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CSI Awards Winners 2014

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http://www.csimagazine.com/awards/

CSI Awards 2014

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CSI Awards 2014

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Contents

04 Overview of 2014 winners

05 Judging panel

Selected winners profiles:

06 Arris - Best monitoring or network management solution technology

07 AirTies - Best customer premise technology

07 Novelsat - Best satellite contribution/distribution/transmission solution

08 Amino - Best IPTV technology or service solution

10 Motive Television - Best mobile TV technology or service

10 Broadpeak - Best Web TV technology or service

11 Sky Deutschland - Best Ultra HD TV Technology or project




CSI Awards 2014

Winners’ overview

04

Picking 18 winners out of over 150 entries, most

of which are strong in their own right, is no easy

exercise. As the pace of change in the industry

quickens, so companies are forced to innovate faster

and this is reflected in this year’s awards. As

technology improves, it becomes harder each year to

separate products and solutions but good technology

on its own is not enough. Technology for technology’s

sake is unlikely to shake up the market or find an

emotional impact with consumers. As a result, the CSI

Awards take into account multiple criteria besides

technical innovation and differentiation. While awards

such as these cannot be determined by a

mathematical formula and the results will always be a

point of debate, we believe the 2014 winners offer

something new and different and hopefully stand to

genuinely have a positive impact in their respective

fields.

This year’s event, held as usual at IBC in the RAI

(see pictures on page 2), was hosted by BBC World

News presenter Babita Sharma, who some people will

also recognise from the Cable Congress. Harmonic

scooped the first two awards on the evening, the only

company to bag more than one trophy. The first went

to its Electra XVM solution in the ‘Best digital video

processing technology’ category, always one of the

most hotly contested, especially now as compression

leverages the full power of virtual environments. The

other was for the ‘Best cable or fibre contribution/

distribution/transmission’ category, where its NSG

Exo distributed CCAP system eases cable’s migration

towards IP and is aimed at markets including MDUs,

hotels, college campuses, hospitals, office buildings

where there are dense pockets of coax infrastructure.

Bandwidth is at a premium so a solution that

promises to make more available for “free” will

always be welcomed. NovelSat’s FreeBand helps

broadcasters tap into satellite bandwidth for DSNG

video contribution using the same bandwidth and

frequency that they own and already use, which

translates into huge savings in operational costs and

the reason why the Israeli company took the top prize

in the Best satellite contribution/distribution/

transmission category.

Anything that makes life easier in the world of WiFi

is bound to be welcomed with open arms, and Arris

has managed to do just that with its ServAssure

Wi-Fi Solutions, a worthy winner in the popular ‘Best

monitoring or network management’ category (see

page 6 for a more detailed write up).

AirTies won the ‘Best CPE technology’ category,

an award it also claimed back in 2011. This time, it

was for the Air 4820 wireless video access bridge

(see page 7 for more details).

The ‘Best workflow/asset management/

automation’ category was won by Broadcasting

Center Europe with its Integrated TV Services for

RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network, for a workflow

that is not just tapeless but also decentralised.

Verimatrix has been tweaking and enhancing its

Video Content Authority System (VCAS) platform

since inception and the latest iteration comes in the

form of VCAS for Broadcast-Hybrid, which fully

leverages enhanced HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)

security as the world increasingly moves towards

multi-screen viewing. It is also postioned to enable

premium UHD services and flexible deployments in

physical or virtualised environments.

‘Best content-on-demand’ was won by Saffron

Digital, a first-time entrant to our awards. MainStage

is an end to end online video solution specifically

designed to manage and deliver premium video

content. It combines in one place all the tools

necessary to launch a premium multi-platform

entertainment service, including protection,

management, storefront services, a digital locker and

secure player. The premium OTT platform is used by

KDDI in Japan, where it power’s the mobile operator’s

new subscription service offering anime content.

SoftAtHome won the next category, ‘Best

interactive TV technology or application’, for its

Universal Cast Dongle. These streaming devices have

made a lot of headlines this year, giving consumers

another route to enjoy video content. The French



CSI Awards 2014

05

• Dr. Roger Blakeway

President, SCTE (Society for Broadband Professionals)

• William Cooper

Founder and Chief Executive, informitv

• Jeff Heynen

Principal Analyst, Infonetics Research

• Philip Hunter

Independent technology journalist

• Dr. Klaus Illgner-Fehns

Managing Director, IRT

• Peter White

CEO, Rethink Technology Research

• Professor Jonathan Freeman

Managing Director, i2 Media Research

• Guido Gybels

ICT Expert

• Steve Tyler

Head of Solutions, Strategy and Planning, RNIB

• Jean-Marc Racine,

• Founder, managing partner, Farncombe

company’s WiFi dongle is fully compatible with both

Google and Apple cast ecosystems, but with the

additional ingredient of support for live and linear TV

alongside on-demand.

