Darcy Antonellis, the veteran media technology executive who led Amdocs-owned media services shop Vubiquity since 2014, will step down and take an advisory role, according to Deadline. 

No replacement has been named. 

Vubiquity performs a range of video technology tasks for clients including WarnerMedia, Disney, ViacomCBS, Verizon and Charter Communications. 

“I cannot say enough about the talented and dedicated group of people that I’ve had the privilege to work alongside as we’ve reshaped the company through some of the most dynamic industry periods of our time,” Antonellis said in a statement provided to Deadline and only Deadline ... exclusively. 

“From a U.S.-centric, licensing focused company to a now global scale distribution and platform provider, every member of the organization contributed in some way to these successes," she added. "I am confident that this team will continue to achieve new successes always with an eye towards the future.”

Antonellis, a former Warner Bros. engineering executive who was a Multichannel News Wonder Woman in 2018, continues to serve on the boards of theatrical exhibitor Cinemark and TiVo owner Xperi. 

Cord-cutting has primarily been characterized over time as the path to less cost and more relevant content. So why is it still proving to be so difficult for consumers to create and manage their ideal multiscreen experience?

According to Parks Associates, over a quarter of millennials subscribe to three or more over-the-top video services, and more than half use at least two. However, a separate U.S. survey from Vanson Bourne claims that 68% of all viewers still aren’t satisfied with the range of content currently available to them, even though they are paying an average of $86 per month (not including the cost of broadband) for access.

With new direct-to-consumer entrants about to hit the market, the options to personalize the viewing experience, and potential complexities, will only increase.

The Millennial Factor

When it comes to millennials, they’ve made clear their willingness to pay for their “perfect bundle” — especially offerings that integrate premium live events (like sports) with a customized on-demand “binge” offering.

However, paying for live a la carte content, on top of recurring over-the-top subscriptions and broadband, begins to reach customary pay-TV cost levels. The further multiplier to this complexity quotient is the management of these bespoke, one-off signups and cancellations, often done to see a particular event or during trial periods that automatically renew.

Without user-friendly ways to manage these subscriptions, customers are more likely to try these services once and avoid them later.

How Can Service Providers Make Sense of This?

It’s clear today that our physical and digital life has become one. Think about the course of your day and the limited number of instances where a connected device, app or other digital tool isn’t part of your routine. From the time you wake up, work out, check the news, schedule meetings, make a reservation or rent a car, it’s all through a digital, connected lifestyle. And managing it can be complicated.

Tools that allow consumers to manage their digital lives, subscriptions, terms, trials, content and valuable data within simple-to-use solutions will become increasingly vital. The same goes for their media and entertainment offerings.

In the case of service providers, combining a unified carrier experience that caters to the consumer’s digital life, and integrated with first- and third-party brands, creates stickiness and value. It creates a platform to try and offer new, contextualized services.

There is an appetite for this approach, too. Almost 70% of consumers surveyed in the Vanson Bourne research stated that they would be prepared to pay (a premium) for a unified and personalized service bundle option. And 69% of consumers said that they would shift services and, in some cases, longstanding brand alliances for this type of package and experience.

Preparing for New Content Business Models

On the content side, the market is filled with new opportunities. Whatever solutions put forward to help consumers manage their digital content need to support the yet-to-be-offered business models of major content providers. After all, a transactional player today could be a subscription player tomorrow, or a subscription service could suddenly offer an ad-supported option.

New approaches, which can also include share of subscription revenue opportunities with service providers, can provide even more content options and solutions for millennials to consider.

Bringing Simple Back to the Content Experience

While cord-cutting was supposed to create an ideal content experience, it’s only becoming more complicated for consumers. To best manage this, we need to give consumers a reason to stay within a single ecosystem. Partnerships, better digital lifestyle management, flexible cost-of-entry, and revenue sharing opportunities are crucial to keep subscribers engaged across a highly dynamic landscape.

Darcy Antonellis is head of Amdocs Media and CEO of Vubiquity.

Turner Sports’ Nov. 23 Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson pay-per-view golf match highlights what has been a very unique and successful fall for the PPV event category.

The Capital One’s The Match: Tiger vs. Phil event – the first live, head-to-head golf event ever carried on PPV -- will retail at a suggested price of $19.99, according to Turner executives. Turner is treating the event, in which the winner will receive a $9 million prize -- like a big, boxing match. It has commissioned sister premium service HBO to offer its 24/7 sports documentary series – which is usually associated with marquee boxing matches – to follow the two iconic golfers leading up to the big event.

