I have had it confirmed from BSkyB's spokesman that the issue affecting the collapse of its Now TV service on Monday night was identified and “a fix has been put in place”. Sky is “now testing the service to make sure the fix ensures that we don’t see another service outage”.

Significantly, it seems that the Now TV trial of Sky Sports earlier this year failed to identify this particular technical issue (which remains publicly unidentified). As Sky says: “the issue was not thrown up in testing, hence why it was unfortunately only caught in a live environment”. This does raise the inevitable question, if the trial was not conducted effectively, will other issues not identified by the trial also only arise when real, paying customers are expecting to watch the big game?

It would appear that BSkyB is unconcerned about capacity issues, suggesting that the technical issue lies elsewhere. The core infrastructure of Now TV is shared with Sky Go, which recently supported more than 330,000 concurrent users for the Real Madrid-Manchester United game.

The business impact of the Now TV service failure on BSkyB is clearly not insignificant. Now TV is not only issuing refunds to any customers who paid for a day pass to watch the Manchester derby, but to any customer who has ever purchased a Sky Sports day pass since the service launched. That was only on March 19^th, so in less than three weeks prior to Monday it seems unlikely there were too many paying customers. Now TV is also offering customers who were unable to watch on Monday five free day passes to use at a future date. Given that there were at least 5000 customers who had free passes on Monday, this equates to a minimum value of £300,000.

By issuing free passes to so many users, Now TV's Sky Sports service has effectively reverted back to trial mode, foregoing most of the commercial revenues which might have accrued over the first couple of months. Let's not forget that the outage also appeared to affect some of Now TV's movie subscriber customers. BSkyB will be hoping that any future technical issues can be resolved over the next few weeks without any further negative publicity.

David Mercer

Now TV Customer Letter

8/4/13

Hi Everyone,

We’re so sorry about last night. Due to an unforeseen technical issue we know some of our customers couldn’t access our service. As sports fans we totally understand the frustration you must have experienced if you came to watch the big game.

Having identified the cause of last night’s problem, we are now working hard to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

For anyone who has ever purchased a Sky Sports Day Pass since launch, we have refunded all of your £9.99 passes. From this point the refund will be in your account within 3 to 5 working days (depending on your bank).

By way of an apology, we will also be sending everyone affected (including #Tweet4YourTicket winners) 5 free Sky Sports Day Passes so you can come and try the service again. We've been processing these today and they will be emailed to you tomorrow.

Apologies again from everyone here.

NOW TV

Live televised football games don’t come much bigger than the top two teams in the English Premier League facing off at 8pm on a Monday night. Sky’s over-the-top TV service, Now TV, chose this game to offer 5000 free day passes (normal price £9.99) as a promotional tool.

I settled down at 7.45 having claimed my free voucher earlier in the day, with some very friendly assistance from Now TV’s online chat service (I had tried to use the voucher via the Xbox app but it wasn’t enabled so I was charged the full amount – I have been offered a refund).

Initially video quality was surprisingly good (I had heard that video quality on the recent Now TV Sky Sports trial was not entirely satisfactory). The main problem tonight was lip sync: audio was running ahead of video markedly for both studio and advertising material. But that’s not a problem you’ll notice for live sports so everything was looking good…

… until 7.55pm when my Xbox app shut down the video and presented an error message. After several attempts to restart the service the error message kept appearing. Checks at www.xbox.com/status suggested Xbox had resolved earlier problems at 7.35pm with Now TV but clearly that wasn’t the case. That message had disappeared by 8.30pm and Xbox claimed the Now TV app is “up and running”. I supposed that is true because the app opens. It just won’t run any video.

Checking Twitter it appears Now TV acknowledged problems specific to the Xbox app which they have tried to resolve. But there is a steady stream of complaints from Now TV users about the service failing, on multiple devices, including users who have paid £9.99 for the service and are demanding refunds. There are also reports that users of other Now TV channels (eg movies) are seeing a deterioration in service.