Amino created the Home Reach platform to enable

operators to add home monitoring and control

services over an existing set-top box in what

promises to be the next frontier for payTV providers

in the home (see page 8 for more) and this beat rival

entries in the ‘Best IPTV technology or service’

category.

Meanwhile, demand for consuming content outside

the home is well and truly proven, and Motive

Television aims to tap into this demand with its new

Tablet TV service (outlined on page 10).

Also on page 10, you can find out more about

Broadpeak’s nanoCDN Video Transparent Caching,

which won the ‘Best Web TV’ category for the third

year in a row, a feat which only a small handful of

companies have managed to achieve across all

categories in the history of our awards.

The first of our two new categories this year is

‘Best Ultra HD TV Technology or project’, which was

won by Sky Deutschland for its pioneering work on

the world’s first live broadcast over satellite in

UltraHD with 50 frames per second (see page 11).

‘Best TV Everywhere/multi-screen video’ continues

to go from strength to strength as the market further

matures, and coming top out of an extremely

competitive field was Kaltura with its KabelKiosk

white label IPTV offering (meinFernsehen), a

customer it took on after buying Tvinci this year.

Search & discovery is critical as consumers are

faced with the “paradox of choice”, where daunted by

the amount of content the 80-20 rule still applies.

Liberty Puerto is trying to break this by helping

viewers find TV content in a social context. Based on

ActiveVideo technology, the operator has already

seen great success with the service, called Social

Content Navigator, in Puerto Rico, for which it

emerged as the winner in the ‘Best Social TV’

category.

YouView won the ‘Best contribution to TV

Accessibility’ for introducing a whole range of

accessibility updates in 2013 for blind and partially

sighted customers and those with motor skills and

cognitive impairment, making it an almost unanimous

winner here.

The inaugural ‘Best HbbTV technology or service’

category went to HTTV for the httvLink, the

worldwide first deployment of HbbTV on an IPTV

network.

Last but not least, another new category, ‘Best

data & analytics innovation’, was won by Guavus,

whose CareReflex solution stood out for being able to

reduce network operations and customer care costs.

CSI Awards 2014 judging panel



CSI Awards 2014

6

ARRIS Group

ServAssure™ Wi-Fi Solutions

It is fair to say that in-home WiFi is the

cause for many of payTV operators’

biggest headaches. Most operators

understand the benefits of engaging

deeper with home networking but have

been discouraged from doing so due to the

challenges found in this environment. This

technical complexity has real-world

implications: service providers commonly

complain that anywhere up to 70% of

their call centre costs are attributable to

solving WiFi problems in their subscribers’

homes. Common problems like buffering,

choppy online videos, and slow download/

upload speeds are primary call drivers -

and the majority blame the service provider

for them. Anything that can help tackle

this issue stands to help them save time

and money on OpEx, as well as ultimately

encourage loyalty and reduce churn.

Step forward ARRIS and its new

‘ServAssure Wi-Fi Solutions’ part of the

company’s Assurance portfolio of

products. Introduced towards the end of

last year they comprise a comprehensive

toolkit to give operators better visibility

into the home network. ServAssure Wi-Fi

gives them assistance with the initial WiFi

installation and, significantly, it gives call/

customer care centres visibility to

recommend a solution. ServAssure

features include the ability to detect issues

and recommend changes; configure basic

wireless settings; scan the RF environment

to select best band; check for poor signal

areas; identify devices and perform

speed tests.

Targeted at telco and cable networks,

the solution is generally available

and currently being field tested by

Tier 1 operators.

Not surprisingly, ARRIS says that Wifi

is the biggest operational topic by far with

customers. “It’s almost like a religion,” one

company executive told CSI at IBC. “There

are those who believe in it and those who

have yet to be convinced of the reliability

of delivering video in this way”.

ServAssure Wi-Fi should encourage

more service providers to go wireless

and help those that alrady have. Service

providers estimate that up to 80% of

mobile data/video traffic in the home is

offloaded onto WiFi.

Going forward, more connected devices

(the average is seven per home in Europe)

and new ultra HD services will put an even

bigger strain on wireless multi-room home

network making solutions like these even

more critical.

Best monitoring or network management solution

WINNER

ServAssure should encourage more

operators go wireless and help those already

enagaged in home networking



CSI Awards 2014

AirTies Wireless Networks

Air 4820

Turkey-based AirTies has been making

cutting-edge consumer premises equipment

(CPE) since 2004, and along the way it

has picked up an impressive list of Tier 1

European payTV providers as customers,

among them BskyB, Swisscom and Orange.