Golf fans can buy the match through traditional companies like In Demand and Vubiquity, as well as through new entrants like Turner’s Bleacher Report Live streaming sports service.

Tiger vs. Phil adds to what has become a very fruitful period for the PPV event category.

For the first eight months of the year, the pay-per-view event industry hadn’t had a lot to cheer about. Then in September, Canelo Alvarez and Genaddy Golovkin stepped into the boxing ring for a rematch of their highly controversial November 2017 fight, which ended in a draw. Along with being an action-packed fight -- won by Alvarez in a close decision -- the rematch drew approximately 1.1 million PPV buys, according to ESPN.

The Oct. 6 UFC 229 Conor McGregor-Khabib Nurmagomedov fight will be remembered mostly for the wild, post-fight melee that took place both inside and outside the octagon. Yet the event is trending to become the most successful PPV event in UFC’s history with more than 2 million buys, according to published reports.

Showtime will step into the PPV ring Dec. 1 with its big heavyweight championship fight between Deontay Wlder and Tyson Fury.

Looking ahead, the PPV category will certainly face some challenges beginning in 2019 as upstart streaming services like ESPN and DAZN compete for mid-sized combat sports events. DAZN’s deal to stream current PPV boxing champion Alvarez’s next 11 fights is a major body blow to the category.

But for now, the PPV category is enjoying a very event-filled and lucrative end to 2018. 

Amdocs has shed a bit more light on the drivers behind its proposed $224 million acquisition of Vubiquity and how the key distributor of premium content fits into Amdocs’s focus on hundreds of communications companies around the world.

Amdocs to Acquire Vubiquity for $224M

A big one is to enable Amdocs to diversify its business and “further expand our capabilities in the world of media and entertainment, which is increasingly converging,” Eli Gelman, Amdoc’s president and CEO, noted Tuesday (Jan. 30) during the company’s earnings call.

“We’re seeing increasing convergence between traditional wireless and pay TV distributors, content owners and large OTT virtual players,” Gelman said. “By acquiring Vubiquity, we believe Amdocs will be uniquely positioned to address the requirements of distributors, content owners and Web players as the lines between each become increasingly blurred.”

By way of example, he cited AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV and its pending acquisition of Time Warner Inc., as well as Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011 and Comcast’s more recent pursuit of mobile services. Meanwhile, content players, including Disney and HBO, have developed or are developing direct-to-consumer business models.

“We saw this a very natural and complementary fit that works with how the media and entertainment industry has been evolving,” Darcy Antonellis, the CEO of Vubiquity who will head up the Amdocs media division after the deal closes, said in an interview. (Antonelis is a member of MCN's 2018 Wonder Women class.)

She said Vubiquity, for example, can help Amdocs work through the complexities of the content licensing and rights acquisition process and complement Amdocs's expertise in areas such as subscriber management.

In Vubiquity, a company with about 500 employees, Amdocs will get access to a unit with relationships with more than 600 content owners (via a mix of major networks, studios, digital-first networks and independent content owners) that delivers content to 121 countries in 80 languages.

As Amdocs looked to diversify and reach into verticals that extend beyond its communications core, “We wanted to step in with a strong presence and a strong pedigree and knowhow [with] existing relationships embedded in the ecosystem, and Vubiquity gives us that,” Gary Miles, general manager for Amdocs, said in an interview.

He also pointed out that Amdocs started to broaden its reach into the media industry last year when the company acquired Vindicia, a company that makes a cloud-based subscription billing platform for digital media and OTT content offerings.

“This [acquisition of Vubiquity] is part of a broader, strategic, thought-out approach,” Miles said.

Billing, OSS and customer care giant Amdocs announced Tuesday that it has inked a definitive deal to acquire Vubiquity, a distributor of premium content services, for about $224 million in cash.

The boards of directors of both companies have approved the deal, which is expected to close by the end of Q2 2018.

RELATED: Vubiquity Names Heiting Head of North American Sales

The acquisition extends Amdocs’s reach more deeply into the world of premium multiscreen content distribution. Vubiquity works with several major content owners and distributors,  including Time Warner, Disney, Comcast and Sky, as well as OTT players such as Netflix and Amazon.

“This acquisition uniquely positions Amdocs at the center of increased convergence across the content community and video distributors including major OTT providers,” Eli Gelman, president and CEO of Amdocs, said in a statement. "Our joint offerings address the media and entertainment industry’s challenge in balancing the incredible growth of content and the many ways to consume content with making programming easier, faster to deliver and ultimately watch, while also delivering profits.” 

Vubiquity, formerly known as Avail-TVN before a rebranding of the company in March 2013, was formed in 2009 via a merger of Avail Media and TVN Entertainment.

