The BBC Store, a new multiscreen digital sell-through offering, went live last month, and represents a win for SeaChange’s new OTT video platform, Rave.

BBC Store, developed by BBC Worldwide, kicked off with more than 7,000 hours of content, offering both new and archived programs from the BBC vault.

The BBC Store, which is adding up to 70 hours of programming on a weekly basis, is running on SeaChange-supplied backoffice system, handling functions such as metadata management and content curation.

“Our technology partners including SeaChange have helped us to make it really easy for audiences to buy the shows they love and enjoy them on laptops, tablets and smartphones,” said David Gibbons, director of global operations, BBC Worldwide, in a statement.

“We’re delighted to help bring the BBC’s unmatched archive to life for U.K. consumers,” said Rochus Schreiber, SVP, Services & GM, EMEA SeaChange.

 “Our technologies and services are at the core of the BBC Store hosted in the cloud as the central point of content and product management,” added Rochus Schreiber, SVP, services and GM, EMEA at SeaChange.

Other SeaChange Rave partners include ROK Mobile and  Algar Telecom of Brazil, among others.

SeaChange International’s position at Liberty Global and the competitive OTT threat posed by MLB Advanced Media were among the hotter topics on the multiscreen video tech company’s fourth quarter call on Thursday morning.

SeaChange, whose product line include its Nucleus software for set-tops and gateways and its Adrenalin multiscreen video backoffice, among others, took a cautious tone with respect to growth activity  in general and, in particular, with Liberty Global.

“I want to be as conservative as possible, because we do not control when Liberty expands and announces their expansions and takes down more licenses [for Nucleus],” SeaChange CEO Jay Samit said in response to a suggestion from an analyst that guidance (SeaChange expects first quarter revenues to be in the range of $22 million to $24 million) showed that SeaChange isn’t seeing a lot of momentum in Nucleus or Adrenalin. “It’s baked, it’s running great, it's doing phenomenal in Poland, but I do not control that timing. So to bake that into our numbers we know it will be a slow build quarter-by-quarter. This isn’t a back-ended year or some big hockey stick year.”

But he does expect another “significant decline in our legacy products,” offset by new design wins for Adrenalin and Nucleus.

Samit also addressed opportunities for Rave, its new software-as-a-service for premium OTT video platform, noting that SeaChange is responding to RFPs, just completed a Rave trial with a telco, and is in a trial with a long-standing customer of its previous-gen Axiom VOD backoffice platform. BBC Worldwide and Algar Telecom of Brazil are among SeaChange’s known Rave customers.

“We’re getting the calls from all the right customers,” Samit said, but acknowledged that he doesn’t expect Rave to “translate into GAAP for this year.”

With respect to Rave, SeaChange was also asked to address the general OTT competitive landscape, including some recent momentum by MLB Advanced Media, which includes some work with HBO and the premium programmer's Internet video products, including its new stand-alone service, HBO Now. 

SeaChange, Samit said, is “dealing with a number of major media companies out there and we're not running across MLB, except in Wall Street Journal articles. They have got great technology, but they haven't set themselves up yet to really handle being in the service business, and that's one of our great advantages in that.”

On the financial front, SeaChange posted a fiscal fourth quarter net loss of $6.1 million (19 cents  per share), on revenues of $31.3 million, versus $35.6 million in the year-ago quarter. Analysts were expecting a loss of 4 cents per share.

SeaChange shares closed down $1.05 (13.13%) to $6.95 each on Thursday.

Taking aim at studios, TV networks, sports leagues and MVPDs, SeaChange on Wednesday introduced Rave, a platform designed for “premium” over-the-top video.

SeaChange said Rave, which will support the company’s data analytics and advanced advertising technologies, will cover a variety of OTT apps and services, including video-on-demand, time-shifted, live and downloadable content.

According to the company, the Rave platform will support a presentation layer for multiple devices and operating systems, a unified subscriber experience via a component called Rave Unite, and a services layer spanning content preparation, analytics, advertising, social integration, personalization, as well as live and on-demand video, time-shifted TV, and network DVR capabilities.  

The product seemingly expands the business scope for SeaChange, which has been traditionally focused on the MVPD sector via products such as Adrenalin, its multiscreen video backoffice platform, and Nucleus, an in-home gateway software platform that will play a key role at Layer3 TV, an emerging “virtual” MVPD. Adrenalin is also part of the Rave platform, the company confirmed.

SeaChange said Rave is backed by its Professional Services organization, and that its platform has already been picked by BBC Worldwide for the BBC Store, a service scheduled to launch in 2015. Algar Telecom of Brazil is also a Rave customer, using it to expand a cloud video services trial. SeaChange is in discussions with others. 

The rollout of Rave also appears to place SeaChange in more direct competition with premium-focused online video publishing and management companies, such as Comcast-owned thePlatform, Ooyala, and Piksel, as well as Vubiquity, which also provides content aggregation services, Cisco Systems (Videoscape), and Ericsson, which recently upgraded the Mediaroom product it acquired from Microsoft and introduced a cloud-based, OTT-facing product called MediaFirst.

“Until now the OTT phenomenon has mainly been about reaching the biggest possible audience, not about getting the most revenue from the TV and video content that consumers most prize,” said Jay Samit, SeaChange’s recently appointed CEO, in a statement.

SeaChange announced Rave as it prepared to release fiscal third quarter results. 

Update: SeaChange posted Q3 revenues of $30 million and a GAAP loss of $5.9 million (19 cents per share), versus revenues of $37.8 million and net income of $500,000 (2 cents per fully diluted share) in the year-ago quarter.  SeaChange expects fourth quarter revenues to be in the range of $30 million to $34 million.