MobiTV, Inc.

MobiTV's Converged Media Platform Fact Sheet

2012-05-17T16:41:00.001-07:00

We’re publishing a series of fact sheets this week on mobitv.com that help crystallize the media delivery solutions our platform offers to operators and service providers around the world. These are simple, downloadable and printable abstracts that take a slightly more layman’s approach to explaining convergence, TV everywhere and efficient media delivery than, say, a technical white paper does. That said, we think it’s fairly straightforward and unassailable that the world is moving from the living room to a multi-screen TV viewing experience, and we at MobiTV have built a platform that, having powered complex and multi-device and -OS mobile solutions for many years, now comes at delivery from the other direction – from mobile to multi-screen, as we like to say.

Our Converged Media Platform Fact Sheet, which you can download with one right-click on the image to your left, provides a compelling overview of this scalable, end-to-end solution that allows operators and content providers to present live, on-demand and downloadable television entertainment on any type of in-home and portable device – and then optimizing delivery for the capabilities of each type of device. By authenticating the user, rather than the device, our converged media platform allows for the seamless shifting of program viewing and a higher quality of service for program providers.

Hey, we’ll just let you read the thing already. To see our platform in action, just fire up a smartphone on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, US Cellular or Telus, and you’ll find a MobiTV-powered solution available for immediate viewing.

MobiTV Wins 2012 Mobility Award for Technology Innovation

2012-05-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

Well, that was fun. Last night in New Orleans at the annual CTIA show, we accepted the 2012 Mobility Award for Technology Innovation in the software category for our TV everywhere solution. These awards, sponsored by MobileTrax, a leading mobile and wireless industry analyst firm, are not given lightly. As Gerry Purdy, Principal Analyst with MobileTrax said, “The Mobility Awards have honored the brightest innovators in mobile computing and wireless data communications products and services for the past 16 years. This year there was stiff competition for the 450 products and services which were nominated in the 63 categories.”.

Apple, Amazon, Nokia are among some of the players that won awards on the hardware side; Google, Facebook and Pandora were among several companies, who, like us, picked up the top nod on the software side.

It’s an terrific honor to be recognized for what we’ve done to power video solutions in and outside of the home across North America and around the world, and the 2012 Mobility Award is another to add to our growing list of awards since we first launched a mobile TV service in 2003. Our cloud-based TV Everywhere solution and media platform now allows users to seamlessly time-shift and place-shift their media consumption across multiple screens, and last night’s recognition is validation that what we’ve built has value to consumers and to the ecosystem built to serve their media needs.

Multiple Ways To Follow MobiTV, Inc.

2012-05-08T09:26:00.001-07:00

While we’re busy powering most of North America’s operator-branded mobile TV services and deploying our TV everywhere solution around the world, we’re also scouring the web for information about the ways in which business and consumers are adapting to a world in which video services are consumed both in and outside of the home. We’re continuing to stay active on social media – and we’d love for you to join us there. We’re working on making sure that the world of IP-based TV delivery is covered there, whether it’s something that we’re doing or something a third party has written that sheds light on where it’s all headed.

Beyond the MobiTV blog you’re reading now, here are some other methods to connect with us:

Follow us on LinkedIn
Check out our Facebook page
Bookmark our Google+ page
Watch our YouTube videos
Scan our job openings on Glassdoor
Drop us a line via our Contact page

Thanks, and we’ll see you in these places both in and outside of your home, right?

The Wrap From Digital Hollywood 2012

2012-05-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

This spring’s DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD – Los Angeles event took place at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey, CA and was more focused than ever before on the converging worlds of content, screens, mobility, business models and platforms with which to bring them all together. MobiTV was invited to speak on a terrific panel on Tuesday called “Multi-Screen Universe: TV, Tablets, Broadband, Smartphones and IPTV – Strategies for ConnectedTV Technology and Content” (!). In fact, there were many sessions with variations on that same theme, just with the panel titles shuffled a bit, e.g. “Video Across Platforms – Television, Broadband and Mobile” later on in that very same day. Any guesses as to what’s on the lips of every Hollywood executive in 2012? This year’s event made it pretty obvious.