Darcy Antonellis, formerly the president, technical operations and CTO of Warner Bros., was named CEO of Vubiquity in December 2013. That role became effective on Jan. 2, 2014. Following the closing of the deal, Antonellis will join Amdocs as head of the company’s Media Division.

“Vubiquity has successfully been connecting content owners and distributors across many diverse platforms and evolving business models at the core of its support to the media community,” Antonellis said in the release announcing the deal. “Our capabilities, coupled with Amdocs’ global scale and rich set of complementary solutions around monetization, analytics and personalized customer experience will be truly unique, allowing us to deliver to a larger set of customers while solving key industry challenges.  his includes helping video distributors deliver additional profitable offerings, as well as enabling content owners to focus on content creation and maximizing licensing revenues.”

In this week’s issue of Multichannel News, Antonellis was recognized as a member of the publication's annual class of Wonder Women.

RELATED: Hard Work and a Helping Hand Pay Off (subscription required)

The impact of the acquisition on Amdocs’ diluted non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be neutral in fiscal year 2018, and accretive thereafter, the company said.

Amdocs posted fiscal Q1 revenue  of $977.7 million, up 2.4% from the year-ago quarter, and net income of $116.9 million, or $0.80 per diluted share.

NAME: Darcy Antonellis
TITLE: CEO
COMPANY: Vubiquity

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Prior to joining Vubiquity as CEO in late 2013, she was president, technical operations and chief technology officer at Warner Bros. Entertainment, where she played a key role in the studio’s transition to digital technologies and automated distribution systems.

QUOTABLE: “You want to avoid trying to boil the ocean to solve a multitude of problems. Think about your core and the company’s areas of expertise and where you can really bring value and enable new opportunities for your customers.”

Darcy Antonellis, CEO of Vubiquity, understands that a combination of hard work and determination is always required to successfully climb the corporate ladder.

But she’s eager to point out that this climb, typically a more difficult one for women in male-dominated fields, also requires the help of mentors and advocates who make their decisions without self-centered motives, but instead “pay it forward.”

“I feel very strongly that nobody makes their way completely on their own,” Antonellis said. “Recognizing those contributions and how you can learn from anyone on any given day is extremely important.”

Many Mentors, One Most Important
Antonellis noted several mentors who have contributed to her career, but gives much of the credit to her father, who is technically trained and worked in the broadcasting arena. He had some influence on Antonellis’s decision to focus her efforts on technology and engineering, she said.

Watch MCN: 12 Takeaways From MCN's Wonder Women Class of 2018

The importance of mentorship also ties into how Antonellis operates Vubiquity. A prime example is the “VUer Choice Awards,” an annual internal program that recognizes employees who are nominated and selected by their peers for exhibiting one of Vubiquity’s core values.

“Paying it forward is certainly one of those,” Antonellis said.

It’s been an interesting journey for Antonellis, who initially embarked on a career in journalism, including a post with the CBS News bureau in Washington, D.C.

“I later realized that I had a much greater aptitude and passion for math and science, and that ultimately spurred my interest,” she said.

Jim Riley, a former colleague of Antonellis at Vubiquity and now chief revenue officer at Mediamorph, said she possesses a unique blend of knowledge that is critical in the ever-evolving video and media business.

“Darcy is driven, strategic, tenacious and technically savvy,” Riley said. “She’s got a deep technical expertise that she marries with her enthusiasm about the future.”

Riley said he believes Antonellis got ahead of that curve working as a top engineering executive at Warner Bros. Entertainment, which she has parlayed into the leadership role she has today. “She has the technical acumen to handle the challenges of this new world we’re all living in and working together to bring to fruition,” he said.

As a global media distribution technology and services provider, Vubiquity, like other companies in the sector, has been required to evolve, going beyond securing rights and the tech required to distribute premium content to a wide range of screens.

These days, the turf of traditional pay TV operators is being invaded by content owners and new distributors that can tap into high-speed broadband connections to deliver over-the-top content directly to the viewer.

“The video space is incredibly dynamic,” Antonellis said. “The trend we’re seeing is of content owners becoming more direct-to-consumer distributors, and video distributors becoming content owners. We’ve made a lot of investments to enable and support new services rapidly.”

Knowing how to support those trends while also implementing a range of advertising, subscription and transaction-based business models, and doing it on an increasingly global basis, has been a major focus for Antonellis and Vubiquity.

“There’s a great opportunity for premium content to be shared and enjoyed, and that crosses a lot of borders,” she said, referring to the company’s international expansion (now at more than 120 countries and support for about 80 languages).

