Liberty Global is preparing to take its Horizon platform into the cloud following a successful demo in London.
Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries broke the news on Friday during an investor call, “Last week we had a demo in our office in London of a cloud based version of Horizon. We will have a ready-to-launch cloud-based version of the user interface which will make future releases simpler and that will reduce the costs of the box, I am really pleased with this development, ” he said.
During the call Fries also downplayed the problems with the Horizon set-top in the Netherlands and Switzerland. “Customers complain about everything, that is normal with a new product. Some want it faster, some want it green, some want it blue.”
“As with any innovative product in the market place you have bumps in the road. We just had a new code drop in both Switzerland and Holland that has dramatically improved pretty much every customer complaint,” according to Fries. “Most of the feedback we listened to we have been able to sort it though with this new code drop. Faster in terms of the cool User interface, simplify some of the menu options.”
The operator also launched a new remote that has a keyboard on the back. “Lots of the things we planned are rapidly introduced. Every quarter we will be improving our Horizon product and every market we are launching along the road we will have a better Horizon product.”
The versions to be launched in Germany (planned for September) and Ireland will be based on the learnings of both Switzerland and The Netherlands.