46 OTT TV FILES Android TV
ASSISTANCE FROM ASSISTANT Voice control is transforming the way people interact with their devices – and how they think about their pay TV services. As such, having Google Assistant for voice-activated search across content sources is a tremendous bonus for operators. “For an operator to integrate voice activation from scratch, independent of Google, is a formidable job,” says Blickensdörfer. “You need to properly integrate the Play Store and Google Assistant. In order to do this, you would need access to all metadata being reliably supplied by all third-party apps, the know-how and ability to build a cross-source search mechanism, and you would need to construct a voice search capability on your own, from the ground up. So, that is three levels of complexity that Google solves thanks to Google Assistant being available out-of-the-box.” Google’s TV Input Framework enables third-party apps to connect and searchable. Google’s cross- silo search already exists, so the operator saves time and cost with Android TV and Google Assistant. Of course, by using it, the operator needs to show Google and third-party search results alongside the operator’s own, but many operators consider the benefits outweigh this trade-off. to the Android TV platform, making metadata accessible
AS SOON AS YOUWANT TO MERGE OTT AND BROADCAST, THEN CERTAIN CHALLENGES ARISE
to be navigated,” says Blickensdörfer. “Critically, there are legal requirements imposed by Google you need to understand and know how to comply with. You also need to ensure your customised UI is an enabler for your viewers and helps them find the content they want in an intuitive way.” There are also concerns about ongoing OPEX costs. Google’s update policy applies to STB manufacturers who must comply to keep their Android TV certification. It states that when a new OS is released (eg Android Oreo 9.0), they must apply the new release to all boxes in consumer homes within 90 days. ACTUAL ROLL-OUT Analyst and researcher Rethink TV registers around 70% of operators globally investigating Android TV as a serious option. Provided Google continues its open approach, Rethink forecasts 99.2 million Android TV devices will ship through pay TV operators by 2022. You have to bear in mind, though, it will take any operator around a decade to replace their entire STB population. The 100 million devices in Rethink’s forecast constitutes less than 11% of TV homes globally – but that’s up from less than 1% in 2017. “Android TV does have traction, but its market share is still small if you look at overall middleware deployment worldwide,” says Racine. Competitors include RDK, the open- source ecosystem devised by US cable giant Comcast, and certain pay TV operatorss own Linux-based solutions. That said, Android is on a roll. Accedo’s Brickman says: “We see very few new projects based on proprietary middleware stacks and, other than a few major operators and those that license their platforms, we are not seeing growth in the adoption of RDK.” Racine says clients have a choice. “We’ve deployed Android TV with Vodafone in Germany and Yes in Israel, we’ve deployed other clients with RDK, while Evo [Synamedia’s own operator middleware] is in over 200 million. Some operators want pure OTT solutions with
Android and a high-end pay TV platform running on Linux.” While Android TV Operator Tier is likely to be the de facto technology platform for many second, third tier and new pay TV launches, it may prove challenging for major global operators, such as, Liberty Global, to consider such a close tie-in with Google. “Operators considering basing their platforms on Android TV sometimes voice concerns about the long-term implications of partnering with Google,” says Blickensdörfer. “They will likely continue to want to remain independent and not over-reliant on a single content or technology provider. They will continue to favour AOSP or RDK.” Video distribution is increasingly migrating towards personalisation and unicast (OTT), and the entire software and infrastructure ecosystem is evolving to meet this transformation. “I think operator-distributed Android TV is a key transitional platform in the transformation away from broadcast and towards unicast,” says Brickman. “Once broadband networks are sufficiently robust to handle unicasting the World Cup to everyone who wants to watch it, then operator-distributed devices may disappear, as they are increasingly replaced by consumer devices. However, this does not mean the end of Android TV, as needless to say, Android TV can power some of those consumer devices.”
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