As CEO, Antonellis is tasked with maintaining a balance on the “here and now” of the business, as well as preparing for what’s to come. “I think the biggest challenges are really just around the raw, dynamic nature of the video landscape and consumption patterns,” she said. “The challenge for any executive team is to maintain discipline to stay focused, but not at the expense of adjusting to these relative changes.”

Finding the Time for Family
Antonellis also tries to strike the right work-life balance. Outside of work, her focus is on her two children, Andrea and Sebastian, who were born in Bogota, Colombia, and did not speak English when they were adopted as teens. Antonellis’s daughter is getting ready to graduate from college; her son is now working full time.

“They’ve really worked to find their way in the world,” Antonellis said. “I look at them as being my greatest inspiration. I think about the beginning of their lives and the challenges that they’ve overcome, and those are pretty good goal posts for me.”

Antonellis is also into sports — among them tennis (she played in college under a scholarship), golf, skiing, participating in triathlons and boating. “Probably everything except curling, maybe,” she said.

She’s also a big Philadelphia Eagles fan, and scored tickets to watch her team defeat the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship.

Her passion for sports also translates to her interest in women’s health, as she is chair of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Los Angeles chapter.

And speaking of sports, regarding advice for other women interested in pursuing a career in engineering, technology and operations, she’d say the same thing cheering on her favorite teams. “The best thing I can say, and in all caps, is: ‘GO, GO, GO!’

Boston – Comcast plans to start shipping its first box with on-board High Dynamic Range (HDR) capabilities on July 4, according to Tony Werner, Comcast’s EVP and chief technology officer, said here Wednesday during a session with other industry CTOs.

That will ensure that the Xi5 will be available in time for the Rio Olympics, where NBCUniversal will be producing some coverage in the HDR format. Comcast also offer a taste of HDR during the games at some special screenings that will showcase the format. 

Werner said he has more personal interest in HDR, a technology that enables brighter and more colorful pixels, than 4K, a format that packs about four times the number of pixels than today’s HDTV images.

He said upconverted 1080p looks good, but HDR makes it “noticeably better.”

Here at the show, Comcast showed off the Xi5, its first HDR-capable box that will be wireless and work with the company’s IP-capable X1 platform. Comcast is also developing the Xi6, which will support both HDR and 4K.

Comcast plans to demo HDR in some hosted events it will arrange during the summer games in Rio.

As for 4K, Werner said Comcast won’t “roadblock” access to it, but said there’s need for more content in that format .

The wide-ranging discussion also touched on Comcast’s X1 platform, which is being licensed by Cox Communications and Shaw Communications and uses the Reference Design Kit (RDK), a preintegrated software platform for video and broadband devices being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter Communications).

Licensing X1 for Cox’s new “Contour” product, “was a key part of our strategy to gain scale, scale around innovation,” Kevin Hart, Cox’s EVP and CTO, said, stressing that there’s a need for more collaboration in the industry.

“The early success is off the charts,” Hart said of Cox’s new X1-based Contour product, which has been deployed to most of the MSO's markets. He added that Cox is looking to update its capital models next year in order to keep up with demand this year and into 2017.

“Once we got this locked and loaded, these guy went,” Werner said.

 The panel also discussed the evolving world of advertising and the shift to more targeted and interactive ads.

Comcast, Werner said, expanded on Comcast’s strategy to integrate interactive ads with the X1 guide environment.

Though advertisers weren’t interested in the early phases of X1 when few customers were on the service, that’s no longer true as Comcast aims to get 50% of its video base on it by the end of the year.  “They are doing the limbo under our door to get ad spots on there,” Werner said, noting earlier that he has “warmed up” to the idea of offering interactive ads on the X1 guide.  

Comcast has supported interactive ads on legacy boxes using EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) (EBIF), but plans to bring it back in a “big way” to X1 using more advanced technology.

Roku, meanwhile, is also pushing hard into this arena, and recently struck a deal with Viacom to help the programmer make its ads more relevant, said Steve Shannon, GM of content and services at Roku.

Darcy Antonellis, CEO of Vubiquity, noted that targeted advertising technologies continue to improve, but are still in the “nascent stages” when it comes to refinement, noting that her getting an for Deadpool is a “tell-tale sign” of that because she’s not in the demographic for that particular movie.

The talk also touched on the potential for virtual reality and 360 video.

Discovery Communications, which launched a VR unit last year, is “still searching for that consistent user experience,” company CTO John Honeycutt said.

