Broadband TV News speaks with Darragh O’Brien, VP Media Solutions at Digisoft.tv about their novel approach to big screen content distribution, Playmigo.
The race for OTT and streaming video is on for content owners – how can Playmigo help?
Content owners and content distributors first and foremost compete with their content offering itself. However, Content Owners (going direct-to-consumer) and Content Distributors (traditional PayTV operators) are now expected to offer the same quality of experience that consumers are already used to from the major OTT services.
This includes seamless content discovery, quality UX, subtitles, UHD, etc., but also must include multi-platform support beyond just mobile and desktop apps, thus enabling subscribers to get their content whenever they want, wherever they want, on any device they want and be able to move seamlessly between these devices.
Supporting multiple consumer electronics and device platforms is complex and expensive business.
This is where Playmigo can help. We enable content owners to check the “Multi-platform” support requirement (and meet consumer expectations) without significant investment for all those “other” platforms that subscribers expect them to have readily available.
For the more established OTT services, Playmigo can help to lower their operational overheads and realize their multi-platform roadmap in a more efficient and economical way.
What problem does Playmigo solve?
Playmigo solves the connected device fragmentation problem – that is, dealing with App development and publication for many different devices and TV platforms. We recently published a white paper on this topic. Development for multiple TV platforms can be a headache, and App Store submission compounds that headache, and this cycle continues exponentially with the introduction of updated or new TV platforms.
Content owners are faced with some big challenges, one of them is the multitude of devices that need to be served, from smartphone to smart TV, and from PC to tablet.
If an OTT video service currently has a mobile (iOS/Android) app and they add code to support Chromecast, then that is a great feature for consumers that have a Chromecast device. But Chromecast is limited in its ability to deliver to all relevant platforms – what about Apple TV or Fire TV, etc? However, if that same video service replaces their Chromecast specific code with the equivalent Playmigo code, then they get that same Chromecast feature BUT also (at no extra effort or cost) the ability to cast to other platforms too – Roku, Samsung, LG, Apple TV, Fire TV etc.
What is the best way to exercise quality control, as OTT services are not managed IPTV
Playmigo uses the principle of lowest common denominator and does not try to include every possible feature available on all the disparate platforms. First and foremost, consumers spend most of their time watching content, Playmigo gives the publisher the simplest way to present this on the big screen without having to develop complex user interfaces for each device and then trying to connect those interfaces for seamless viewability between devices.
The technology works by aggregating the multiple casting protocols that exist today and encapsulating them in Playmigo’s own proprietary protocol and then, on the receiver (TV) side, Playmigo builds and maintains a single universal app for each connected TV platform. This app is dynamically branded at runtime by whichever service is casting to it at the time, thus eliminating the need for multiple apps.
What makes Playmigo different from its competitors?
Playmigo is not intending to compete with or replace traditional connected device apps that get developed by agencies and brands. Some OTT brands will insist that they must have a full user interface experience on a given platform. However, some brands will not be willing to invest in such a commitment, so Playmigo is there to offer assistance in that instance and allow the service to give the consumer the best viewing experience (discovery on mobile, playback on the big screen) and can assist the OTT brands that do want a full user interface on some platforms to do that, while expanding their reach to secondary platforms without the development investment. In both cases, faster time to market, faster expansion to as many platforms as possible all the while simplifying the process and enhancing the user experience.
Pricing for Playmigo is a SAAS tiered model based on the anticipated volume of usage for a given service. Details are at https://playmigo.com/pricing.html, and Playmigo offers enterprise pricing models for larger customers where they may have specific requirements and SLAs that need to be accommodated and for Partners that wish to offer the Playmigo technology combined with their own in unified solution or as a stand-alone offering to enhance their existing offerings, be they product or services.
Can you tell me one or two use cases?
Some interesting use cases have emerged as we have worked with new partners.
The fundamental and most obvious use case is where a new mobile-first OTT service wants to support their service on other devices such as media streamers and Smart TV’s. Playmigo allows these operators to have a presence on these other platforms without any custom TV app development or deployment management and at the same time offer high quality user experiences the likes of traditional PayTV operators.
Moving beyond the obvious use case, we also have partners using Playmigo to deliver Home Gateway DVR recorded content to consumer device media streamers in other rooms in the home. In this instance, the Playmigo “ecosystem” is a closed managed environment whereby the Home Gateway is analogous to a cloud hosted OTT service.
Additionally, any app (video, photo, karaoke, games, music, etc.) that currently has Chromecast support is a potential Playmigo partner. These brands already understand the value of having a casting feature and integrating Playmigo will just add to the number of screens that their content can be consumed on.
Moving into the custom receiver side of things, Playmigo can enable non-smart TV (and STB and Speaker) manufacturers to have a built-in casting receiver, thus making them “Connected or Smart” with only a very lightweight embedded receiver.
