ActiveVideo Accelerates Industry Shift to Cloud-Based UIs; Enhances CloudTV™ Platform to Deliver TV as an Application

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- ActiveVideo® today announced major advances in its CloudTV™ H5 platform that will propel service providers and content aggregators to deliver the next generation of television user experiences from the cloud to any connected device.

The announcement marks major advances in platform and network scalability -- enabling the accelerated rollout of TV services embedded with modern UIs that support guide, navigation and rich media applications across a range of device and network paradigms. In conjunction with the announcement, ActiveVideo said that CloudTV™ has been enlisted to fulfill cloud-based UI strategies for Charter (NASDAQ: CHTR) and interactive applications for Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) in the United States.

ActiveVideo also is partnering with Sumitomo Corporation (TSE: 8053, "Sumitomo") to target deployments in Japan and in the Asia-Pacific market.  Sumitomo is an international conglomerate corporation that provides a diverse range of products and services with 140 offices in 66 countries. In the Media Sector, Sumitomo holds ownership stakes in J:COM, the largest MSO in Japan, as well as in Japan's top movie, sports and shopping channels.

"With billions of connected devices in the market, the need is growing exponentially for cloud-based solutions that can reduce device and experience fragmentation," said Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo. "Our continued commitment to improving the CloudTV platform will help our customers address multiple needs:  delivering the best possible viewer experiences, accelerating time to market, and providing the operational scale to roll out TV Everywhere-style services, all while minimizing infrastructure costs."

CloudTV™ H5 Product Highlights

To achieve operational scale, the all-IP CloudTV platform includes three new platform and network scalability innovations:

• Render Layers, enabling complex UIs and animation to be rendered more smoothly and to reduce required bandwidth up to 50%;
• Smart Multiplexing, increasing the number of CloudTV sessions delivered across an existing cable QAM network, resulting in 25% throughput improvement, or in an IP network benefiting from adaptive bit rate technology; and
• Dual-Stream Rendering, allowing the bandwidth-efficient delivery of partial-screen user interfaces that are controlled from the cloud but rendered locally on devices, resulting in enhanced on-screen experiences without taxing the network.

A fourth innovation, support for a family of thin clients based on an ultra-light code base, works with the CloudTV platform to deliver consistent user experiences on any connected device.  Dubbed CloudTV Nano, CloudTV Nano Lite and CloudTV Nanoware, the clients are designed to meet a variety of customer deployments supporting managed and unmanaged devices with full UI-in-the-Cloud capabilities – while dramatically minimizing custom integration.

Supporting Quotes

Jim Blackley, executive vice president of engineering and IT, Charter Communications

"As Charter is transitioning to a cloud based infrastructure, ActiveVideo's CloudTV technology helps enable our move of the UI into the cloud and is intended to help accelerate service innovation to our customers across a range of devices. This technology enhances platform and network scalability, while delivering a balanced architecture on which cloud and client interactions can be optimized.  Early tests have shown favorable results and the next step is an in-market trial."

Yvette Kanouff, executive vice president of corporate engineering and technology, Cablevision:

"As a pioneer of cloud-based television service, we long-ago adopted ActiveVideo's CloudTV platform to provide rich media applications to our customers. Cablevision is committed to providing the highest-quality TV, phone and Internet service and HTML5 will help us to further enhance the television user experience across devices."

Toshifumi Shibuya, Executive Officer, General Manager, Media Division, Sumitomo

"As we work with customers in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region to deliver rich media applications and advanced VOD navigation, CloudTV plays several key roles.  It enables us to capitalize on HTML5 web standards for rapid content creation, it allows customers to expand the capabilities of existing STBs today; and it lays the foundation for advanced services on any screen in the near future."

Dr. Ray Mota, CEO, ACG Research

"Usage of video by consumers has been until now prohibitively expensive and difficult because of the fragmentation in device capabilities. We found that by using CloudTV and moving the UI and other applications to the cloud, scalability was improved by an order of magnitude and total cost of ownership was reduced by 83% relative to upgrading set-top boxes."

Supporting Resources

CloudTV Platform and Network Scalability Analysis – ACG Research
Television as an App: Taming the Device Fragmentation Problem – nScreen Media
Ziggo Case Study
About Sumitomo Corporation

About CloudTV™

Using highly optimized browser technology, CloudTV massively scales to render the complete UI in the cloud to enable consistent multiscreen delivery of advanced user interfaces. The CloudTV H5 platform streams user experiences with low latency in either H.264 or MPEG2 via IP or QAM networks to any STB, CI Plus television or connected device. The cloud-based execution and rendering enables rapid, cost-effective development of complex animations and functionality for any connected device, regardless of processing capability. 

Available through service providers and in retail CE products, CloudTV is engaging viewers on more than 10 million devices in the United States and abroad.  CloudTV is powering advanced user experiences with Cablevision Systems, Ziggo, Time Warner Oceanic and other operators like Comcast, which is in a multi-stage trial in one of the country's most competitive markets. Net2TV, a virtual service provider, also is using CloudTV to deliver branded, web-based television content to Philips NetTVs.

About ActiveVideo
ActiveVideo® is a Silicon Valley company that harnesses the power of the cloud to accelerate multi-platform television experiences. The company's anchor technology enables service providers and content aggregators to deliver advanced user experiences – irrespective of device dependencies - by rendering the UI in the cloud. The company's flagship platform – CloudTV™ - frees the service provider from device dependencies that limit reach and fragment user experiences across diverse device platforms. Using a "write once, deploy everywhere" approach, CloudTV eliminates the need to write content services for countless device makes and models, resulting in lower operational cost and faster time to market. ActiveVideo is based in San Jose, CA, with offices in Los Angeles and Hilversum, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.activevideo.com; find us at www.facebook.com/ActiveVideoNetworks; follow us at www.twitter.com/activevideo.

SOURCE ActiveVideo