CABLE CONGRESS 2012 – BRUSSELS. There were five multiscreen deployments by European cable operators during 2011, bringing the total to six, said Guy Bisson, director television at IHS Screen Digest.
The total worldwide number of multiscreen deployments stood at 18 on cable networks, there were 16 for satellite DTH operators, 13 with IPTV platforms and two for DTT services.
In Europe, Denmark is leading the way. In Denmark, Stofa and YouSee offer their WebTV service. In the Netherlands, Ziggo TV was launched on second screens, with live TV streaming to the iPad, while in Belgium Telenet rolled out its Yelo second screen service. During the year, Virgin Media launched its Virgin Media Player.
IHS Screen Digest groups all multiscreen services under one roof – this includes the live streaming to TV channels, which has been happening for a couple of years with many operators.
Streaming to tablets is a more recent phenomenon, with a few operators such as Ziggo in the Netherlands and Telenet in Belgium as the front runners. These fast movement can be explained by heavy competition – in the Netherlands IPTV provider KPN was the first to introduce live streaming to iPads.
During this year’s Cable Congress Liberty Global’s Mike Fries said that the new Horizon gateway would stream more than a 100 channels to tablets upon deployment later this year.
