Adding a new wrinkle to the TV everywhere model, Pac-12 Networks and Synacor have developed a way to securely stream out the college sports programmer’s video service directly to students who live on campus.
A new authentication system for the Pac-12 Now TVE service, currently in use at Arizona State University, the University of Washington and the University of California at Los Angeles, enables eligible students to sign in using each school’s existing student-identification system. Synacor is doing this by extending each university’s student-ID management system via proxy.
The sports programmer and Synacor hope to roll out the platform to other Pac-12 Conference schools in the coming months as more universities opt in. About 80,000 on-campus students attend schools in the Pac-12, which also includes Arizona, the University of California at Berkeley, Colorado, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, the University of Southern California, Utah and Washington State.
According to Pac-12 Networks president Lydia Murphy-Stephans, the student-tailored TVE project was spawned by initial interest from Arizona State president Michael Crow, as it became increasingly apparent that most students don’t watch TV in common areas and prefer to consume video on their mobile devices.