Our Senior Director of Marketing, Jay Hinman, participated on the aforementioned panel along with leaders from LG’s Smart TV content business, Technicolor and from Real Software Systems. Everyone represented a different link in the chain for delivering content to any screen, and it made for a lively discussion out by the hotel pool (yes, many of the sessions was actually held in outdoor poolside tents – so LA! We loved it.). We were able to talk about our converged media platform and how it powers services on smartphones and tablets across all the major wireless carriers in the United States, and shared with the audience our user-centered product design philosophy, in which the user, not a device or platform, is at the center or his or her personal programming experience and can tailor their content experiences accordingly. We’d like to report lots of oohing and ahhing at every utterance, but this was a professional group – yet judging by the questions we received both during and after the panel, our TV everywhere solution was and is compelling enough to generate some terrific post-panel hobnobbing.

As we post this, Digital Hollywood continues on for another day and a half in LA, and most sessions are extrapolations on the theme of how video digitization is turning the world of MVPDs, mobile operators and OTT providers sideways and back again – and about how consumers are truly leading the rapid changes in our industries and are voting with their remote controls and fingers. We’re happy to be a key player in this ecosystem and always appreciate the chance to tell the mobile-to-multi-screen story where we can.

NAB: Betty White and TV Everywhere in Vegas

2012-04-25T16:32:00.001-07:00

As many of you know, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show was held last week in Las Vegas and showed off the latest developments in the broadcast industry. Not to be overshadowed by Betty White’s induction into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, TV everywhere was a key theme among attendees, and we were right at the epicenter. This year, we joined conversations on both the event stage and show floor.

Our own Kay Johansson, Chief Technology Officer here at MobiTV, joined other industry knowledge holders on stage to discuss mobile television and its effects on the ecosystem. Kay shared our vision for consumers to access the content they care about anytime, anywhere with any screen, device or connection. We discussed MobiTV’s journey from blazing the trail for television on-the-go to our TV everywhere solution bringing consumers live and on-demand programming inside and outside the home across set-top boxes, computers, tablets and smartphones.

Beyond the NAB stage, we teamed up with one of our new partners, Amino, to showcase how our platform technology integrates with Amino’s set-top boxes to create a quick-to-market, high-quality adaptive streaming experience. The solution eliminates the need for managed networks and brings Amino’s customers a personalized television experience from anywhere.

This year NAB shed light on some of the industry’s hottest topics, TV everywhere included, and we were right in the forefront putting multiscreen into action. What were some of your highlights from the show?

Extending the Boundaries of the Set-Top Box with Amino and MobiTV, Inc.

2012-04-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

What happens when you take an innovative maker of set-top boxes and IPTV & hybrid/OTT solutions like Amino Communications, and pair them up with a leading provider of comprehensive managed TV Everywhere solutions? That would be us – MobiTV, Inc. We sat down with Kevin Ross, our Senior Director of Business Development and a key player in this partnership, to discuss just what does happen when TV everywhere solutions become more lightweight, cloud-based and easier and quicker deploy.

What does MobiTV’s partnership with Amino bring to operators looking to deploy a TV everywhere solution to their consumers?

Kevin Ross: It really helps telecom operators and cable & satellite providers bring a robust multiscreen solution to market far more quickly than they otherwise would. Putting together a fully managed network solution and deploying it to consumers takes an immense amount of time and capital. By working with Amino, who already deploy their set-top box with large operators, we’re able to couple their leadership with the innovation that we’ve done in the cloud, and help operators extend this set-top box TV to consumers on any screen, wherever they are. Now they can bring the same sets of channels they’re already serving up at home to their customers’ tablets, mobile phones and PCs.

Are there different models for an operator who might be interested in deploying the Amino/MobiTV solution?

Kevin Ross: Absolutely. We can support a hosted service, where MobiTV operates the solution in our data centers, or an in-network deployment – where we deploy within the operator’s network.

The joint offering we’re doing, though, really gives operators a lower total cost of ownership than they’d otherwise be spending on things like head ends and other components of a fully managed solution. Think of what we’re doing as a “light”, cloud-based, IPTV solution. The operators just don’t need to deploy a bulky, expensive solution anymore.

Amino Freedom Media Gateway

What does Amino gain from working with MobiTV?

Kevin Ross: Amino is all about connecting people to the entertainment they love. We embed our strong DRM protection layer, which gives content providers and operators peace of mind that content won’t be illicitly shared, even when it’s untethered from the living room and on multiple devices. It protects everything – including HD-quality content.

