Boston -- IP-VOD and a cloud DVR are among the services that WideOpenWest is planning to add to a new hybrid QAM/IP platform it’s deploying in partnership with Evolution Digital and TiVo, WOW chief technology officer Cash Hagen said here during a brief interview at INTX.

WOW is the first MVPD to deploy Evolution’s eBOX, which is being outfitted with TiVo’s software and user interface.

Hagen said the rollout of the device will get underway in earnest to about 75% of WOW’s footprint on June 13.

WOW, he said, will target that product, which blends live TV with OTT apps, to a segment of the market that wants a slimmed down pay TV package that complements (and won’t replace) the operator’s  full-freight HD-DVR offering powered by Arris’s Whole Home Solution, which also supports integrated OTT apps.

WOW’s new offering, branded as “SW!VEL,” will include the broadcast basic channels and integrated OTT apps in the initial phase of the product, Hagen said.

Phase II, slated for a summer launch, will add IP-VOD to the mix (through Evolution Digital’s new eVUE platform), and Phase III, slated for early next year, will add a cloud DVR to the mix, he said.

Boston -- The pay TV industry is undergoing a tectonic shift amid the rise of a growing array of over-the-top options, but a complete change of the industry’s complexion – and its historic business models -- won’t happen overnight.

“I believe we are in a transformative place in pay TV,” Dwayne Benefield, vice president and head of PlayStation Vue, Sony’s new virtual MVPD that just launched a set of "Slim" packages that are offered nationally, said here Tuesday on a panel titled, “Now Leaving Normal: Assessing and Inventing the Future of Pay Television.

“It’s been ripe for innovation for a decade," Benefield said. 

And it’s not just the pay TV industry. “The consumer is in a transformative state…Consumers are sending us signals” as they seek content wherever they are from a growing mix of devices and programing sources, Tony Goncalves, senior vice president and business development at AT&T Entertainment Group, added.

But that shift, which AT&T will aim to address through a trio of OTT services set to launch later this year, won’t happen overnight.

“There’s a longer runway here than the headlines might be signaling,” Goncalves said.

“We are at a point of view that this is not a massive defection of pay television,” Barbara Kalosieh, senior vice president, content distribution, at Scripps Networks Interactive, said, noting that the traditional business remains strong.

At the same time, she said Scripps is happy to work with  new players such as PS Vue and Sling TV, Dish Network’s OTT-TV service for cord-cutters, so long as they play by the rules of the game.

“What hasn’t changed and I don’t think will change is the value of good content,” Steve Necessary, executive vice president, product development and management at Cox Communications, observed.

He said consumers still require a solid search and discovery platform to surface all their content, but that there is a need for new cost models to work across the industry.

Though the perception is that pay TV is in a state of decline, the truth is that not only are they coming back, but that “they never left,” Ben Weinberger, chief product officer of Sling TV, said.

“They’re not leaving and they still want that content,” he said, noting that some consumers want to pay for content differently and have more choices in how they bundle that content together.

The panel also touched on a TV ad business that remains largely based on the 30-second spot.

While there’s still “great value” in those spots, Scripps is developing new partnerships for advertisers via Scripps Lifestyle Studios, a unit that is targeting multiple platforms, including social media, apps, websites and third-party digital media outlets.

Advertisers, Kalosieh said, aren’t just buying 30—second spots, but are looking to make digital and social media connections with programmers.

And advertising needs to become more targeted and, therefore, more relevant, to the viewer.

Advertising, Weinberger said, is part of the “entire experience” that needs to work in harmony with the programming.

And targeting ads might not be enough, Goncalves said, suggesting that advertisers and programmers need to be more creative to the point of integrating more of those messages into the programs natively, particularly with on-demand shows and short-form content. 

BOSTON—The quest for additional transparency in the modern measurement business will be driven, like most aspects of the TV ad industry, by the amount of money that is being directed toward it, a panel of ad experts said at an INTX Show panel Tuesday.