And though mobile video is grabbing lots of attention and headlines, there’s a “revenge of the TV” occurring as more of those big screens get connected to the Internet, Roku’s Shannon said. “It is roaring back to be the predominant streaming platform.”

Werner said Comcast is finding tablets and other second screens to be accretive, and not a displacement of TV viewing. “They can fill gaps with it,” he said, noting that Comcast, for example,  has seen many viewers pause a show on the set-top at 10:15 p.m.  and then soon resume it on a tablet. 

Vubiquity said it’s entering the $32 billion PC gaming industry with a new subscription service that will be offered via an exclusive global distribution deal with Utomik.

Under the deal, Vubiquity will be the global business-to-business commercial distributor for Utomik, a service that provides unlimited gaming,  including a library of hundreds of popular and classic PC games, for a monthly fee.

Vubiquity said its affiliate partners will have the option to either bundle Utomik’s monthly service with subscription broadband packages or offer the service separately on an a la carte basis.

Vubiquity will lead marketing and sales efforts while Utomik will continue to operate its service directly to consumers through its standalone system.

Silicon Valley-based Utomik was founded in 2014 and currently offers a service with a library of more htan 650 titles to more than  30 markets.  In April, it inked a deal with Sega to offer more than 20 titles, including Total War and Sonic the Hedgehog.  Other Utomik publishing partners include Codemasters, Paradox Interactive, Nordic Games, and Plug In Digital, among others. It’s currently operating an “open beta” service that offers a 14-day free trial, and then $5.99 per month thereafter.

“This relationship allows our partners to capitalize on new opportunities in today’s dynamic content landscape,” Michele Edelman, Vubiquity’s EVP, marketing & content strategy, said in a statement. “As the development and distribution of gaming continues to evolve, Utomik’s library of games and instant download technology combined with the broad reach of our distributors creates new and exciting opportunities for our partners and their gaming customers alike.”

Vubiquity said it has struck a five-year multiscreen video deal with FlixFling, a new OTT streaming service that touts a catalog of more than 15,000 movies and TV shows.

Under the deal, Vubiquity will provide FlixFling with access to its AnyVU Content Cloud, a commercial multiscreen platform that manages the distribution of movies and TV shows.

FlixFling delivers content over-the-top via pay-as-you-go and subscription-based offerings. According to its site, it currently supports multiple platforms, including Vizio smart TVs, apps for iOS, Android and Windows 8 devices, the Xbox 360, Roku players and the Google Chromecast streaming adapter.

Of recent note, Philadelphia-based FlixFling announced a streaming video deal with Consolidated Communications, which offers broadband service across an 11-state territory.

“We’re proud to offer a deep library of curated premium titles in the AnyVU Content Cloud, including our selection of pre-licensed content,” Fred Handsman, SVP of business development at Vubiquity, said in a statement. “We’ve built a service that can seamlessly make these titles available to FlixFling’s customers across multiple devices and in a variety of ways, including subscription video-on-demand and electronic sell-through.”

“Our partnership with Vubiquity will provide a huge influx of new releases, sometimes months before they are available on other services,” added FlixFling CEO Thomas Ashley. “The AnyVU Content Cloud is a tremendous asset for FlixFling to be working with and we’re thrilled to add Vubiquity's catalog of premium content to our extensive library of major studio releases, TV shows, indies, and exclusives.” 

Vubiquity said it is setting its sights on the OTT market in Latin America with the debut of a managed digital storefront product for the region.

Vubiquity said the product, to debut at next week's Andina Link show in Colombia, expands on the company’s current work with telecom operators in the region with a suite of content services, including content acquisition licensing, scheduling, programming and processing and marketing support. Vubiquity has already launched digital storefronts with partners in other regions, including North America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

It  added that the new digital storefront for the region provides a “white-label” portal for partners and content distributors that also links access to Vubiquity’s film and TV catalog alongside studio-approved DRM, and support for various business models, including subscription VOD, free, ad-supported VOD, electronic sell through and live TV.

Vubiquity said the storefront for Latin America supports Web browsers, iOS and Android mobile devices, and set-top boxes.

"The telecoms market in Latin America is especially competitive and complex, and our storefront provides service providers with the edge they need over other OTT providers,” Hector Rodriguez, Vubiquity’s VP for the Latin America region, said in a statement. 

Multiscreen video distribution specialist Vubiquity said it has struck an international SVOD Deal with AwesomenessTV that will enable the millennials-focused service to extend its reach to regions such as the Middle East, Africa, South Eastern Europe and Latin America (excluding Brazil).

