Entertainment through thick and thin
In IP TV, the client side of the camp is divided into those who put a lot of intelligence into the solution and those that use thin client architecture. The former would include Nokia-Siemens, Microsoft and Espial. Vendors like UTStarcom, Kasena, Orca, and Thomson all use thin clients. With thin clients the disadvantage is that you take several seconds to navigate through a few lines of EPG.
With the intelligent client you can browse through much faster. If you look at 14 days of programming, which is 2 weeks of data times 24 hours a day times 100 channels, that is a lot of EPG data. And what consumers really want today is better information and better guidance on what is on offer.
I usually spend more time going through program synopses than actually watching some program. So I would definitely need a “thick†client. I think what viewers are actually looking for is an increased description not a decreased description size in program data or synopses. So the question is how to keep all that data (which is multi megabytes of data) accessible instantaneously to the viewer without having some kind of intelligence on the client?
And this is linear programming when you talk about traditional TV. As you move towards a non linear world where you have video on demand kind of services, and further beyond into a YouTube kind of world, how do you allow TV viewer to get to the programming as quickly as possible without having enough having intelligence on the client?
Another issue is that if you take the approach where all the intelligence is in the network somewhere, most of the vendors will choose browser based middleware approach for the client. And with that you have significant delay problems. And just to add another argument, IP TV has to enable service provider to differentiate. If intelligence resides mostly in the core, and most requests from the client side have to be referred to the server, that would perhaps not be suitable for service innovation.
DVR is an example of an application that has been developed on the client side.
If we look at cable and satellite TV services, it is mostly driven by the client side. Or let us say 90% client side and 10% server side. That changes a little bit when we move over to telco space because you now have video streaming over networks as opposed to broadcast. But still in terms of data management and user experience the actual service is driven by the client side that sits inside the house.
From the user interface perspective, visual entertainment is different from other network centric services such as voice. The visual experience comes alive on the client side and if you do not get that right, you cannot really have a successful offering.
