Background and Methodology

TV Multiscreen Intelligence supplies global, continuously-updated information about video service providers' strategies for reaching connectable, consumer-electronic (CE) devices via IP-video. Focusing in particular on pay-TV operators' movement beyond the set-top box, TV Multiscreen Intelligence covers - provider-by-provider, and device-by-device - the business models employed to monetize multiscreen, the back-end systems needed to supply CE devices with video, the households which actively consume and will consume IP-video, and the devices allocated across this population of multiscreen households.  

Within TV Multiscreen Intelligence, data is sourced both directly from operators, CE device manufacturers, software providers, and video infrastructure vendors, and from the detailed modelling of households' device ownership, and propensity to consume IP-video. Forecasts are based on an economic model of consumption behavior, and on CE device shipment data drawn from IHS Screen Digest's TV Technology, Broadband Media, Mobile Media, and Games intelligence services.

Glossary:

• Access-network-delivered content: video which is centrally processed, transcoded, secured, and checked at a provider's headend, and delivered in its final form to a household or device via an IP telecommunications network
• Active device: any connectable CE device which is actually used to consume the IP-video furnished by a video provider
• Active household: any household which possesses at least one active device
• Adaptive bitrate streaming: a multimedia delivery technology which allows a video stream's bitrate to vary in real-time, in response to changing network conditions, congestion, and bandwidth. Adaptive bitrate streaming is particularly useful where a video provider wishes to delivery high-quality IP-video over a 3^rd party's telecommunications infrastructure
• Addressable device: any connectable CE device that a provider has specifically earmarked as a viable consumption platform, and which is located within an addressable household
• Addressable household: any household which is able to receive IP-video - as dictated by the provider's multiscreen business model - and which possesses at least one addressable device
• Application-based DVR scheduling: a dedicated native application, most commonly for a mobile handset, tablet, or portable music player (PMP), which allows the user to program a DVR-enabled set-top box remotely. Browser-based DVR scheduling is also used to allow PCs to program recordings remotely
• Application-based remote control: a dedicated native application, most commonly for a mobile handset, tablet, or PMP, which allows the user to control functions of the set-top box, such as channel change. Typically, remote control applications require the device and the set-top box to be networked with one another over an in-home IP network
• Business model: There are four generic types of models that providers employ to monetize and control access to their multiscreen services; these business models are not necessarily mutually exclusive
  • Under a bundled model, pre-existing subscribers to the operator's services - and who meet defined criteria - are freely eligible to access at least a subset of the operator's multiscreen offering
  • Under a subscription model, access to the operator's multiscreen offering requires a standalone subscription. Purchasing this subscription may be open to any IP-connected user, or may be restricted to those users who have a pre-existing subscription with the operator
  • Under a transactional model, at least a subset of the operator's multiscreen offering is secured behind an a-la-carte pay wall. The a-la-carte purchases required to access this content may be made available to any IP-connected user, or only to those users who have a pre-existing subscription with the operator
  • Under an entirely open model, at least a subset of the operator's multiscreen offering is made available to any IP-connected user, with no access restrictions of any kind
• Content Management System (CMS): for multiscreen IP-video, the CMS is the platform responsible for ingesting, quality-checking, and handing-off video assets for distribution, as well as for overseeing the assets' transcoding and DRM security-wrapping
• DRM: digital rights management (DRM) is a permissions technology that is used to control users' access to, and consumption of, IP-video across compliant CE devices
• Home-network-delivered content: video which, while typically still delivered over an IP telecommunications network, is transcoded and processed into its final form by an in-home set-top box or gateway
• Interactive advertising: any form of video-based advertising that, upon deliberate input from the viewer, proffers additional information about the good or service, or even allows the good or service to be purchased with minimal hassle
• IP-video: video content whose distribution occurs in packetized form,  and takes place over a network that relies on the Internet Protocol's (IP) suite of communication protocols
• Multiscreen: the delivery of long-form IP-video to at least one connectable CE device; in traditional pay-TV, the notion of multiple screens comes from the fact that provisioning a CE device with video - such as a PC - represents the activation of an additional video screen beyond the set-top box
• Off-network: the delivery of IP-video to a user who has no pre-existing relationship to speak of with the operator or video service provider
• On-network: the delivery of IP-video to a user who does have a pre-existing relationship with the operator - typically but not exclusively a TV subscription
• Targeted advertising: video-based advertising that is presented to a viewer based on known demographic information, or behavioral metrics, that describe the viewer. Although technically feasible, most targeted advertising today is not addressed to single, uniquely defined-and-profiled individuals; targeting typically occurs on the basis of supra-individual metrics, such as region or neighborhood
• Transcoding: the conversion of video from one resolution and compression format to another. For a single video asset ingested by a CMS, transcoding typically involves replicating the asset to suit the different codecs and screen resolutions that characterize, and are supported by, the CE devices enabled to consume the video
• Video content types: multiscreen IP-video falls into three generic content types
  • Linear video is typically delivered to the user via an IP-unicast, but according to an airing schedule that is beyond the user's control or choosing
  • Video-on-demand (VOD) is delivered via an IP-unicast to the user, but the user retains control over the elapsed time of the video. VOD may include premium movie content, or even catch-up TV content
  • Digital video-recorded (DVR) content, typically delivered via IP-unicast, is accessible thanks to the viewer's prior decision to record and store the content for future consumption
• Video environment: the software environment or markup-language that allows video to be decoded and displayed for playback. The major video environments in use today include Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, HTML5, and Windows Media