The company’s strategic focus has

always been on the wirelessly connected

home (it was one of the first to use the

5Ghz WiFi band for multi-room services).

AirTies designs its own hardware and

software, which sets it aside from many of

its peers. The latest in the growing

portfolio is the Air 4820 Wireless Video

Access Bridge/Access Point (AP), the

descendant of the 4420, which in fact won

this award in 2011.

The 4820 is setting new standards in

speed, raising the bar from 600 Mbps to

1.7Gbps thanks to Quantenna’s 4x4

802.11ac chipset. According to AirTies, the

4820 is able to simultaneously stream up

to ten HD videos to multiple devices around

the home – and at good quality too. As a

result, the product solves the common

problem of consumers not getting the

internet speeds they are paying for when

connecting multiple devices in different

rooms or on different floors.

“The Air4820 features AirTies Mesh,

which allows for the scalable expansion

of wireless coverage by simply adding

more units. This means that no matter how

large your house is or how thick your walls

are, perfect wireless is assured in every

room -- each Air4820 added to the Mesh

extends wireless coverage around it. “

Launched in March this year, when the

first samples were also made available, it

is targeted at IPTV and payTV operators.

Mass production was due to begin in

Q4 2014.

Best customer premise technology

WINNERAir 4820

7

NovelSat

NovelSat FreeBand

The new FreeBand solution from

NovelSat lets broadcasters

simultaneously contribute remote content

using satellite bandwidth that they are

already using for content delivery to a

point-to-multipoint network, such as to

cable headends. In other words,

according to NovelSat, broadcasters

never again have to pay for contribution

bandwidth for their SNGs, flyaways and

remote studios that are within the

footprint of the satellite network. This

translates into huge savings in

operational costs. According to the

company, with satellite bandwidth

running up to $250 per hour, FreeBand

can pay for itself within weeks: a very

compelling proposition indeed for

broadcasters. With ready bandwidth

available, FreeBand also eliminates the

hassle of coordinating and configuring

satellite bandwidth, allowing remote

teams to get up and running more

quickly. This is the second CSI Award for

NovelSat. The first was for NovelSat

NS3, which the Israeli-based company

positioned as a third generation satellite

bandwidth optimisation solution, using

spectral efficiency algorithms to boost

satellite capacity by up to 37% over the

DVB-S2 standard. In fact, when NovelSat

NS3 is implemented with FreeBand,

signals benefit additionally from superior

resilience to interference and jamming,

weather fluctuations and phase noise.

FreeBand can, of course, work with DVB-

S2 at the hub and remote terminals.

Best Satellite transmission/contribution/distribution solution

WINNER



CSI Awards 2014

08

Amino

Home Reach

Smart home systems are a subset of the

emerging Internet of Things (IoT) sector,

which is forecast to be a huge

opportunity going forward to the next

decade and beyond. The concept of the

smart home has been slow to catch on

but when shows like IBC start to feature

a fair share of demos – we counted at

least half a dozen this year - it is an

indication that perhaps things are about

to change. Even though home automation

awareness remains low among European

consumers, research from Parks

Associates points to some pent up

demand for these types of services.

Approximately 25% of broadband

households in the UK, Germany, and

Spain find individual smart home devices

“very” appealing and are interested in

purchasing a smart home package

Home monitoring and control are the

two key verticals here and they are the

ones that Amino is hoping to tap into

with its innovative cloud-based Home

Reach platform. The solution was created

specifically for operators to enable them

to add home monitoring and control

services alongside entertainment and

broadband offerings using an existing

Amino set-top boxes, which effectively

become a gateway, and allow service

providers to “own the connected home.”

Home Reach combines a range of devices

(WiFi cameras, smart plugs, movement

detectors, and door and motion sensors)

with an easy-to-use smartphone app and

operator-grade cloud-based service

delivery to enable consumers to monitor

and manage their homes on the move.

Home Reach was developed to align

with operator strategies to develop new

value-added services that help drive

additional recurring revenue streams,

reduce churn and retain and attract new

customers. The home security market on

its own is expected to grow to $34.46

billion in 2017.

Use cases include checking in on

youngsters and pets while away from

the home, receiving an alert when the

home is entered, checking to see if

windows or doors have been left open

and managing lighting remotely. Amino

is now engaging with a number of

operators who see the value of a

new service layer alongside their

entertainment offerings. Home Reach

is currently in extended trials with a

number of operators and could finally

help kick-start this nascent market.

