MobiTV Inc. has spent the past 18 months developing new technologies that will speed up the time between channel changes to less than a second and optimize cellular network backhaul by automatically switching video streams from unicast to multicast depending on usage in a specific sector.
The company also said that it’s hit the 4-million subscriber mark, which puts it on pace for adding a million subscribers every six months since this time last year.
“We have more users in our system than all the IPTV users in Europe,” Kay Johansson, the company’s CTO, said in an interview with RCR Wireless News.
The company already white labels its service for numerous wireless carriers, but plans to expand that offering soon as an end-to-end managed hosted service for carriers that won’t require the more complex relationships it’s made with carriers thus far.
Johansson said carriers around the world have reached out to MobiTV for managed hosted services and so the company decided to begin licensing the use of its servers that still allows companies to manage the remainder of the operation.
Optimized delivery
The company’s new Optimized Delivery Server will combine unicast and multicast distribution methods aimed at improving video quality and decreasing traffic pressure on the backhaul.
If 50 subscribers are watching the same channel in one sector, the server will automatically begin streaming that channel in multicast to that group of customers, rather than relying on a solely unicast approach, which can be cumbersome and costly.
This new hybrid approach is expected to lower the cost of distribution and optimize the backhaul, Johansson said.
Channel change
Johansson is particularly excited about the improvements in channel changes though, saying it’s a key item the company had to reach before it could go on to the next step.
“We are probably showing the fastest channel change in the world. We’re less than one second,” he said. “We’re on par, probably better than any kind of TV service.”
Johansson freely admits that previous incarnations of cellular-based mobile TV left much to be desired on that front. “Channel change on cellular networks for mobile TV sucked. It was up to 15 seconds,” he said.
“What we wanted to make sure is the next generation of mobile TV services is going to be on par with traditional TV services,” Johansson said. “That’s sort of where we are right now.”
Targeted ads
The upgraded software is also set to help deliver a fresh infusion of targeted advertising. In-stream insertions for live and linear-clip content and post- and pre-roll ad placements for video-on-demand and downloaded content will all be possible with personalized targeting that will be based on each user’s profile information, the company said.
“The server itself has the capability to do ad insertion, but it’s very stupid,” Johansson said. “You have to tell it which ads to insert.”
The new changes that MobiTV has been developing will be enjoyed by all of its customers next month, he added.
Eyeing the future
Finally, Johansson also made the case for broadcast mobile solutions coupled with a unicast model, which MobiTV has trumpeted.
“From our perspective, we’re smack in the middle,” he said. “We have one foot in the camp with the carriers and we have one foot in the camp with the broadcasters.”
MobiTV believes ATSC M/H offers the most viable opportunity for broadcast mobile TV services in the United States and has actively been involved in the standardization process for the past 18 months.
“I’ve been in many standards organizations bodies and this is the fastest I have ever seen,” Johansson said.
The company plans to demo broadcast mobile TV service running over ATSC with interactive components at the NAB Show in Las Vegas this week.
“We can show we have technology that can make money for both the carriers and the broadcasters if they work together,” Johansson said.
