if any affiliates have agreed to jump on board, but Liberty Global’s UPC Hungary unit is the first announced MSO to deploy the CloudTV/StreamCast combo, using it to bring YouTube, Picasa, Flickr and other Internet-based apps to non-IP boxes. Ziggo of the Netherlands and Deutsche Telekom are among other MSOs in Europe that work with ActiveVideo.

“The marriage of libraries of the very best online content and the 10-foot viewing experience of television holds tremendous potential for pay-TV - online video collaboration,” said Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo, in a statement. “Virtualizing STB functionality in the cloud is the key to creating partnerships that can drive audience reach and content expansion for the benefit of both parties.”

In the run-up to IBC, ActiveVideo also announced that it has become a licensee of the Reference Design Kit (RDK), and has boosted the scaling capabilities of its “virtual” set-top architecture by supporting off-the-shelf network servers outfitted with Intel’s new Quick Sync Video technology.

The Reference Design Kit (RDK) is poised to stick its head a bit further into the cloud.

The RDK, a preintegrated software stack managed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Liberty Global, appears headed in that direction now that ActiveVideo has tossed in its hat as a licensee.

ActiveVideo, now one of about 160 other companies with RDK licenses, has developed a cloud-centric platform for video applications and services, extending an application and service framework that could ride on top of the RDK.

ActiveVideo is already active with MSOs connected to Liberty Global, including Liberty Puerto Rico, UPC Hungary, and Ziggo. Liberty Global has shown some eagerness to implement RDK for the rollout a cloud-based version of its Horizon user interface/navigator. If Liberty Global opts to broaden its relationship with ActiveVideo, it could be in position to offer a uniform UI across new boxes that speak IP as well as older QAM-only boxes.

With a license secured, ActiveVideo’s small (100 kilobyte to 200 kilobyte) software client for set-top boxes will become part of the RDK stack, Sachin Sathaye, ActiveVideo’s vice president of strategy and product management, said.  While the addition of the client will help RDK-based devices utilize a cloud-based browser, the license doesn’t cover any of ActiveVideo’s cloud browser  intellectual property.

But the presence of the client on the RDK stack could come in handy for MSOs that work with ActiveVideo and are also deploying RDK-based devices. The role of the client is to collect keystrokes and button presses from the remote control, relay them upstream to the headend, where the commands are processed, rendered and delivered back to the set-top as a video stream. In addition to cloud-based interfaces, the architecture can be used to deliver other types of apps, including interactive ads, games and over-the-top video from sources like YouTube.

The advantage of packing that into the cloud is it that it will enable devices (such as an HDMI streaming stick) outfitted with an RDK stack to support media-rich applications, Sathaye said.

“You don’t have to worry about putting in more advanced devices because [those advanced services] because it can be served from the cloud,” he added, noting that the approach, which also works with non-RDK devices, aims to “mitigate device obsolescence.”

Comcast and TWC have been testing or deploying ActiveVideo in limited ways, but they have not announced if they will intend to work with ActiveVideo in tandem with their RDK deployments.

But RDK LLC, the group managing the platform, believes that ActiveVideo’s participation will fill in some technology gaps.

“ActiveVideo’s expertise and leadership in advancing cloud rendering of applications fills an important need within the RDK community, as operators seek to capitalize on cloud technologies to create their own user experiences on top of the RDK software stack,” Steve Heeb, president and Comcast exec who is also serving as general manager of RDK LLC, said in a statement.

More than 160 companies, including a mix of set-top makers, silicon and software vendors, have licensed the RDK. According to an RDK official, 15 multichannel video programming distributors have also licensed it, but so far has only identified Comcast, Liberty Global, TWC, and Kabel Deutschland. Others that are also believed to be on board include Rogers Communications of Canada and J:COM, Japan’s largest cable operator.

ActiveVideo believes the notion of a “virtual” set-top box is ready to take a big step toward reality.

The supplier claims it is in position to boost the scalability and reduce the requisite costs for a proposed virtual STB architecture that shifts the key processing and other primary functions of the traditional set-top into the cloud using off-the-shelf servers that are outfitted with Intel’s new Quick Sync Video technology.

ActiveVideo, whose CloudTV platform delivers interfaces, video services and interactive advertising to IP-based and QAM-locked devices, claimed that servers with Intel’s QSV technology can reduce virtual set-top box data center capex to as low as $1 per subscriber, which compares to $50 to $60 for a modern IP-only set-top, or roughly $200 for more traditional boxes.

ActiveVideo has already been running CloudTV on commodity servers that rely solely on CPU processing, but the new approach also builds in Intel QSV, which, according to the chipmaker, is built into the Intel Core processor, and uses dedicated media processing to rapidly create and covert video. That addition, when paired with ActiveVideo’s MPEG-stitching technique, enables CloudTV to simultaneously deliver the UI and transcoded video streams.