Financial terms were not disclosed, but the agreement covers  AwesomenessTV series such as Fifth Harmony Takeover, DIY or DI-Don't!, Hey Guys, It's Meg!, Makeup Mythbusters, Amanda Steele’s The Social Life, Cheerhab, My Dream Quinceañera, and IMO. In all, Vubiquity will distribute about 130 hours of content from AwesomenessTV to its international distribution partners.

"We’re excited to bring a fantastic brand to some of the largest territories in the world,” Vubiquity chief content officer Rob Jacobson, said in a statement. “Non-traditional programming is extremely popular in emerging markets amongst young audiences and AwesomenessTV has created terrific, popular shows and is shaping the type of content that the next generation expects. This deal gives our clients the opportunity not only to meet customer demands but also to get ahead of their competition. We’re delighted to be partnering with them in this SVOD initiative."

AwesomenessTV, which also distributes content via Verizon’s new go90 service and Comcast’s Watchable curated OTT video offering, is owned by DreamWorks Animation and Hearst Corporation, which has a 25% interest in AwesomenessTV. 

Multiscreen video specialist Vubiquity has teamed with TV2U Worldwide Pty Ltd to roll out transactional VOD (TVOD) services to under-penetrated markets in Asia and the Middle East.

Under the deal, TV2U will act as Vubiquity’s affiliate in up to seven high-growth markets, including Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.  Other countries covered by the deal include Australia and the United Kingdom, and others may be added to the list at a later date, the companies said.

Vubiquity will also provide  international programming for these new VOD services along with content processing and ongoing promotional support.

In turn, TV2U will provide its video-distributor clients with a TVOD platform that includes single login for access to films and TV series on devices such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, connected TVs and set-top boxes. 

Vubiquity dipped into the M&A pool again Wednesday by announcing it is buying Digital End-To-End (DETE), a managed content technology service, from Warner Bros. Technical Operations.

Vubiquity said the deal, which includes all of DETE’s clients (including Warner Bros. itself), will enable it to expand its content services and distribution capabilities. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The agreement will also give Vubiquity exclusive distribution rights to Warner Bros.’ library of movies and television shows for “several years,” the company said.

Vubiquity said it will build on DETE’s current capabilities by combining it with its own AnyVU Cloud service for digital multiscreen video.

The DETE deal comes less than a month after Vubiquity added OTT expertise via the acquisition of Juice Worldwide, a Toronto-based encoding house that certifies content for digital delivery.

“Pairing DETE with VUBIQUITY’s AnyVU cloud-based service will save us and our clients significant time, effort and resources while providing expanded and improved digital distribution,” said Brendan Sullivan, EVP of technology for Vubiquity, in a statement.  “We are eager to incorporate the DETE technology into our current, cloud-based business with the ultimate goal of servicing our clients from beginning to end with speed, flexibility and security to generate quality results.”

Vubiquity and Warner Bros. already had a connection of sorts. Darcy Antonellis, who joined Vubiquity as CEO in January 2014, previously was president, technical operations and CTO at Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Doug Sylvester, formerly the president of Vubiquity’s Americas division, has been named CEO of CAPS, a technology payroll company that serves the entertainment industry.

Sylvester succeeds Eric Capogrosso , who is retiring. Capogrosso will stay on in a consulting role with CAPS  through the end of 2015, retain an ownership stake in CAPS, and remain active on its board of directors, the company said.

Multiscreen video specialist Vubiquity does not have immediate plans to hire a replacement for Sylvester, an exec who is also late of E!, New Line Cinema and IFILM. “Doug is pursuing an opportunity to lead a privately-held software company,” Vubiquity said, in a statement. “He remains a terrific colleague and friend of VU.  We wish him well and thank him for his contributions to the growth of the company.”

“With an unwavering focus on technology and service excellence, CAPS has distinguished itself in the industry,” Sylvester said in a statement.  “I’m very excited about the opportunity to lead this dynamic organization, and look forward to working with Eric and the team to realize the company’s next phase of growth.”

CAPS specializes in providing entertainment payroll services, covering areas such as film and television, music tours, venues and festivals and live events. 

Vubiquity said it is revealing and demonstrating new products and services at this week’s INTX show in in Chicago focused on areas such as live streaming, digital distribution and electronic sell-through.

On the linear side, its LiveVU service is powered by powered by Vubiquity’s AnyVU Cloud platform, enabling service providers to quickly launch a live linear streaming service that includes content acquisition, content encoding and packaging, CDN delivery and a digital storefront.