At 8.43pm Now TV’s Community Manager posted the following comment on the community notice board:

“We’re really sorry, but we have been experiencing some issues this evening which will obviously have impacted your viewing of NOW TV.

“As a result, we’ll be issuing a full refund tomorrow to all customers who had an active Sky Sports Day Pass during this time, and will email you to confirm this has happened.

“For those of you using a free pass, we will be contacting you with another free pass for you to use at any time.”

As I write at 9pm the stream of complaints on Twitter continues. This looks like being a major publicity disaster for Sky’s Now TV service. I will try to get official explanation of events in the morning. In the meantime this fiasco is confirmation that OTT TV is a long way from prime time when it comes to live sports, which was always going to be the most challenging genre, even when major powerhouses like BSkyB are behind it.

David Mercer

The UK’s Freesat digital television service provider begins its television advertising campaign today for its new hybrid broadband/broadcast TV service, “Freetime”. We’re supposed to write this as <free time> so don’t blame me if it looks like my fingers have slipped on the keyboard.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been using the newly launched <free time> service for the past couple of weeks, courtesy of a new Humax <free time> HDR-1000S set-top box. The “hybrid” part means that the Freesat EPG integrates the OTT catch-up TV services from providers like the BBC, ITV and (coming shortly) Channel 4 and Five. In practice this means that the user can search backwards in time through the EPG, find a programme which was broadcast (in that traditional, legacy sense of the word) at some previous point, select the programme and watch it, more or less instantly.

From an end user perspective this should mean that the EPG becomes a gateway to online TV apps and services without the user even having to think about it. And in practice <free time> comes pretty close to delivering on that promise. At the moment only the BBC and ITV channels can make use of the hybrid capabilities; in those cases the user simply selects the left cursor on the remote control to surf backwards through the programme schedule. Selecting a programme which is available online (which the vast majority appear to be) takes the viewer automatically to the online player app, and to the specific show selected, and starts the show playing. There are inevitably a few pauses along the way, since however fast the broadband connection there is a fair amount of processing going on. But typically I have found that shows start within 30 seconds or so. That’s not bad when you appreciate what technology is involved in getting this to work, although perhaps typical users might wonder initially whether there is a problem with the service. Humax might want to think about showing some sort of “please wait” message while all this is going on.

Freesat is also planning to launch second screen apps to allow remote EPG control and content shifting. That's something I'm really looking forward to.

All in all, it’s an impressive effort and watching catch-up TV soon becomes second nature to watching regular live broadcast TV channels using the EPG. Unfortunately I have to report a couple of issues. Initially my ITV Player was simply failing to load, although this now appears to have been resolved. Secondly, I have found that the box does not appear to be caching enough content to allow for smooth playback. My set-top box is connected to a 4Mbps broadband connection and other devices using the same connection successfully stream both SD and HD content from the BBC’s iPlayer. Eventually I found a a solution: pausing the catch-up show for 30 seconds or so appears to load the buffer sufficiently that it then plays smoothly without further interruption. I have asked Humax for feedback and am awaiting comment.

The other aspect to <free time> is the ability to market television shows via the EPG. The “Don’t Miss” feature essentially advertises TV shows already broadcast and allows the viewer to watch them instantly. I have found this surprisingly compelling, given that I am not particularly open to searching for TV shows I am not familiar with. Perhaps the novelty factor will wear off, but this is potentially a rich seam of innovation and source of additional eyeballs which the BBC and other free-to-air broadcasters will want to mine.

According to Strategy Analytics research, opposition to pay TV has grown significantly in the UK in the past two years. We’ve seen a 13% net rise in the number of people who believe all TV should be free and supported by advertising or public funding. <free time> will go some way to ensuring that free digital satellite TV remains competitive against hybrid service offerings from Sky, Virgin Media and BT.

