Accenture joins the list of connected TV technology vendors

At the NAB show this week, Accenture announced its Over-the-Top TV solution. Key features of the Accenture solution include:

• Broadcast TV with Video on Demand and interactive application, which enables viewers to see any movie or TV series episode they may have missed. The interactive application enables operators to gather real-time audience data.
• Personal TV experience, which enables individual household viewers to create a personal profile, customize TV needs, create categories, and share contents with friends, schedule programming, and purchase and record content, over their PC or mobile phone.
• Targeted personalized advertising, which enables providers to tailor advertising to each user, according to favorite content, most-viewed content, and community profile. Users can also choose to receive the advertising that meets their interests, which can help reduce “channel surfing.”
• Interactive advertising which enables viewers to express their interest in a product shown on a TV commercial, via a “wish list” application that the user can access later through a web portal.

Accenture is joining a growing list of companies that are working to supply TV manufacturers with solutions to bring Web content to high-definition displays. The Accenture effort looks like it would compare with efforts from the likes of DivX, Google, IBM, and Yahoo!

Cable Europe Not Afraid of Over-the-Top

Today the European cable industry spent the afternoon at its Cable Congress in Brussels discussing the impact of OTT content. Through a number of spokespeople, the message was clear: cable is ready and anxious to play a role in over-the-top. Some key points include the following:

Set top box maker ADB reminded the audience that the brand in the hand is the brand that wins. That is, cable companies must provide remote controls which support the set top boxes that support the features most desired by consumers. As soon as consumers move to alternative set top boxes, the cable provider loses the opportunity to provide the superior experience to the consumer.

Telenet’s EVP of Residential Marketing said that her company’s market leadership has enabled the company to test, for some months, a number of over-the-top interfaces in order to be ready before any serious competition provides a superior alternative.

UPC’s VP of Strategy implored the cable industry to work together more closely and suggested that providing a better interface to real time web access as well as a better VoD library will be the keys to accommodating over-the-top experiences.

Kabel Deutschland’s CCO welcomed over the top content as he said access to YouTube and other web portals has fueled tremendous broadband subscriber growth in Germany. When asked if YouTube should be sharing revenues with cable, Virgin Media’s CEO stated that the company has a variety of business models attached to different types of content and that many revenue opportunities will exist within the cable ecosystem.

YouTube EMEA's Director of Partnerships offered that the company was engaging in a number of revenue sharing models with broadcasters and that we will see more branding as a part of YouTube, suggesting that the relationship between aggregator and pipe may become increasingly cooperative.

Business Models for On-Demand Lifestyles

In the traditional value chain for media, consumers have paid monthly or a la carte to aggregators or distributors. The advent of digital media gave rise to a new relationship, where the consumer and the content owner were connected directly, often bypassing those traditional content gatekeepers.

But even the content owners can lose out on this arrangement since it is still an open question on how to monetize over-the-top (OTT) media. In Europe in particular, consumers are downloading video in large numbers but primarily because the content is free. When they have to pay, they go to more traditional video venues, such as the cinema.

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Comcast's Fancast Goes Transactional

We had the opportunity today to brief with Alix Cottrell, who is the general manager for Comcast's Fancast service. As has been reported, Fancast has now opened up a store where TV episodes and movies can be purchased or rented. The numbers of titles (3,000) and features of the service are similar to those to which we’ve grown accustomed – iTunes, Unbox, CinemaNow, etc. So, while it’s interesting that Comcast is getting into the transactional business for online videos, our key takeaways from the conversation is how Comcast is taking “over-the-top” video and really making it a strategic asset to build their core broadband and television services. This was a key point that was stressed by Amy Banse, the president of Comcast Interactive Media, during a keynote at our CONNECTIONS™ 2008 conference in Santa Clara.

The key to Fancast’s success isn’t going to be how profitable its movie rental business is; it’s how well it can serve to point viewers (Comcast subscribers or not) to relevant content. The extra benefit of the service – if you’re a Comcast subscriber – are the features that will:

• Allow you to remotely program your DVR (a feature that should be rolled out in some form later this year but fully deployed in 2009); and
• Set up “favorite” folders of content that can then be viewed at the TV; and
• Help direct users to all of the ways in which a Comcast subscriber can view the content – online, live, in VoD, etc.

With Fancast’s free content, there are some interesting tools that allow users to share content with friends or set notification reminders where they are e-mailed when new content is available to view. This isn’t particularly unique; many of the online video services offer this. It’s just a nice tool to have, and a new feature that Comcast is touting.

One area of electronic movie distribution that we’ve covered extensively in our blog and in reports such as the newly-released Internet Video: Direct-to-Consumer Services (Second Edition) is the struggle that online movie services have in dealing with Hollywood’s “sequential distribution” or “windowing” of content. Basically, it’s the rules that govern premium Hollywood content’s availability to certain distributors, whether they’re theaters, DVD rental stores, airlines and hotels, pay-per-view/video-on-demand, and syndication.

The folks at Comcast aren’t making claims that Fancast is going to shatter the windows, but there are some nice features that Fancast delivers in terms of setting consumer expectations to when and where content can be viewed. I think that’s a really important aspect to note. Comcast likes to think that consumers will get accustomed to “Fancasting” content to check how they can view it. They also refer to it as “creating the impression of a windowless world,” when in fact there are strict rules that will limit the ubiquitous access to all content. Better to set the expectations early and offer consumers additional options (ordering the DVD through Amazon, for example) than to disappoint them in the long run.