We put years into ingesting, encoding and delivering live TV, as opposed to simply retransmitting on-demand content the way so many OTT providers do. Amino, at the core, is a consumer electronics manufacturer, and by working with MobiTV, they’re now able to provide their operator customers with a full TV everywhere solution that includes MobiTV’s media playback system, our search and recommendation capabilities, the DRM I mentioned, and so on.

What does MobiTV gain from working with Amino?

Kevin Ross: Well, to start with, we don’t build set-top boxes, and they built a phenomenal one that’s won awards for its innovation and design. This partnership enables us to demonstrate an integrated solution to different types of operators – MSOs, IPTV providers and so on – and provide them with the ability to deliver an over-the-top service, rather than saddling them with the traditional fully-managed network approach. We can help Amino target an operator’s broadband customers who happen to have lower bandwidth plans.

This integration further demonstrates our commitment to being a premier technology enabler capable of powering a full-service platform and a superior overall quality of experience.

To contact Kevin Ross and the TV everywhere business development team at MobiTV, click on the "Service Providers" contact form here.

Peer Deep into the MobiTV Word Cloud

2012-04-16T13:17:00.005-07:00

We recently held an internal “design this year’s MobiTV Inc. t-shirt” contest and received more than a few interesting designs. The winner, submitted by our VP of Human Resources Tracy Coté, is simple and complex both at once, while doing an excellent job of providing the essence of what our TV everywhere Solution provides our many customers.

(click to expand)

You’ve probably seen these “word clouds” before online – there are a number of easy tools that allow you to insert a URL or some other text, and the tool distills that web page down to its key and often most-repeated phrases. At MobiTV, it’s obvious we’re all about the “cloud-based” “converged delivery” to the “user” of both “live” and “on-demand” “media”, “content” and “experiences” “across” “networks” and “devices” – among other things.

If you lose yourself in our word cloud, we understand. It’s pretty heady stuff, but it’s nice to see the key differentiators that make us a leader in comprehensive managed TV everywhere services clustered together in one design. It should look great on a t-shirt as well, and if you watch this space closely (subscribe to our blog via RSS, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+), we’ll be giving away some of these t-shirts once they’re designed.

Technology, Innovation & Performance in Under 3 Minutes

2012-04-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

We’ve distilled the story of our TV everywhere solution into a two & a half minute video that provides you with the background on who MobiTV, Inc. is, and what we’ve achieved in the past decade-plus. This video went live on our home page yesterday, but we also wanted to give you a chance to see it here on the blog and meet some of the prime movers that have helped our company move television on mobile, tablets and other internet-enabled screens “from novelty to utility”, as our president and co-founder Paul Scanlan says in the video.

The video provides a look into some of the attributes that make our TV everywhere solution and converged media platform what it is – such as the ability to successfully deliver high-scale, big-ticket live events, as we’ve been doing for Verizon Wireless and the NFL Mobile Live application the past two seasons, and for other operators through the multiple live channels available in solutions that we power. Take a look and let us know what you think. Where do you think you’ll be seeing live, on-demand and downloadable television show up next in your life?

Get To Know Our New Partners

2012-03-27T16:51:00.001-07:00

Recently, we announced three new partners, Texas Instruments (TI), Dolby and Amino. These collaborations represent companies joining together with us to achieve the same goal – to bring consumers a high-quality media experience across screens.

Our partnership with TI is an important milestone in delivering secure HD content. We are working to develop a single screen, mosaic viewing experience that enables simultaneous playback of up to six live feeds. TI brings enhanced security allowing consumers to experience premium content on authorized devices. We’ve combined our Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution and media playback technology with TI’s OMAP™ platform to deliver secure, high-quality content across multiple IP-connected devices like tablets, phones and set-top boxes.

Additionally, we are collaborating with Dolby to make it possible for a theater-like media experience anytime, anywhere. Our technology platform will integrate Dolby Digital Plus into its established DRM-protected content delivery platform to provide surround sound to consumers across multiple platforms. Adding surround sound is the next step in providing a secure, high-quality experience for end-users without the need for additional speakers or a specific device.

Lastly, we have teamed up with Amino to develop a new set-top box experience. By integrating our platform technology with Amino’s set-top boxes, we’re creating a quick-to-market, high-quality adaptive streaming experience while eliminating the need for managed networks. As a result, our TV everywhere solution is bringing Amino’s customers, and ultimately consumers, a personalized television experience inside or outside the home.