David Mercer

Finally, if you’re thinking this all sounds eerily familiar, you probably have in mind the Youview service from Freeview, the rival UK digital terrestrial TV platform, which does pretty much the same things, albeit using a very different technical platform. But Iwon’t bore you with those issues today, strategically significant as they are. Just sit back, select your show and enjoy. TV schedules just entered the digital age.

Client Reading: Attitudes to TV Business Models: Opposition To Pay TV Is Growing

If the television industry is going to get swept up in the apps hype wave there is little sign of it at this week's Appsworld event in London. There were hardly any stands demonstrating apps aimed at smart TV viewers, Accedo being a notable exception. And the dedicated TV apps conference track has focused on the many barriers which stand in the way of this emerging market while bemoaning the absence of any major revenue generation opportunities.

Accedo`s Michael Lanz did his best to drum up some enthusiasm for the TV apps business, claiming that he can already make business cases for ad-supported apps, if only in the larger smart TV markets. At the same time he admitted that "TV apps payment platforms are a mess right now. I haven't been able to make one payment using my smart TV and this is my business." Partly because one-time payment mechanisms are so user-unfriendly he believes that the TV apps business will be driven almost entirely by ad- and subscription-driven business models. That sounds a lot like how the TV industry works today, and Lanz's argument makes sense: television's industry structure will encourage entrants to adapt to its way of doing things.

The other key theme has been openness and standards, and we have heard the usual complaints that most developers will never be able to support smart TV until today's fragmented market evolves into one where one or two platforms are dominant. Unless, that is, you are the BBC, which has hundreds of developers making sure that iPlayer is available on 400 different connected devices. The BBC is now promising that the red button will evolve into a connected TV service, so that viewers will connect directly to the channel's respective online service by selecting the familiar red button on their TV remote control. Eventually the BBC will offer multiscreen red button services, so that smartphones and tablets will detect if the viewer is watching TV and synchronise content.

The most valuable contribution so far has come from Facebook's Karla Geci, Strategic Partner Development Director. In response to my question about advertising opportunities, she noted that multiscreen was allowing advertisers to become better storytellers. This is precisely what needs to happen - the active involvement and drive from the creative community - if multiscreen and smart TV technologies are not to be consigned as distant memories like so many other advanced TV technologies over the past decade or so.

David Mercer

The International CES 2012 closed its doors a week ago and our analyst team has filed its reports. Highlights included smart TV apps, the post-HDTV future, two-screen TV and ultrabooks.

Within the smart TV domain Google had been expected to set the show alight with its latest Google TV implementations. But none of us was over-impressed. Marvell took up some of the space left by Intel’s digital home withdrawal by demonstrating its Armada platform supporting GoogleTV 2.0, but the platform did not appear to offer anything unique relative to other smart TV solutions.

LG was also demonstrating Google TV on the show floor, but was clearly less than wholly committed to the platform. I was talking to LG’s Peter Hollenhurst at the Google TV stand when we were politely interrupted by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on his whistlestop tour through the CES pandomonium. (I seem to have developed a habit of being interrupted by FCC Chairmen when I am viewing smart TV innovations at CES.)

Fortunately I had already managed to hear enough from Peter to suggest that LG is still working out exactly what Google TV means and where it sits in LG’s smart TV strategy. Behind him was a large display with the words “LG Smart TV with Google TV”, which obviously raises some interesting positioning questions. So “Google TV” is an option within the “LG Smart TV” package, perhaps? In Peter’s words, however, “Smart TV is one thing, Google TV is another”. “Our display is confusing,” he noted, and who was I to disagree?

Much of the rest of LG’s stand was taken up by demonstrations of its own Smart TV platform, or NetCast. And since LG has stated publicly that it expects its own solution to account for 90% of its smart TV business during 2012, we can assume that the Google TV version is unlikely to feature strongly in its product lineup or on retailer shelves during 2012/3.