“The dollars will dictate how this changes,” said comScore executive vice president Cathy Hetzel at the panel session, Getting to Transparency: The Promises and Pitfalls of Modernized Media Measurement. Hetzel added that last year $3 billion of advertising spend went up for renewal and clients want transparency as to where the money is going.

Discovery Communications head of ad sales product strategy and development Keith Kazerman said making sure the data collected is accurate and reliable depends on who is delivering it and what methods are being used.

“Monetizing our investment is incumbent upon us,” Kazerman said. “We need to have a currency that is third-party verified. We should collaborate and work together, programmers distributors, measurement companies to see what standards start to evolve.”

Nielsen senior vice president client solutions Judi Allen said client collaboration is an important part of her company’s Total Audience Measurement products. And she added that clients have to look at data and measurement in general in a different way – moving to a world where shows are measured by the second and ratings periods can be days and even weeks long, requires a different mindset, even about things as simple as how views are counted.

“We want to experience all we can, but getting clients there takes time and effort,” Allen said.

Cablevision Media Sales senior vice president and general manager, advanced data analytics Paul Haddad said that accuracy and accountability also are critical to success.

“We do believe the legacy measurement system for the past six years needs to evolve, it needs to be complemented,” Haddad said, adding that taking responsibility for the lack of measurement or faulty data is just as important as accuracy.

The TV space, although under siege from digital competition, is in a unique position, Allen said, and operators and programmers should step up efforts to drive that point home to advertisers.

“The story is there about the incredible TV experience” Allen said. “There are weaknesses in the existing digital ecosystem.”

Hetzel agreed.

“This is the first year we’re going to see real cross-platform measurement,” Hetzel said. “We have our first reports where we look across unduplicated reach, the first opportunity to be able to understand how consumer are consuming TV. …Transparency is big part of that.”

WideOpenWest has become the first operator to rollout the eBOX, a hybrid QAM/IP device from Evolution Digital that is powered by TiVo’s software and user interface.

WOW is starting to deploy eBOX for its new “SW!VEL” service, which integrates the operator’s live pay TV service with over-the-top apps and services. It also gives WOW a new option that can complement a whole-home DVR offering based on an Arris-based platform that also allows for the integration of OTT apps such as Netflix.

Evolution Digital introduced the eBOX and WOW’s plans for it late last year, underpinning it with TiVo’s software, UI and search capabilities. Last week, Evolution Digital announced it would also fit eBOX with eGUIDE, an interface that runs on Rovi’s Fan TV software platform (Rovi and TiVo are merging under a $1.1 billion deal announced in April.).

Evolution Digital said eBOX can be configured to support an all-IP platform, including live linear, VOD, as well as a network DVR on a unified platform.

Brent Smith, president and chief technology officer at Evolution Digital, said his company is working on a cloud DVR product that would work with its “eVUE” IP video platform, which handles the ingest, streaming and content management for linear TV, VOD, and mobile services.

WOW is the first announced MVPD to launch eBOX. Smith said some “large” tier-2 operators have the device in their labs, and that he expects the company to move ahead with a “substantial number” of deployments of eBOX in 2016.

“We are thrilled to launch SW!VEL, as well as to become the first broadband provider to offer Evolution Digital’s eBOX, as integrated with TiVo’s cross-platform search capability, to our customers,” Cash Hagen, chief technology officer at WOW, said in a statement. “Entertainment consumption is evolving, and this solution helps customers find and enjoy content no matter what platform it is hosted on.”

“We are proud to partner with Evolution Digital to bring WOW! customers a great next-generation set-top box,” said Thomas Elam, vice president and general manager, TiVo North American Service Provider Business. “The TiVo user experience is unmatched, and we are excited to expand our offerings to include Evolution’s eBOX to cater to the changing needs of operators.

“We look forward to continuing our collaborative relationship with Evolution Digital to further the tremendous successes of WOW,” added Thomas Elan, VP and GM of TiVo’s North American service provider business. 

With twosessions dedicated to it here today at INTX, network virtualization is a hot topic for service providers and their array of vendors.