Best IPTV technology or service

WINNER

Home Reach was created for operators to enable them to add home monitoring and

control to their entertainment and

broadband packages



AMINO_0275_HomeReach_Advert_PATHS_AW.indd 1 2014/10/15 4:45 PM

http://www.aminocom.com

CSI Awards 2014

10

Motive Television

Tablet TV

Tablet TV is a new service which aims

to maximise the use of digital broadcast

television. Crucially, it does not require

costly additional infrastructure or

handsets, two factors that ultimately

doomed the failed DVB-H mobile TV

effort. Rather, it uses broadcasters’

existing content distribution system.

Tablet TV enables customers to watch

and record the existing broadcast

television available in their local area on

their tablet and smart devices. Initially

this is achieved using a low cost WiFi

dongle that can be positioned anywhere

to get the optimum signal reception.

Live broadcast television is only the

start, Tablet TV also offers premium

content datacast directly to the portable

devices, as well as integration with social

network and IP based content when a

suitable network connection is available.

Tablet TV services in the US and the

UK should both be commercial by the

end of the year, in time for Christmas,

assuming the process of updating and

improving the user interface, as well as

the tests, go according to plan. In the US,

technical Beta Testing is underway in San

Francisco with users trying out the

functionality in different environments

and various parts of the city. A trial with

UK users was expected in early October.

If things go according to plan,

Tablet TV stands to offer another,

compelling option for the growing

consumer appetite for TV on the move.

Best mobile TV technology or service

WINNER

Broadpeak

nanoCDN Video Transparent Caching

As OTT video delivery continues on an

upward curve, getting all the content

from an origin server that is not part

of the operator’s infrastructure turns

more and more inefficient. Transparent

caching enables the operator to cache the

popular content it doesn’t manage inside

its own network.

Broadpeak’s nanoCDN video

transparent caching (VTC) application

does just that. Leveraging home

gateways as probes, VTC determines

popular video content from the internet

so that it can be cached on local servers

by operators. By caching popular and

regional content closer to the end-users,

and relying on an efficient optimized

network, nanoCDN VTC eliminates

contention points and reduces peering

costs. It enables operators to effectively

handle unmanaged video content

delivered over their network, significant

as it continues to account for an ever

larger proportion of total network traffic

Broadpeak, which spun-off from

Technicolor in 2010, has won this award

three years in a row, an impressive

achievement in a fast moving industry.

Best Web TV technology or service

WINNER

Tablet TV



CSI Awards 2014

Sky Deutschland

The world’s first live broadcast over

satellite in Ultra HD with 50fps

Ultra HD is without doubt one of the

biggest developments that will shape

the TV industry for the next ten years.

Indeed, DVB labels UHD as the Holy Grail

of broadcast. What this also means is

that reaching it will take a huge

collaborative effort on the part of the

industry. This is why early experiments

that take the full value chain into account

are at this stage crucial as the

technology matures. And this is why

German payTV operator Sky Deutschland

emerged as the winner in this category.

Live sports helps with the rollout of

any new technology, so SkyD chose a

Bundesliga match between FC Bayern

Munich and Werder Bremen in April to

conduct the world’s first live broadcast

over satellite in UHD with 50fps, encoded

in HEVC. Six 4k cameras and four HD

cameras, which were up-converted in the

OB van, were used to deliver pictures to

Sky’s HQ in Unterfoehring and to the

labs of multiple technical partners.

The message was that SkyD can do

the entire end-to-end chain. Interestingly

while the company argues there is

nothing stopping it from making a full

launch on the back of these trials it is

holding back and waiting for the industry

to move beyond the first phase of UHD,

which is just about higher (4k)

resolutions. Stephan Heimbecher, head of

innovations and standards of technology,

said SkyD doesn’t want to be the first on

the market just for the sake of it. “We are

still stuck in a pre-HD world in many

cases and UHD is a good opportunity

to get rid of a lot of the old stuff we are

still carrying around with us,” he said.

This is because SkyD’s ecosystem

trials come against a backdrop of a

larger industry debate of what exactly

UHD should ultimately consist of,

including higher dynamic range, wider

colour space, higher frame rates and

better audio, and the exact nature of

these is a point of heated debate.

The DVB hopes to standardise the

next wave by 2016, which would fall

in line nicely with the Olympic Games

and European football championships.

If this doesn’t happen in time, it will be

interesting to see if this prevents SkyD

from launching its first commercial

channels by then. The temptation may

prove too hard to resist. UHD needs new

HEVC capable boxes and these will start

coming on the market in 2015.

Best ultra HD TV technology or project

WINNER

Credits: Sky /sampics

The clear message is that Sky Deutschland can do the entire end-to-end ultra HD chain

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