Our CES reports cover a wide range of exhibitors, including Acer, Akamai, Amimon, ARM, ASUS, AT&T, Broadcom, Buffalo, Cisco, Coincident, Google, Hisense, HP, Intel, Lenovo, LG, Marvell, Motorola, Netgear, Opera, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Rovi, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Sony Pictures, Toshiba, Universal, Vizio, Warner Bros. Clients are welcome to follow up with any additional questions about the show.

David Mercer

Standalone content providers will be marginalised, the role of device vendors will be diminished, and entry barriers will be raised to “historically unimaginable levels” according to our 2012 Predictions report, which is now available for complimentary download. According to my colleague, Ed Barton: “Now it is no longer enough to ‘just’ be a multibillion dollar market leader to play this game: bring an addressable market of more than a hundred million devices, global territorial coverage, tier one content relationships across all entertainment formats and tens of billions of dollars to invest over the next decade, or go home.”

The report also addresses Apple’s iTV, Smart TV platforms, second screen apps, broadband speeds, Android@Home, Amazon’s tablet strategy, voice control, new wireless home technologies, the next generation of games console platforms, and the multiscreen impact of the London Olympics.

Enjoy the report. We welcome feedback and wish everyone a peaceful and relaxing holiday.

David Mercer

The keynote presentation by Google TV’s Head of International, Suveer Kathari, at last week’s Informa OTT TV conference said very little about Google TV, even though it did present some useful insights on future market trends. For the record, Google’s key predictions include:

1. TV will become more personal and social

2. TV will become more engaging, especially through improved discovery

3. there will be more “glocal” content: local content delivered to global audiences

Not too many surprises there. The concern has been that Google, like so many PC- and mobile-centric players, still sees the TV as an extension of those legacy models. We’ve heard it so many times, but just to confirm: Google believes smart TV will follow the smartphone path, including the apps and store models. It was this limited vision that helped to create the disaster that was Google TV 1.0, and resulted in a $50m black hole for its partner, Logitech.

So what are Google’s plans for recovery? Well, it has already launched the second version of its Google TV platform, which has been downloaded to Sony Google TV devices and will upgrade the Logitech Revue devices over the coming weeks. Google TV 2.0 is essentially Android 3.1, according to Kathari, and includes Android Market. Kathari claims that apps developers are “very interested” in the big screen opportunity. Google TV market can accommodate all Android apps which do not rely on specific personal and mobile device capabilities, such as touch screen and GPS. In fact there are very few Android apps designed specifically for Google TV today: one example includes Plugplayer, a UPnP media streaming app which has accumulated between 10 and 50 downloads during the past month.

In response to my question, Kathari confirmed that Google TV will be an “open operating system” able to be modified by its device partners. However, during a one-to-one discussion, a senior industry executive cast doubt on this notion of openness, noting that Microsoft was receiving many millions of dollars in licensing fees from the Android platform. Regular readers will be familiar with my own issues with the notion of “openness” in any technology domain, which seems to be very much in they eye of the beholder.

Nevertheless, Google does finally seem to be appreciating the magnitude of its earlier mistakes and adjusting to the unique requirements of the TV model. Interfaces and user experience are one thing, and we will certainly see excited crowds flocking to see the latest LG, Samsung and other Google TV devices at CES in January.

Business models are very much another matter. Never say never, but our research so far suggests people, yes, even early adopters, want to watch TV on their TVs, not browse lecture schedules or check their email. As Google’s latest partner, Samsung, noted, the TV apps space is going to evolve very differently to those on smartphones.

I’m sure that a handful of apps, especially in games, will emerge as star performers from the efforts of Google, Apple and CE manufacturers, but there is a strong consensus that the opportunity in TV relative to the smartphone and tablet spaces is somewhat limited. Rather than broadcasters, it may be PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo which should feel more threatened by the dawning of the TV apps era.

(Visit Apps World next week in London where you'll hear from key speakers about the TV apps industry.)

