The Future Looks Bright in 2005

We thought MobiTV blog readers might get a kick out of this commercial that we put together back in 2005 – hey, was that really seven years ago? We hadn’t heard of smartphones, iPhones, Android, TV Everywhere, tablets, “HDMI out” or any of the common parlance of 2012 converged media that MobiTV is a part of today. We were on cellular phones, though – lots of them: flip phones, “candy bars”, and….well, that’s pretty much what there was back then. Our branded TV service was, in fact, called MobiTV – not AT&T U-verse Live TV, NFL Mobile, T-Mobile TV or any of the many services that our converged media platform powers in this new decade. 
 

Please travel back to a more simple time with us, an era when most living room TVs still had cathode tubes and mobile video was just beginning to show the promise it now delivers in full today.

 

 

Europe’s Largest Telecom Company Partners with MobiTV to Offer TV Everywhere

The next time you go backpacking through Europe, imagine watching your favorite live TV broadcasts or on-demand programs anywhere that you have a mobile device or Internet service. Start viewing a movie on your iPad or laptop in the hostel, then pause it and pick it up where you left off with your mobile phone on a break from the hike, and finish watching it on the other side of the trail on your friend’s home television set.

MobiTV, with its TV Everywhere solution, is working to make this a reality for customers of Deutsche Telekom (DT), Europe’s largest telecommunications company.  DT and MobiTV are partnering to develop a converged media platform that allows delivery of TV and video across multiple platforms, including mobile phones, tablets, PCs, Internet TVs and set-top boxes. The first phase of this partnership started with a trial integration of MobiTV’s TV Everywhere solution with DT’s “Entertain” IPTV service, stretching the home television experience to multiple screens.

This capability means that consumers can watch TV in any location inside or outside the home—and they expect no less.  After all, they can receive their email anywhere, chat around the globe in real time from anywhere and get news reports any time and any place they want to. Now they justifiably expect to watch TV on the go.  MobiTV’s converged media platform allows TV operators and content providers to extend the delivery of primetime shows, live sporting events and video-on-demand services to smartphones, tablets and other Internet-enabled portable devices.

Introducing MobiTV’s Knowledge Center

We have created a new repository of our web site where you can learn about some of our key areas of thought leadership, as well as download abstracts of some of what we believe are key pieces of the MobiTV story. We’re calling this the MobiTV Knowledge Center. We’ve started it up with an explanation of Fragmented MPEG-4, the backbone of our streaming solution, as well as a Q&A with MobiTV CTO Kay Johansson, who explains the “recipe” for video quality that we’ve made available for our service provider partners and their consumers.
  

Take a look and please let us know what you think – and watch that space for more thought leadership in 2012.

TV in the Cloud? Let MobiTV Take You There

Television viewing, as we all know, has rapidly evolved to embrace an ethos of user-centric personalization, in which the television consumer controls what they want to watch and both when & where they choose to watch it. To be sure, we’ve built an entire company around allowing users to watch TV outside of their homes. What MobiTV’s IP-based converged media platform brings to both the technology industry and to consumers alike is true “TV in the cloud”, in which the ability to watch TV can seamlessly shift across dimensions of time, place and quality, while being accessible to the increasing number of “screens” in our lives. Please allow us to explain.

Picture all of your favorite full-episode TV shows, live channels and programs you’ve downloaded to watch later sitting in a – well, in a cloud. This cloud remembers that you are you, and knows that you recently watched 42% of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” on your tablet. The cloud has saved the exact spot where you stopped, and doesn’t care if you pick up the remaining 58% of the show on your mobile phone, your personal computer or on your home television – it will resume your experience in the same place, every time. Or perhaps you’ve downloaded a program on your tablet to watch later, and you hop on a bus for your morning commute. Whoops, you left the tablet at home, but your program’s waiting for you to watch on your mobile phone as well, right there in your pocket and in your TV application's "My Favorites" folder.

These are but two scenarios of many that MobiTV’s converged media platform enables. For service providers, our platform includes authentication and access control, DRM and media delivery and playback of live, on-demand, rentals and downloaded content across mobile devices, tablets, personal computers, set-top boxes and Internet-enabled televisions. Users can record on any platform, consume on any platform and access his or her content and account settings on any platform. We think it provides unparalleled flexibility and user-centric choice, and extends the promise of cloud-based entertainment to deliver your favorite programming to you wherever you roam.