Kyrio, the recently rebranded CableLabs for-profit spin-off, has also been taking aim at network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN) in the form a new interoperability lab based at the organization’s Louisville, Colo., and Sunnyvale, Calif., facilities.

Multichannel News recently caught up with Phil McKinney, CEO of CableLabs, and Mitch Ashley, president and general manager of Kyrio, to learn more about Kyrio and the aims and plans for the new lab and why they think it will be important not just to cable, but to other industries as well.

Multichannel News: In February you rebranded your for-profit NetworkFX subsidiary as Kyrio as it pursued areas like wireless roaming and WiFi testing.  And recently you announced that it will open an SDN]/NFV interoperability lab. Can you offer a bit more detail on the goals of that new effort?

Mitch Ashley: Kyrio is a wholly owned subsidiary of CableLabs and what we're doing is building off the phenomenal technology transfer model that CableLabs has had for the cable industry of creating technologies and innovations that show up in vendor products and show up in cable operator networks and in customer homes. 

NetworkFX (the former brand of the Kyrio spin-off) was started originally around taking the PKI (public key infrastructure) service that CableLabs had done for the entire cable industry -- coming up on over 500 million security keys for devices like cable modems, CableCARDs... That sort of proved out the model for Kyrio. In January we announced the rebranding of the company but also that we were expanding into other lines of business, like wireless testing. 

[For the NFV/SDN lab], we're providing a vendor-neutral laboratory environment where hardware manufacturers, software providers and even chip manufacturers can come in. Much like we do with cable modems and other technologies, now we can interoperable with each other and go through test deployment scenarios, do basic testing across devices in a friendly environment where they know that the confidentiality of their information is maintained. What we focused on was how do we help those vendors get their products to market in a mutli-vendor environment. 

It's pretty difficult for one manufacture to get the bevy of SDN and NFV devices into their labs to do testing with. We provide that platform, where they can maintain an ongoing presence in our interop lab or do some remote testing. And we'll do hosted events -- like the OPNFV interop...on May 9. 

We can also provide remote access to both hardware and software manufacturers and provide new builds and loads onto their equipment and test that across multiple hardware manufacturers and software solutions.

Phil McKinney:  The SDN and NFV worlds are moving fast. We see it having a great opportunity to have an impact on the MSOs but the overall cost of network infrastructure and encourage the vendors to...move quickly. That's why we brought that expertise and opened it up to anybody and everybody not related or tied to cable operators.

MCN: Will there be a qualification stamp that comes out of this like CableLabs does with DOCSIS? 

PM: Even on the cable side when we do an interop, there's no certification or stamp. Anything that happens inside the interop, stays inside the interop. But there are still some gaps in the NFV world around interoperability. They can get access to a set of configurations that they wouldn't be able to afford on their own in order to do a better job of bringing the entire industry together. The focus, step one, is just on interoperability.

MCN: How would you characterize the cable industry's work with SDN and NFV with respect to competing industries? Are they in lock-step, ahead of the curve, behind the pack? 

PM: I can tell you that most of the major MSOs are keenly interested in taking advantage of the SDN and NFV worlds. The main driver there is can you speed up the process of deploying new products and new services.

The bigger operators are very involved in SDN and NFV; they are all having discussions with their vendor suppliers. Many of them have their own labs set up. Some are doing deployments...but it's in the early days. That's why I think there's so much excitement about the interop labs.

In this case, we're trying to bring everyone along together and it actually shortens the timeframe of going from, this is a nice concept, one in which I can actually commercially deploy this in a broad-based format. 

Get more #INTX2016 news.

Boston -- “Machine learning” will pave the way to delivering better experiences including “how quickly we can put apps on the X1 platform,” Comcast EVP and chief technology officer Tony Werner explained here in an introductory overview at the Imagine Park opening session on Monday. 

He envisioned “a ton of very cool apps,” comparing the ability of DOCSIS 3.1 to replace “a backhoe or forklift” in implementing new services for cable operators.