David Mercer

Back in December 2010 I spoke with Anthony Rose the day before his departure from the BBC. Less than a year later Rose is preparing to launch his latest venture: Zeebox, which has attracted $7m in funding. He gave last week’s Informa IP Cable World Summit a heads-up on what Zeebox would be bringing to the market.

Zeebox is a free application which (eventually) will reside on tablets, smartphones or PCs. The iPad version launches in early November. Zeebox is a TV guide for the social network age. It allows users to see what their friends are watching at any given moment, and switch to that programme instantly on the TV set by selecting an option in the application on the personal device. People can also get real-time statistics on what is being watched, which shows are most popular, and chat in real time about live shows.

Part of the magic is in the application’s ability to tell the personal device, via the DLNA-enabled home network, to switch HDMI inputs on the connected TV if required, and then to select the appropriate channel and programme seamlessly from within the application. The service also works with DLNA-enabled set-top boxes, although these are not as commonplace just yet.

The Zeebox service also incorporates metadata and content recognition technologies which allow the app to understand what is being watched on the big screen at any given moment, and to incorporate relevant material on the personal device. Zeebox hopes to patent this technology: content recognition is a hot area being pursued by a number of emerging players such as Civolution.

Zeebox is initially aimed at the Europe-centric free (ad-funded and public service) TV market, so Amercians might think it has little relevance in that market. Its functionalities are dependent on open standards and APIs, and on the presence of DLNA in connected devices. Specifically Rose claims that the first implementations will be compatible with Samsung, Sony, LG and Panasonic 2011, and some 2010, TV models.

Rose claims that pay TV operators need not be left out of the opportunity: they could enable their devices with DLNA, and they could use Zeebox to drive viewers towards pay services. It was clear from Rose’s answer, however, that this is very much a secondary objective in the early stages.

So one of the key questions for Zeebox is how many people are actually using the connected TVs on which the success of his service greatly depends. Well, according to our own research released this week (to which Rose was kind enough to refer in his speech), 10% of European homes are accessing video content via the internet on their TV screens. But only 3% are using a connected TV: the remainder are using games consoles, PCs via HDMI and various other solutions.

This is sure to change as this emerging market rapidly evolves; but it may be a stretch to assume, as Zeebox appears to, that connected TV users are actually connecting their TV set, strange as that may seem. So Zeebox could end up playing a key role in the all-important customer education process which needs to take place before its full market potential can be reached.

David Mercer

Client Reading: Multiscreen Connected TV: Assessing Device Usage and Ownership

As the media industry gears up for another long weekend of back-to-back trade meetings at Amsterdam's IBC, a number of vendors have held analyst pre-briefings, perhaps recognising the challenge of finding time and any space, never mind a quiet space, to discuss things during the show itself.

Last week Netgem, the France-based IPTV set-top box developer, introduced its key theme for this year’s event, and managed to put yet another gloss on the buzzword of the moment, the ubiquitous “cloud”. I thought we had heard most of the possible explanations for what this cloud thing really is, and they have all revolved around some element of online access to remote servers in datacenters. The “cloud” is, very loosely, anything “out there”, ie remote from the individual user and his devices.

Netgem has now taken the concept a step further by bringing the cloud home. Instead of users storing content and accessing services and apps on servers in some distant, unknown location, Netgem proposes that network operators deploy home media servers as the “central points of the cloud”.

Netgem’s solution, nCloud, incorporates three key elements: the home media server, a software platform, and social TV applications.The nCloud media server takes a modular approach and could, depending on operator requirements, incorporate a Blu-ray Disc Live player, video conferencing devices (camera, microphone), NAS (network-attached storage), networked games and the access modem/gateway. The software platform comprises content from live television broadcasts, on-demand sources and personal content libraries.

Connected devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, would access content and apps, whatever the source, via the home media server, meaning that there is no need for the network operator to budget for datacenters. I was able to use an iPad to watch live broadcast TV received by the nCloud home media server and streamed directly to the tablet. Netgem calculates that operators will save money over time by deploying more advanced media server boxes in homes instead of moving their systems towards the “cloud” model.