Also on show is the company’s Bandwidth Optimization platform that uses reduced bitrate encoding to compress data and make more storage available, thereby enabling service providers to expand their offerings. The company said its Bandwidth Optimization platform facilitates 38% more storage and allows service providers to deliver 62% more on demand assets to their customers, leading to increased revenues. Bandwidth Optimization transcodes high-quality source files into lower bitrate profiles encoded at a rate of 9.25Mbps, while maintaining high-quality standards of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Visual Quality Metrics (VQM), and Structural Similarity (SSIM).

With respect to digital distribution, Vubiquity said its existing service provider portfolio consists of 550 distributors across 37 countries in 15 languages, noting that, beginning in the third quarter of 2015, the company will boost this portfolio and distribute content to additional service providers including OTT distributors.

Vubiquity is also showing an EST solution for that works with existing VOD set-ups and includes pre-licensed movies and TV shows for in- and out-of-home viewing on mainstream devices, set-top-box integrations, white-labeled storefronts, and device apps iOS  and Android devices, as well as PCs and Macs.

“At this year’s INTX, we wanted to really highlight all of the content capabilities we have been developing over the past year,” Darcy Antonellis, CEO of Vubiquity said, in a statement . “With new technologies and disruption comes many new challenges, and we have been diligently working to best support our partners and customers with new solutions.”

Vubiquity, an aggregator of premium content, said it has struck a deal to make its LiveVU linear TV platform available to members of the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), a group that negotiates carriage and tech deals for more than 850 independent cable operators.

The LiveVU hosted MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 service, which offers more than 720 standard- and high-definition channels, including pay-per-view offerings, carves out a migration path to more bandwidth-efficient MPEG-4-based feeds as cable operators start to retire MPEG-2-based gear, Vubiquity said. 

Vubiquity said LiveVU is compatible with MPEG-2 and MPEG-4-based set-top boxes, DAC/NAS/NASRAC, and cable systems that run on Arris, Verimatrix, Mediaroom (now run by Ericsson), and Minerva platforms.

“NCTC’s partnership with Vubiquity offers access to technology and content packages that help drive down the costs associated when providing cable TV,” Corey McCarthy, NCTC’s CFO and SVP of business development, said in a statement. “Vubiquity’s LiveVU service offers our members flexibility and choice by offering both MPEG2 and MPEG4 linear feeds, providing bandwidth, compression and network capacity advantages our members can take advantage of.”

“Our LiveVU solution addresses the challenge most cable operators continue to try to solve - the ongoing operational and capital costs associated to managing a headend,” added Vubiquity president Doug Sylvester. “LiveVU delivers bandwidth and network capacity savings, mitigates the need for costly headend upgrades, and provides the springboard for future monetization services for NCTC’s membership base.”

NCTC also works with Comcast Wholesale, striking a multiyear renewal recently for the HITS National Authorization Service that includes new provisions for NCTC members to use “universal” digital transport adapters (uDTAs), which are one-way "channel zappers" that can operate on Cisco Systems- and Arris-based digital video networks. 

Multiscreen technology and content company Vubiquity has hired Adam Poulter as EVP and managing director for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region.

As the senior exec based at the company’s London headquarters, Poulter will be responsible for Vubiquity’s performance and growth for EMEA, as well as in Latin America.

Poulter most recently served as global SVP-content, digital and media at Liberty Media’s Ascent Media unit, where he headed up its global content business and developed digital distribution for several major Hollywood studios, including Walt Disney Company, Sony, Paramount and Warner Bros, and television distributors such as BBC Worldwide, Discovery Networks and IMG.

He previously served as CEO of Carlton Communications cinema division in Europe; CEO of Screenvision (formerly Technicolor’s Entertainment Services start-up in New York); CEO (Europe) of the digital ad network Miva Inc; and executive director of Red Bee Media under Macquarie Capital Funds.

“Adam brings strong leadership coupled with a very successful history of working with media clients around the world,” said Darcy Antonellis, CEO of Vubiquity, in a statement. “Adam is the perfect executive to lead Vubiquity's international organization supporting its partners with innovative media and entertainment products and services.”

Elsewhere on the international front, Vubiquity acquired U.K.-based video-on-demand content aggregation firm FilmFlex Movies Ltd. earlier this year.

Multiscreen video specialist Vubiquity has expanded its corporate development division through the promotion of Pete Bryant to  EVP, corporate development and strategic business development, and the hiring of Gabriel Berger to the post of SVP, business development.

Bryant, who previously was SVP, business development, will report to Vubiquity CEO Darcy Antonellis and company president Doug Sylvester in his expanded role.

