Alticast has announced that Korea Telecom is using Apex, from Alticast, to deliver a graphics user experience for both linear and on-demand content, completely virtualizing STB functionalities across nearly five million already-deployed IPTV STBs from Humax, Kaon, DMT and Samsung. The new cloud-based graphics user experience replaces older text-based UIs, even on low-power STBs, enabling picture-in-picture capabilities and cover art images.
Future plans call for migrating additional services to Apex, including dynamic UIs that can be personalized to target the interests and use patterns of individual subscribers. Apex uses command transmission-based user experience virtualization to bring dynamic service experiences to a wide range of STBs, regardless of CPU specifications. The result has enabled Korea Telecom to triple the frequency of service upgrades, from two per year to six per year; increase the speed of upgrades; and reduce the operational costs of managing and upgrading multiple user experience versions.
Analyst Comment
I had a discussion with one of the cloud TV companies at IBC about why the technology was used by MSOs, but not by smartTV companies and the answer was simply that there is an on-going cost in CDNs to support delivery of content to the sets and without an income stream, there is no interest. It seems to me that as many consumers are really interested in ‘upgrade-proofing’, there could well be an opportunity to make a Smart TV where the Smart part was in the cloud and that many would be prepared to pay a premium to cover the cost. Tivo got started by offering a long term (lifetime) service for a fixed price, in its early years. (BR)