Netgem admits that the media server will require a “big chip”, but estimates that the media server might be deployed at a premium of only 20% compared to an existing set-top box. Netgem works with both Broadcom and Intel, although it accepts that some service provider customers are still not confident with the Intel solution.

The whole thin v. thick, client v. server debate has energised the IT industry for as long as anyone can remember. It’s now enveloping the television and media segments, and there’s no question that service providers are seriously considering the long-term feasibility of “cloud” or server approaches replacing their traditional home-installed hardware-based models.

The widespread availability of fast, reliable broadband connections and connected devices is the catalyst for this potential living room revolution. But just because content can be stored anywhere doesn’t mean it necessarily should be. For a start it’s an issue of great concern to content owners themselves (and their lawyers). Content business models have been built for many years (without much reason for question or debate) on exactly where a particular “piece of content” is stored and who can “access” it. Those business models are being disrupted by concepts like cloud and connected devices.

There is also a shift in the economic debate for operators: they have wrestled for a decade or more with the relative viability or otherwise of “VOD” (ie television and movies in the cloud...) and DVRs (ie television stored in the home). In terms of market penetration, usage and media consumption impact there is no question that DVRs have had the greater impact to date.

Netgem’s home-cloud approach reignites the debate about the role of the set-top box as a key component in the connected home. In the end operators will make decisions based on their own economics as to whether a “thick client” has any role in the world of cloud content and services. Those decisions are likely to vary based on individual circumstances and local market environments but we see no sign yet of any overriding trend in one direction or another.

However the future of content storage and access pans out, Netgem’s move makes the whole cloud debate just a little but more, er, cloudy.

David Mercer

Client Reading: 

Why Connected TV will completely reshape the television industry in the next 10 years

Many people, often with a mobile or PC background admittedly, seem to assume that the smartphone environment, relating to the exloding apps market in particular, is somehow a template for the evolution of advanced television. So it was relief to hear Dan Saunders, the Head of Content Services at Samsung, one of the pioneers across all the latest “smart” platforms, admit that the apps business in the television space is likely to look very different to what’s been happening in smartphones and tablets.

Speaking at yesterday’s Westminster eForum conference in London’s Whitehall, Saunders noted that the television set is fundamentally a social device, compared to phones and tablets, which are personal. For this reason, he described his company’s strategy as focusing on using “apps-based technologies” to bring a “handful” of services via applications to the TV screen.

Phew! For a minute there I was thinking we’d have to spend the next few years refuting the idea that the TV screen was somehow going to morph into a playground for hundreds of thousands of apps developers, which seems to be the assumption of some industry players. In fact, the model described by Saunders doesn’t sound a whole lot different from the various interactive TV initiatives we have seen over the past couple of decades. Sure, nobody was quite so obsessed with the focus “apps” in the old days, but the fact is that’s what they were: the infamous “Open....” service portfolio launched along with Sky’s new digital TV platform in 1998 was basically an application platform for a whole range of services, including shopping, banking, games and, yes, even “social networking” – ok, that last bit was really just email.

Time and again our research has shown that the “application” most people want on their TV screen is, guess what, TV. And that clearly includes the whole emerging panoply of online or OTT video services (Netflix, Lovefilm, iPlayer) which are indeed delivered to users of smart TVs and connected devices through applications. But on the TV screen the “application” serves as little more than a gateway to video or other content. Our research with early adopters of smart TV suggests that very few want to use applications on these devices in the way they use them on smartphones or tablets.

TV apps will have a role to play if they are TV- and video-related; but their development, delivery and deployment will likely evolve in very different directions from the open-development platform, storefront models currently prevalent in the personal device space.

David Mercer

Client Reading: Is Catch-Up TV Really All That Viewers Want to Watch Online?