In short, these partnerships mean more of what we at MobiTV do best: bringing consumers a high-quality media experience anytime, on any screen of their choosing.

IP&TV World Forum – Here We Come

2012-03-16T17:09:00.001-07:00

We’re heading across the pond for this week’s IP&TV World Forum. Joining fellow industry leaders across the international broadcast industry, we look forward to discussing the TV everywhere concept, as well as current solutions, and how they relate to the current landscape of IPTV delivery.

Television has come a long way since relying on traditional satellite signals and cable television formats. Similarly, MobiTV’s solution has come a long way since debuting mobile television for the first time on a flip phone. Before the days of smartphones and internet-based television delivery, consumers and technologists alike couldn’t fathom the idea that consumers would be able to seamlessly shift television viewing between screens. However, combine IP TV technology with MobiTV’s platform and TV everywhere comes to life - offering consumers and the industry a new way to look at entertainment. Just this year, we announced that we’re collaborating with Deutsche Telekom to deliver on this very notion - television across multiple platforms, including mobile phones, tablets, PCs, Internet TVs and set-top boxes.

We’re not stopping there. The delivery capabilities of the TV everywhere experience is getting even more sophisticated with HD quality video and surround sound made possible by partnerships between industry leaders. Recently, we announced that we’re teaming up with Texas Instruments to create a deeper layer of security to better enable delivery of HD-quality content. Beyond what meets the eye, we’re also partnering with Dolby to bring cinema-like surround sound across platforms.

Today, consumers want to access high quality, great sounding television anytime, anywhere and we are here to make that possible for our customers to provide. Let us know if you’re also making the trip to IP&TV World Forum.

It's Here – Sprint TV Comes To The iPhone

2012-02-27T21:59:00.004-08:00

After months of readying their new iPhones for just such an event, Sprint customers with the new Sprint iPhone 4S are getting a nice surprise today: SPRINT TV is now available on the iPhone – and it’s free. We at MobiTV have been powering the Sprint TV service from our converged media platform for many years now, and we’re proud to see this service now launched in a sleek, beautiful application for iOS that showcases the robust live and full-episode on demand content that’s been a hallmark of Sprint TV for years.

Sprint iPhone customers can download the free application from the App Store right here. Listen to what it comes with as part of your unlimited data plan: FREE ESPN Mobile TV, including live NBA basketball, pro & college sports, Major League Baseball and much more. FREE Disney Channel – both live and on-demand. FREE Weather Channel, NBC, CBS, ABC Mobile, USA, Bravo, Syfy, SPEED – and much more. Learn more about what’s included right here. This is the first time that this breadth of channels has been available to iPhone users at no additional charge, as part of their data plan. Should come in handy with the NBA and NHL seasons heating up and with Major League Baseball right around the corner.

Moreover, all of the premium packs that have been available on Sprint TV on other operating platforms are also available for iPhone users. That means you can add Sprint TV Xtra; Spanish-language TV on Sprint TV en Vivo; children’s full-episode TV on Playground TV, and many more. Again – if you’re looking for the full view on what’s available, you can check it out here, or right there within the application itself. Just open up “On Demand” and then “Premium Packages” to see what’s available to enhance your Sprint TV experience.

We’d love to hear your feedback on our latest creation. So Sprint iPhones: fire up that iOS 5 operating system, head over to the free download here, and start watching immersive live and on-demand TV wherever you happen to go today. Then let us know how it’s working out for you in keeping you connected to the live sports, breaking news & full-length entertainment you enjoy.

Meet our newest (international) addition – Paul Burmester

2012-02-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

We are excited to introduce Paul Burmester, the latest addition to the MobiTV team. Leading the charge across the pond as general manager and senior vice president for EMEA, Paul brings more than 30 years of experience in technology and the international market. Interested in getting to know Paul, his role at MobiTV and what’s to come from MobiTV globally? Check our conversation with him below.

Q. Tell us why you joined MobiTV.

There has always been an interesting debate as to whether or not people would really watch TV on their mobile devices but I think the success MobiTV has already had in North America has answered that question.

This coupled with the move to LTE by the carriers and the release of larger and high quality screens in laptops, tablets and smartphones has meant that users can have an even better viewing experience.