“I love Full Duplex,” Werner enthused about a symmetrical multi-gigabit project underway at CableLabs and being demoed here by Nokia, before he scooted off stage to support other Comcast executives at the opening of their nearby booth on the INTX show floor. 

As fellow panelist and visionary Andy Lippman, senior scientist and Associate Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, showed his “Ultimate Media” project, Werner quickly noted that, “You don’t have all the online sources loving it.”  Werner cited the prioritization for certain news sources within the MIT algorithm.

For his part, Lippman envisioned a shifting media landscape in which TV networks assume the role that Hollywood studios have taken in the motion picture industry -- they become venture capital sources for creative producers.  He called it a re-invention of the broadcast industry. 

Lippman also emphasized the speed of change, citing the rapid move away from schedule programming to on-demand programming. 

Boston -- Whether it’s authenticated TV everywhere services or new direct-to-consumer offerings, mobile video is no longer a funky little trend but a key part of the video and TV landscape that programmers and distributors must continue to focus on and adapt to.

“It’s not a trend. It’s here,” Ryan Spoon, senior vice president, digital product, design and audience development at ESPN, said here Monday at a session titled: “Air Power: Strategies and Sensibilities of the New Mobile Video Marketplace.”

Consumers, added Bob Toohey president of Verizon Digital Media Services (VDMS), simply want content now wherever they happen to be. “There’s no mystery to that,” he said in a panel moderated by CNET’s Maggie Reardon.

But there is some mystery to which distribution models programmers should adopt, whether it’s TVE apps, subscription VOD, or ad-supported services.

Turner is playing in all of those areas, though the rules and windows tend to shift depending on the business model being supported, John Harran, senior vice president of business development, digital distribution and strategic partnerships at Turner, said.

But mobile means different things to different people. Plus, this massive array of distribution and business models can be confusing to consumers, Reardon observed.

Harran agreed that it consumers have more options than ever before, which can make it confusing, but said strong brands, programming and storytelling “cut through that clutter.”

Spoon said ESPN has endeavored to adapt its content to the various screens, apps and platforms the programmer must now support, noting that programming on its Snapchat channel is filmed in portrait mode.

And Harran said the media world should stop looking at millennials as if they are “creatures from another planet…They are people who like to be entertained.”

Toohey agreed, noting that mobile video is rising in stature not just because it’s how millennial audiences are consuming their content but because all consumers are moving at a faster pace and require quick access to content while they are on the go.

“Mobile often equates to speed…and the user’s mindset,” Spoon agreed, adding that consumers are usually accepting of lower-quality production standards in exchange for more rapid access to that content, such as a video clip from a game-changing moment in a sporting event.

And like millennial audiences, panelists said it’s a mistake to lump social media outlets only to younger audiences.

“The demographics are everyone,” Spoon said. “The numbers are so massive.”

But programmers must be able to tweak and recraft content when they are targeting these various social media outlets, Harran said.

“We are seeing tremendous engagement” on mobile, Harran said, but “No one has cracked the code.”

And building in more personalization will help to support advertising-supported services, Toohey said, referencing Go90, Verizon’s free, ad-supported “mobile-first” OTT service.

Mobile needs to be more personalized, he said, in order to ensure that viewers actually watch the ads, he said.

The panel also weighed in on the controversial topic of mobile data caps and zero-rated services that are exempt from usage-based data policies. 

“I look at it and see it as a nice problem to have,” because it means consumers are spending more time watching programming on mobile devices, Harran said.

Toohey said sponsored data is still in its “early” days, but acknowledged that there’s been more change there in the last six months than has been seen in the past three years.

For its part, Verizon in January introduced FreeBee Data, a sponsored data offering that exempts some content from the mobile service operator’s  usage-based data caps.

Get more #INTX2016 news.

Boston -- Even as AT&T, Dish Network and a new wave of virtual pay TV providers, including Hulu, develop and deploy competitive multichannel services, Comcast expects to resist the temptation to offer its own services beyond its traditional footprint.