Berger, who last served as SVP of sales at Digitalsmiths (now part of TiVo), is also late of Clearleap, Navic Networks (sold to Microsoft in 2008 ), Gotuit Media (sold to Digitalsmiths in 2010), OpenTV, The Box Music Network and Request Television. Berger is tasked with managing key partnerships, building relationships with emerging companies and exploring new revenue opportunities worldwide. He reports to Bryant.

“Throughout the course of this year, Vubiquity has developed a number of new products and platforms that leverage the latest in technology to support good consumer experiences while increasing content monetization,” said Antonellis, who took the helm of Vubiquity in January. “Pete and Gabe are perfectly placed to leverage these new tools to support new and existing clients as they accelerate growth to reach their financial and strategic goals.  Their respective backgrounds speak directly to the new economy of audience engagement, retention and monetization in media and entertainment.”

Viewers Choice Canada, the joint-venture, pay-per-view content distributor owned by Bell Media and Rogers, is closing down in September, which might create opportunities for other providers to step in and fill a gap in providing access to  PPV movies and events, especially for smaller pay-TV providers in Canada.

The shutdown, which has been reported earlier in Canadian media, including cartt.ca, comes as a result of changes in ownership at the 23-year-old PPV distributor. 

Bell Media became the majority owner last year after buying Astral Media, which had owned a minority stake, with Rogers owning the rest. A Bell representative confirmed the service is closing down operations on Sept. 30.

"The two co-owners of VCC, Bell and Rogers, both have their own pay-per-view services and thus feel there is no need to keep the service operating as a standalone entity," the Bell statement said. "VCC will be working with its affiliate partners to ensure that a smooth transition to another provider of pay-per-view (including Bell, Rogers, and Shaw) will occur."

Carrt.ca reported that providers other than Bell Media and Rogers, which have their own PPV distribution businesses, "may have to scramble to find something to replace the pay-per-view service, which offers both movies and event programming such as boxing, UFC and WWE matches." Viewers Choice Canada affiliates include Videotron, Cogeco, Eastlink, Bell Aliant, Source Cable and select other smaller providers, carrt.ca said. Videotron, which operates in Quebec, and was said by carrt.ca to be looking into asking for permission to expand its French-language PPV service, Canal Indigo, to also include English programming.

One U.S. content distributor, Vubiquity, said it was aware of the situation and exploring the potential of providing PPV content to small cable and telco providers north of the U.S. border. In fact, it is already doing business in Canada. “Vubiquity’s platform is integrated with most Canadian operators and has provided a range of managed services in Canada for years," the company told Multichannel News in a statement. "And since we work with every event supplier, we are actively exploring ways to assist our Canadian partners in accessing these important PPV events.”

Viewers Choice Canada began in 1981 as an alternative to video-store movie rentals in Eastern Canada, and then expanded to a nationwide service, The Canadian Press reported. "For years it was also the exclusive Canadian provider of major sporting events like Wrestlemania from the WWE and helped build the reputation of mixed martial arts company the Ultimate Fighting Championship," the story added. 

Multiscreen video content and tech specialist Vubiquity is looking to expand its international presence while adding some key video “storefront” capabilities to its portfolio through the acquisition of U.K.-based video-on-demand content aggregation firm FilmFlex Movies Ltd.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but FilmFlex, a joint venture of Sony Pictures Television and The Walt Disney Company, claims to have handled more than 90 million transactions since its founding in 2005.

Vubiquity, which acquired the On Demand Group, another U.K.-based VOD company, from SeaChange International in 2012, said the deal will help the company boost its international efforts while giving it a video storefront capability it can tie into its emerging AnyVu Cloud platform, which will support the delivery of video to a wide range of screens and new services, including electronic sell-through offerings.

FilmFlex counts service provider customers such as Virgin Media, EE, TalkTalk and Film4, and has deals in place with more than 30 content owners and studios, including Disney, Lionsgate, MGM, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television, Icon, Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment, and Axiom Films, among others.

“Having a stronger presence in Europe is important to us,” Vubiquity president Doug Sylvester said, noting that the FilmFlex acquisition will provide the company with incremental rights to content that can be licensed in the U.K. for delivery to set-tops and connected devices.

He said the front-end, digital storefront piece coming way of FilmFlex movies will come into play in all markets. While some partners will want to integrate that platform for electronic video services they manage, others partners have asked Vubiquity to handle the full, end-to-end managed service, Sylvester said.

He said FilmFlex team of about 25 people, including CEO Jeff Henry, is joining Vubiquity and will remain based in the U.K.

“FilmFlex’s assets and capabilities, when merged with Vubiquity’s reach and scale, result in a very large opportunity for both companies –and for the customers we share,” Henry said, in a statement.