ActiveVideo said it can reach that $1 mark in part because servers with Intel QSV can deliver a 40% cost improvement on a per-session basis in part to a 400% increase in session density that allows it to support 1 million virtual STBs on one data center rack (moving from 400 sessions to 1,600 sessions per blade server). The vendor also claims that the combo offers a 10X increase in real-time video transcoding sessions to adapt premium online video to any set-top box.

ActiveVideo will show off that handiwork at the IBC show, which gets underway this week in Amsterdam. Although ActiveVideo is agnostic when it comes to servers, its IBC demo will feature CloudTV running on Kontron-made Symkloud servers with Intel QSV. Artesyn Embedded Technologies, Kontron and QuickFire are among other vendors that have integrated Intel QSV. On Tuesday, Thomson Video Networks announced that its ViBE XT1000 Xtream Transcoder is powered with Intel QSV.

“We believe that the set-top is the last node in the network,” Sachin Sathaye, ActiveVideo’s VP of strategy and product marketing, said, noting that the virtualized approach offers a massive savings over traditional set-tops that rely on local processing. “We can now deliver the power of 1 million set-top boxes in one data center rack.”

With Intel’s new tech on board, ActiveVideo said its CloudTV platform is capable of not only delivering the user interface and apps via the cloud, but its transcoding capability also enables operators to deliver their primary video services as well.

ActiveVideo envisions several potential deployment scenarios. Operators can use CloudTV to complement legacy QAM-only boxes with new services, and bring the full suite to new IP-capable devices, including HDMI sticks or directly to connected televisions.

Sathaye said ActiveVideo is in talks with customers about deploying CloudTV with Intel’s new technology, but expects its first deployments to get underway in Europe. Its announced European customers include Dutch MSO Ziggo, Deutsche Telekom, and UPC Hungary, which is using the vendor’s tech to bring YouTube and other apps to non-IP set-tops. Its U.S. customers include Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Grande Communications and Time Warner Cable. Comcast, meanwhile, has been testing ActiveVideo for a VOD interface that runs on QAM-only boxes.

Update: Murali Nemani, ActiveVideo’s chief marketing officer, said in an email that the new technology is already being deployed by two tier-1 operators, and are expected to be in production and in-service before the end of the year.

Liberty Puerto Rico, a unit of Liberty Global that serves about 250,000 subscribers, is putting a new twist on the cloud-based interface in the form of a “Social Content Navigator” that presents a slate of live TV channels based on their popularity using near real-time viewership data.

The UI, which the operator is running on ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform, presents up to eight of the most popular eight channels at once in mosaic form using viewership data that is collected and tabulated every five minutes. As that data is collected, the platform renders the UI in the proverbial cloud and stitches it into the MPEG video stream, meaning it can run on the operator's full base of deployed QAM-only boxes.

In this case, operator and ActiveVideo have built it to run on its systems based on both the Cisco Systems and Arris/Motorola platform, and on some boxes that have been in the field for several years, some as long as a decade.

The operator has been testing the UI for about three weeks and currently has it in front of about 100 friendlies. Under the phased deployment plan, the intension is to roll it out to more homes in the coming months and have it available to the MSO’s entire base by the end of the year, Waldo Hooker, Liberty Puerto Rico’s vice president of product and strategy, said.

The way the system is designed, users can scroll through additional pages that present mosaic views of the next eight most popular shows, again based on viewership data, all the way through to the end of Liberty Puerto Rico’s full live TV lineup of more than 300 channels.

In addition to presenting a broad view of the most viewed channels, the operator and ActiveVideo have built the UI to present more personalized, trending mosaics based on specific genres,  including family-friendly programming. The UI can also be set up to show only the most popular channels available in HD.

A key aim is to help customers get more value out of the lineup and help them find channels that they might not normally view. “We want customers to go outside of their comfort zone,” Hooker said.

And the operator believes the new UI will give it a differentiator to wield against competitors in the market, which include DirecTV, Dish Network.

While the system will allow Liberty Puerto Rico to deliver this fancy UI across its full subscriber base, it does cost some bandwidth. In fact, the operator has nailed up dedicated QAM capacity just for the UI app. “We are measuring the concurrency and use very carefully to make sure the experience is as good as possible,” Hooker said.

The Social Content Navigator is Liberty Puerto Rico’s first application on the ActiveVideo platform. The MSO might also use it for video-on-demand apps and perhaps a “full guide” sometime later, Hooker said.

And expect more tie-ins between the vendor and Liberty Global, which operates extensively in Europe. Last fall, Liberty Global announced it would use ActiveVideo’s CloudTV product to deliver its Horizon user interface to set-tops and other types of connected devices.

ActiveVideo is also working with Ziggo of the Netherlands (Liberty Global is in the process of buying the remaining interest in the Dutch MSO), Cablevision Systems, Time Warner Cable, Deutsche Telekom and Charter Communications, among others. Comcast has trialed ActiveVideo for a VOD interface but hasn’t announced a broader relationship.