The final element is the significant increase in content availability, which has meant that traditional viewing techniques, i.e. discovery from a magazine listing and watching exclusively on a TV are no longer tenable. As a result, people want to watch what they want when they want and how they want, any content on any screen at any time.

All these factors coming together now mean that there’s a significant shift occurring in end user viewing demands and MobiTV is perfectly placed to address those needs.

Q. What will your role be?

My challenge is to build a successful business for MobiTV in EMEA. However, it’s not as simple as a cut and paste application of MobiTV’s North American strategy to EMEA because there are so many differences from technological and legal through to content and cultural. Having worked very closely with the carriers in EMEA for many years, my goal is to adapt MobiTV’s offering and approach to suit the EMEA market and to help the carriers here launch successful services as quickly as possible.

Q. What opportunity do you see in EMEA?

MobiTV's success in North America is well established, while it’s footprint on the global marketplace is far smaller. I look forward to working with the team to replicate this success in EMEA. Long been promised but yet to be delivered on a mass scale, we are offering solutions that allow partners to deliver television and video anytime, anywhere on any device to international users. Most recently, the MobiTV-Deutsche Telekom agreement provides a great template for the type of technology we can offer and expand upon. I look forward playing an instrumental role in driving further expansion of MobiTV’s TV everywhere solution internationally.

The Future Looks Bright in 2005

2012-02-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-14T10:19:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-10-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

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!

Rolling Out the Red Carpet for Multi-Screen Discussion at Digital Hollywood

2011-10-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

Ray DeRenzo, CMO at MobiTV, travelled to Los Angeles this week to participate in the Digital Hollywood conference to chat about how people can access their favorite stars, and shows, on different screens. MobiTV joined major media and technology players including AOL, ABC, FOX and Yahoo! to discuss the evolving digital entertainment landscape. While tablets, social media and new revenue streams were popular topics, the multi-screen experience was a hot theme among the entertainment crowd.

Ray joined fellow panelists from Intel, Verizon and Sony Pictures Television to discuss the current multi-screen universe – from big screens, to mobile, to tablets and just about any other screen capable of media delivery.

In case you didn’t make the trip to LA, Ray shared MobiTV’s perspective on the multi-screen discussion – it’s all about the consumer. It may seem straightforward, but our user-centric approach is core to the technology that powers our media solutions.

As the industry continues to introduce new screens to the market, we continue to evolve our service, having started with the most difficult problem first – media delivery on mobile. Today, we power live, on-demand and downloadable mobile television experiences for major U.S. carriers across all major operating systems. Our technology doesn’t stop with viewing choices on smartphones. We also deliver media to tablets, personal computers and other Internet-enabled consumer electronics so consumers are no longer limited by location, device, network or type of show.

Ten years ago, MobiTV started with the idea to bring media to consumers on the go. Today, that means more than mobile and tomorrow, MobiTV will be there to enable consumers to enjoy content wherever, whenever.

More than 167 million (minutes) served!

2011-10-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

September was a good month for MobiTV. In fact, and to borrow shamelessly from VH1, it was our Best Month Ever in terms of viewership, with more than 167 million minutes of mobile television viewed on MobiTV-powered services – the highest total for any month in MobiTV history.

As we’ve seen previously with events such as Obama’s inauguration, World Cup and the Royal wedding, popular live content such as NFL and college football played a big part in last month’s viewership – in fact more than 65 percent of those 167 million minutes were live programming.

We’re proud of this milestone on a number of levels, since it reflects the hard work of our team in building a technology platform to support this type of volume across multiple networks, devices, and operating systems. We’ve designed our platform to deliver live content to millions of concurrent viewers - a challenging proposition given scale and content type – and it’s gratifying to see viewers taking advantage.

Lastly, we want to thank all of you who tuned in. Please let us know what you watched in the comments below, we’d love to hear about it!

What’s On Right Now? Live TV, Premium Packs & More

2011-09-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

We’re often asked how our programming – as opposed to our technology - stands out from that of other prominent companies in the mobile & converged media spaces. There’s a pretty good four-letter-word answer for that: LIVE. In addition to the hundreds of on-demand & downloadable, full-episode shows available on our managed services, MobiTV Inc. powers a host of LIVE TV channels that meet distinct needs for multiple consumers: live sports, breaking news, business news, kids’ TV and more. We reported on the Top 10 live events in MobiTV’s history back in this blog post, and we’re firm believers in the power of live TV while mobile. We know that some of the biggest usage in our history was generated because of the easy access to MobiTV-powered services when big events were occurring.