“We don’t have any plans to do that,” Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chairman and CEO, said when asked about the company’s OTT plans as programming rights continue to evolve during a media scrum here Monday at the Comcast booth following the morning’s opening session.

“The world always changes, so these answers are good for this moment,” Roberts allowed. “We have a clear value-add in-market,” he added referring to the operator’s fleet of 3,500 trucks and array of call centers. “We have a physical connection with [the customer].” 

Roberts also pointed to Comcast’s improving video results. It added 53,000 video subscribers in the first quarter of 2016, its best Q1 video growth in nine years.

“If something is working, I’m not sure you need to change it.” 

Last month, Comcast Cable president and CEO Neil Smit said there’s nothing stopping Comcast from going OTT from a tech and rights perspective, but added that Comcast has yet to see an OTT business model “that really hunts." 

Though Comcast has no current plans to take its TV service over-the-top, it is looking to expand its own X1 platform through a licensing strategy that, so far, has scored agreements with Cox Communications and Shaw Communications.

“We want to make this platform available around the world,” Roberts said. “We have a whole group that is doing nothing but that.”

Roberts also said it’s difficult to predict the competitive effect of virtual MVPDs, which will include Comcast corporate cousin Hulu, which is partly owned by NBCUniversal.

“One of the things we’re assuming is we’ve got to have the best product and we’ve got to have the best service,” he said. “We’re assuming that the world is going to get more competitive. We didn't buy NBCUniversal to change that trajectory but rather to participate in the changing ecosystem." 

Roberts was also asked about the Federal Communications Commission’s pursuit of new set-top box rules, and reiterated the MSO’s belief that the market for retail video devices that can support pay TV services is evolving without more government intervention.

“Do we need more regulation in this competitive, super-technologically changing world that we're living in? Probably we disagree on that,” he said. “We feel competitive pressure every minute." 

Roberts also disagreed with any suggestion that the FCC’s network neutrality rules aren’t impacting Comcast’s investments in network infrastructure.

“It’s not no big deal,” he said of the current rules, which classify broadband as a Title II service (the NCTA is suing the FCC over it). “Regulations affect your ability to invest…Uncertainty doesn’t equal investment.” 

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and Time Warner Inc. chairman and CEO Jeffrey Bewkes are among 14 named today to the 50th anniversary class of Cable TV Pioneers. They will be inducted at a banquet in Boston ahead of the INTX convention in May. 

The new class also includes Multichannel Newstechnology columnist Leslie Ellis and three of Roberts's fellow Comcast executives.

Here is the 2016 class in alphabetical order:

Jeffrey Lawrence Bewkes, Time Warner; Charles David Cerullo of INSP; Glenn Duval of Challenger Cable Sales; Leslie Ellis of EllisEdits Inc.; Marwan Fawaz of Sarepta Partners; John Gibbs of Comcast; Steve Goldmintz of Marcum Search LLC; John E. Heslip of Comcast; Yvette Kanouff of Cisco Systems; Peter Kiley of C-SPAN Networks; Mark Lieberman of Viamedia Inc.; Mike J. Mason of Comcast; John Arthur Ogren of SpeedConnect and Brian L. Roberts of Comcast.

The group's first class, in 1966, was of 21 entrepreneurs. Since then the roster has grown beyond 700 men and women, the organization said in a release. The banquet will be held on Sunday, May 15, the night before INTX: The Internet and Television Expo kicks off. The banquet will be at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. More information is available at http://cabletvpioneers.com.                            

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, CableLabs and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers has issued its call for technical papers for the 2016 Spring Technical Forum, to be held in tandem with INTX: The Internet & Television Expo, set for May 16-18 in Boston.

They have set a deadline of Monday, Dec. 14, 2015 for proposal abstracts.  Authors whose submissions are accepted (all submissions will be peer-reviewed) for publication will be invited to speak at the 2016 Forum.

Submission details are available here, and tip on how to submit a successful abstract is posted here (PDF).