TV’s “battle of the Titans’ over Middleware

Chris Forrester

There's a battle going on to control viewers' leisure time. On the one hand the TV set is all-powerful, with pay-TV operators largely controlling what's happening via a set-top box and its associated Middleware. But the other view sees players like Apple, Sony and even TV set manufacturers like LG, Samsung and Panasonic attempting to muscle into this tightly fought over space.

Some Middleware suppliers, such as Open TV, already supply their technology into the TV set industry, says Matthew Huntington, VP Product Marketing at Open TV. Huntingdon was speaking at a recent Rapid TV News Round Table on Middleware. There are tens of millions of TV sets deployed in the world with Open TV technology in them. All we are really seeing is a battle emerging, a battle of titans, which is the Consumer Electronics (CE) industry versus the Pay TV industry. So both of those parties want to control the customer relationship, and really the Pay TV industry has control of that relationship today and owns the living room, but the CE industry is coming from other rooms in the home, and trying to take over the living room. And really it is offence which is the best defence, and the Pay TV industry needs to push into those other rooms, and if they rely too heavily on software that is provided by the CE industry, then the CE industry is going to have the advantage."

Huntingdon added that if it's the CE industry that's providing a viewer with photo browsing, "then while you're browsing photos the CE industry has control of that customer relationship. Whereas if a Pay TV operator allows you to browse photos, maybe with a simpler and easier and more updated interface, then they will control the customer relationship during that activity."

Moshe Buhboot, Product Marketing Manager, Middleware, DVR & Home Networking at NDS, says NDS can see from the likes of Sony that introduced Yahoo widgets, or Panasonic, "it is suddenly a way for them to increase their revenues from a service which is indirect, or even direct competition with the Pay TV operators and as such, we are going to see much more friendly cooperation because they are coming from different agendas. TV Vendors are looking at diminishing prices and revenues from selling equipment and they are trying to find ways to provide service. Today it's widgets for weather and stuff like that, but tomorrow it's going to be Video On Demand. How are Pay TV operators going to address that? So I think that we are going to see some basic TV services served directly to the TV without a set top box, but when you are introducing DVR's, sophisticated Video On Demand options and home networking, you certainly can not see that coming from just a simple TV."