One element of MobiTV’s managed services to our wireless carrier partners like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular is hosted & managed online channel guides to help their customers see what’s on right now. These channel guides provide a one-click look into the channels, both live and on-demand, that are included with each respective service – but they also provide a real-time look into what’s LIVE. Is there a live college football game or presidential debate on right now? There might be. If you’re near a PC and about to go mobile, this is a great place to find out. Our online channel guides also provide glimpses into the premium packs available on each carrier, like Sprint TV’s kid-focused Playground TV, or T-Mobile’s female-centric Life and Style pack. T-Mobile’s online guide even includes a live sports programming guide, so you can see every live sporting event this week and into the future. No surprise – there are a ton of them.

Here’s what’s playing on MobiTV-powered services right now – just click on each link to view the online channel guide for each service:

AT&T U-verse Live TV

Sprint TV
T-Mobile TV
T-Mobile TV – live sports guide
US Cellular Mobile TV

Watch your alma mater do battle on your phone – LIVE.

2011-09-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

Three touchdowns in the last two minutes of a game? Even if you're not a University of Michigan football fan, that's exciting. Whether you are among the fans in the packed stadium or tuning in at the airport on your smartphone, you don’t want to miss out on the adrenaline that ensues while watching a live football game. As you may know, MobiTV's converged media platform enables die-hard fanatics and fair-weathered fans alike to catch their teams' game LIVE from anywhere. In fact, live sporting events, especially football, have proven to be some of the most popular content we deliver at MobiTV.

This season is no different, with MobiTV powering regular-season college football games and every single Bowl Championship Series game during the 2011-2012 season. You might want to read that sentence again. That’s more than 140 games on ESPN Mobile TV, FOX Sports and NBC Sports via applications available on the iPhone and dozens of smartphones on the Android, BlackBerry and Windows 7 operating systems, across all four major U.S. wireless networks.

We've recently built a live college football schedule into our many services as well. Fire up your Sprint TV, T-Mobile TV, AT&T U-verse Live TV, MobiTV or US Cellular Mobile TV now and you'll easily see what games are coming this weekend. No matter where you are - wedding, baby shower, stuck in an elevator - MobiTV and its partners on the content programming & wireless carrier side will make sure you don’t miss the big game - and the resulting smack talk with your friends, coworkers, even your boss.

It's All About You. An Interview with MobiTV's Chris Chan

2011-09-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

The customer is always right, even when he’s not. Whether or not you actually believe this, the fact remains that when it comes to user experience, particularly with mobile technology, it really is all about the consumer. Accordingly, at MobiTV, user experience is central to everything we do. We want to ensure the billion minutes of content we deliver to millions of users is a compelling experience every time they fire up a MobiTV-powered application. So, what is MobiTV’s user experience all about - and how does it all come together? To find out, we caught up with Chris Chan, Director of User Experience at MobiTV, and a key part of the team that leads the design of MobiTV’s user interface for all MobiTV-powered products.

What is the most important element of MobiTV’s user experience?

Chris Chan: A successful user experience, in my mind, is an intuitive one. We work to put the user at the center of the experience by allowing them to choose the type of media they want to interact with, including where and when they want to. We do this through a platform that streams any media content – live TV, video-on-demand, and content that can be downloaded – for viewing anytime, anywhere, on just about any device. When the user’s viewing goals are easily and consistently met in the small window of time they might be interacting with a MobiTV product, that’s when I know we’ve done a great job.

TV is inherently a shared experience –how do you make it more personalized for mobile devices?

Chris Chan: Our goal is to create an experience that any user can personalize to his or her preferences. For instance, we allow users to select and bookmark their favorite programs, compile watch lists that serve as “play lists,” and search for content they might be interested in. We’re very proud of the marketing tiles that are at the center of products like Sprint TV, AT&T U-verse Live TV, T-Mobile TV and US Cellular Mobile TV. Users can see the most popular live events or shows right on the home page of the apps – but they’ll also discover new shows or channels they wouldn’t normally seek out, and in the process go deeper into the many content brands we work with.

