International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) — Opera TV, the market leader in enabling OTT, and MStar Semiconductor, Inc., a leading semiconductor company for display and digital home solutions, today announced the availability of a built-in Over-the-Top (OTT) solution on MStar’s System-on-a-Chip (SoC) Set-Top Boxes (STB).
Together, Opera TV and MStar are offering STB manufacturers and service providers a pre-integrated platform solution, providing overall cost savings and reducing the time-to-market for OTT-enabled STB solutions. This market-ready solution enables STB manufacturers and Pay TV Operators the opportunity to deliver consumers with immediate access to premium OTT content through an engaging viewing experience directly from their STB device.
“STB manufacturers, middleware providers and Pay TV Operators are now faced with increasing consumer demand to access popular OTT services and there exists a strong case to enable these directly on their STB devices,” said Aneesh Rajaram, CEO of Opera TV. “By being integrated on the SoC level, Opera TV is continuing to deliver on its strategy of reducing technical complexity and time-to-market for Pay TV Operators looking to deliver the ability to stream content to their consumers.”
Today’s consumers want easy and effortless access to OTT content from the devices and services they already have within their homes. MStar is the world leader of Free-to-Air (FTA) and pay-TV STB controller SoCs on the market today, providing a complete solution that includes a full series of demodulators. Additionally, MStar provides a full software portfolio including the MStar SDK, accelerating the time to market for STB manufacturers and service providers. MStar’s SoCs for STBs with Opera TV integration is a one-stop, modular solution for OTT integration, reducing cost and time-to-market.
The MStar SoCs for STBs are packaged with Opera TV’s complete suite of OTT-enabling products providing full support for advanced UI rendering, HbbTV capabilities, a media streaming module with support for all popular adaptive streaming formats used in OTT, as well as an HTML5-based application platform providing tailored and engaging OTT viewing experiences. The integration enables Opera TV to provide more than 1,000 popular apps to MStar’s customers for effortless OTT integration onto their devices into their own UI’s or using Opera TV’s UI, significantly reducing time to market.
“This integrated solution lowers the barrier of entry for STB manufacturers and service providers in providing the OTT content consumers crave,” said Bill Hsiung, vice president of marketing at MStar Semiconductor, Inc. “We are pleased to be working with Opera TV, the market leader in enabling OTT, to bring demanded OTT content to STB manufacturers, helping them stay competitive in the fast changing TV landscape.”
The Opera TV ecosystem is the world’s largest unified platform for connected TV devices spanning more than 40 million devices shipped each year. Opera TV solutions include Opera TV 2.0, a next-generation OTT platform; Opera TV Snap 3.0, a complete end-to-end OTT app generator for broadcaster, content providers, and video on demand (VOD) services; Opera TV SDK, a platform for creating and rendering HTML5-based and video-centric user interfaces; and the Opera TV Store, an OTT experience for consumers. Unlike individual OEM or operator platforms, the Opera TV platform evolves quickly to keep pace with market requirements, supporting the complex needs of demanding OTT services.
Availability and Demonstrations at CES 2017
CES 2017 attendees can experience a demonstration of the latest integration from Opera TV and MStar Semiconductor, Inc. at the Opera TV booth (South Hall 2 Meeting Place # 25270) at the Las Vegas Convention Center January 5 – 8, 2017.