MobiTV-Powered Downloadable TV Growing Rapidly

First there was place shifting - and lo, it was good. Consumers took their TV with them wherever they happened to roam in the US, thanks to MobiTV-powered mobile TV services such as Sprint TV. Then there came time shifting – and lo, it too was good. The people were able to watch full episodes of their favorite programs for weeks after they had aired on traditional couch-based TV, thanks to MobiTV-powered services such as T-Mobile TV and AT&T U-verse Live TV. Then – there emerged “Download and Store”. And lo, it was very, very good. Now users of MobiTV-powered services could download full episodes of shows and watch them later at a time and a place of their choosing – even if that time or place did not happen to have a wireless network, such as on an airplane. The people began to respond, as people do, with actions that marked their preference for this manner of time-shifted, place-shifted, downloadable TV.

We at MobiTV have been observing for years how consumers choose to use their devices to watch mobile video. Right now, we are experiencing very strong month-over-month growth rates in the number of shows downloaded by consumers on two of our services (T-Mobile TV and AT&T U-verse Live TV) – the ones with large majorities of Android and BlackBerry smartphones that support our download-and-store feature. Month-over-month growth rates have been in the double digits since June 2011, and this past month of October, we saw a 29% gain in full-episode downloads across both services just from the month before (September). What are people downloading? You name it. Kids’ TV on Disney Channel and PBS Kids; comedies like “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office”; even hour-long dramas on ABC, CBS and USA Network. The month before, we saw a 14% gain from August to September, and a 20% gain from July to August.

The reasons for these jumps in monthly downloads are clear. People want to watch what they want to watch, where they want to watch it, and at a convenient time of their choosing. That just might be in bed at night while the family watches something else on the “main” TV; it might be while in flight; and it might even be in a moving car while someone else is driving. There are dozens of reasons for why you might download instead of stream a given show, and with MobiTV-powered services on an increasing number of devices, now you can. And lo, it is good.

TV Everywhere – and We Mean Everywhere

If you’re following IPTV, wireless and cable industry news this week, you might have heard that MobiTV, Inc. introduced our TV Everywhere solution. We know that “TV Everywhere” is the descriptor of choice for all manner of cloud-based video distribution systems, and we ourselves have described our own technology platform as enabling not only TV Everywhere but “true convergence”. Yet what MobiTV uniquely does to enable customer-centric TV viewing anytime and anywhere is something worth spelling out in more detail.

In a nutshell, the MobiTV TV Everywhere solution allows TV service providers to offer their subscribers live and on-demand programming for viewing inside and outside the home on personal computers, tablets and a broad range of mobile devices. The TV Everywhere solution is based on our existing, proprietary cloud-based video distribution platform, and it leverages our decade of expertise in ingesting, encoding and delivering DRM-protected live, on-demand and downloadable TV.

Because users expect access to their favorite content beyond the couch, we design our solutions for these evolving tastes and preferences. As we described our user-centric philosophy in an earlier blogpost:

“…We believe true convergence means those consumers can take their home TV experience with them out into the world, and then take their mobile TV experience with them back into the home. Content – be it live TV, full-episode on-demand TV, or downloadable shows that can be watched anywhere – should be centered around the user’s preferences for where and how they like to watch. It should be optimized for each viewing screen, so that mobile TV looks beautiful and crisp on mobile and fits user expectations for a small screen, and that same TV content viewed at home fits our heightened expectations for big-screen viewing as well. We love the idea of allowing bookmarks, favorites and user access control across all of the many screens in your life – so that you can truly personalize your experience and have it carry over across those screens.”

For cable, satellite and IPTV service providers, we've taken what's typically a very complex and expensive project for a TV operator and made it simple, affordable, and easy to launch. It’s ready to go now – not just on PowerPoint, but on the real-life personal computers, tablets and mobile devices of these providers’ customers. TV operators can easily brand and customize our TV Everywhere solution, and quickly deliver that experience to multiple platforms. If you’re looking for more information on our TV Everywhere solution, please send us an email and we’ll quickly get you what you need.

We’re a Mobile Excellence Award Finalist!

This week the Mobile Excellence Awards named MobiTV Inc. a 2011 finalist in the best delivery platform category. The Mobile Excellence Awards honors the best and brightest players throughout the mobile ecosystem including studios, content providers, developers and technology companies in a range categories such as user experience, innovation, music and games.

It’s an honor to be recognized, particularly in the platform delivery category, as it’s the foundation of our media solutions. Our platform delivers media across carriers, networks and devices providing the live, on demand and downloadable content you care about most. In fact, in 2010, MobiTV powered more than 3,000 live events and streamed 1.4 billion minutes, all thanks to our scalable, reliable platform. Today, our platform powers Sprint TV, AT&T U-verse Live TV, T-Mobile TV and more.

Our team isn’t done yet; the platform is continuing to support growing viewership and mobile media consumption, streaming more than 167 million minutes of content in September, a MobiTV record.

The team here at MobiTV is flattered by the recognition and we are going for the gold in December when the winners are announced!