We aim to make sure consumers are fully in control to discover, organize, select, access and watch the programs they care about. Taking the “favorites” concept one step further, we also work to ensure that when new episodes of a favorite show become available, they are automatically added to the consumer’s video-on-demand playlist.

“How” users watch TV affects their overall experience - can you explain MobiTV’s viewing options?

Chris Chan: Our technology offers users the ability to quickly find and watch full-episode shows or live TV anytime. People don’t have to be bound to their couches, or even tethered to an Internet connection. Users can tune into live television, full-episodes via video-on-demand, and downloadable content for offline viewing. I’m a strong believer in the concept of “user experience” being about both access and options.

The direction that mobility and mobile TV is taking is also offering some terrific new challenges for me and my team. We’re getting to develop tablet-based products and converged products that deliver the same high-quality user experience on mobile, PC, tablets and home televisions. We’re getting to evolve our mobile product into one that meets the needs of a converged world, and there’s a lot of personal satisfaction in that.

What are some of the things you consider in providing a compelling user experience?

Chris Chan: An uninterrupted, smooth viewing experience is vital. That’s where our technology comes in. We make sure that no matter which wireless networks consumers are using, or what mobile operating system they have, we’re delivering the best quality media experience. This means applications that launch quickly, channels that change quickly, and little-to-no buffering or viewing interruptions. Mobile is all about speed and immediacy, and we recognize that our users don’t have time to wait around.

Any final thoughts?

Chris Chan: I would conclude by reiterating that users are at the center of everything we do – simply making content available isn’t enough. It needs to be presented in a compelling, simple to use, personalized format, and that’s what we’re focused on at MobiTV.

MobiTV’s FMP4 Streaming Solution – And How, Why It Works

2011-09-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

With the proliferation of video-capable tablets and smart phones, consumers expect to be able to watch their favorite televised shows and live events anywhere. Naturally, mobile carriers and other service providers want to include mobile video as part of their media offering – and do, thanks to MobiTV-powered solutions like AT&T U-verse Live TV, NFL Mobile on Verizon Wireless, Sprint TV, T-Mobile TV and more. These operators face a number of technical challenges in delivering high-quality mobile video, including:

Convergence, or multi-screen delivery, for a TV Anywhere experience
Content formats for a variety of mobile devices
Unpredictable, fluctuating bandwidth for both wired and wireless networks
Performance and scalability requirements
Content security

With years of experience in the mobile video industry, MobiTV now offers a converged media platform as a solution to the challenges for delivering mobile video. MobiTV’s converged media platform is an end-to-end managed service platform for the authentication, delivery and playback of multimedia across multiple screens. MobiTV’s preferred file format for streaming video is FMP4, or Fragmented MP4. Our FMP4 solution includes both the fragmented MP4 file format itself, and the media distribution system for generating and delivering fragmented video streams. Fragmented MP4 files and the supporting media distribution system are a core component of MobiTV’s converged media platform.

With fragmented MP4 files, the same delivery mechanism can be used for all content types across all networks while achieving a high quality of service. By using HTTP as the transport protocol, fragmented MP4 distribution is compatible with most Content Delivery Networks to provide a scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solution. Additionally, DRM can be applied to all assets, whether they are live, on demand, or downloaded files for local playback. Fragmented MP4 files may be streamed to client devices using the MobiTV media player or native decoders. When the device does not support fragmented MP4, MobiTV can also deliver content in RTSP/RTP format.

MobiTV’s fragmented MP4 format is a next generation video streaming technology that provides many advantages to previous streaming technologies such as RTSP and Progressive Download. Some of these advantages are:

Optimized and efficient delivery of live, on-demand, and downloaded content
Adaptive streaming for optimal quality over any network
Seamless video experience across 2G/3G/4G/Wi-Fi network transitions
Seamless delivery from a CDN using standard HTTP
Cross-platform DRM solution approved by all major content providers
Full multi-screen convergence experience on mobile, tablet, or PC
Policy-based media distribution provides control over network utilization

By delivering the video over standard HTTP networks, MobiTV can leverage CDNs and other efficient network configurations. With minimal capital investment required, mobile operators and television studios can deliver video to most mobile devices. It’s an integral part of our platform that powers the leading carrier brands in mobile video, distributing content from top content providers including The Walt Disney Group, NBC Universal, MTV Networks and more.