How AssetHouse Helped BT Vision Become a Content Retailer
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In December 2006 BT launched BT Vision, a subscription-free digital TV service available to broadband-enabled homes across the UK.
BT chose AssetFactory™ from AssetHouse to handle all scheduling, programming, digital content management and digital proposition management for the BT Vision service.
By building the service around AssetFactory™, BT Vision can make more money, faster from its content investment. Using AssetFactory™, which separates BT’s content from its delivery to end customers, means BT finds it easier to actively sell its content instead of simply waiting for users to buy it, because it streamlines the entire process of turning raw content (like movies, music and sport) into profitable on-demand products.
If you build it, they may not come.
Today’s broadcast model is evolving into a new world of anytime, anywhere, highly interactive and increasingly personalised entertainment – whether it’s delivered to a TV, a PC or a mobile phone (or all three).
It’s a brave new world and it’s completely up for grabs. For those companies that get it right the opportunities are enormous – they can reinvent themselves as the entertainment brands for the on-demand world. For those that get the business model wrong, there’s the prospect of burning a large amount of money to generate a tiny stream of revenues.
Enter BT Vision
One of the most innovative launches into the on-demand space took place in December 2006, when BT Vision, a subscription-free digital TV service available to broadband-enabled homes across the UK, was launched.
At blueprint stage, BT Vision realised that to win in such a competitive market its on-demand IPTV implementation had to meet several stringent tests:
- Get its content to market faster and at lower cost
- Deliver compelling, differentiated experiences for increasingly knowledgeable consumers
- Respond quickly to new ideas and opportunities
- Actively sell content instead of waiting for users to buy.
Digital Proposition Management: the first generation
The first generation of on-demand services were rushed to market with little focus on long-term sustainability or flexibility. As a result, most services (except the ones built by us) have committed the cardinal sin of on-demand: locking the content to the delivery mechanism. It’s a small, seemingly technical decision that has dramatic business implications.
Look under the hood of the typical on-demand service and you’ll see a complex matrix of ad-hoc processes, duplicated data, and channel-specific delivery applications.
The good news: at least they got the new service to market (eventually) and it works (sort of).
The bad news: the new services were built on inflexible foundations that:
- Make it harder to create new propositions and launch new services
- Restrict the ability to package, promote and cross-sell
- Obscure visibility into what is actually owned and licensed
- Severely limit content exploitation opportunities
- Waste money on inefficient back-end processes
- Inhibit responsiveness to the market
- Put a ceiling on growth
Digital Proposition Management: the second generation
How AssetHouse helped BT Vision to change these rules
BT Vision uses AssetFactory™ to handle the whole digital proposition life cycle from content acquisition, through contract management and exploitation, proposition development and promotion to final delivery to the end customer (shown in the diagram below).
The physical content itself follows traditional broadcasting workflow involving encoding, transcoding and storage. AssetFactory™ drives and tags these activities, so editorial staff know whether the content is ready for use and where to find it.
In parallel, the Contract Management Engine tags all the content’s attributes: for films, for example, BT needs to capture the genre, actors, length, box shots, images, soundtrack, usage rights and so on. This means that AssetFactory can support BT Vision’s content acquisition activity: the fast turnover of content and the cimportance of scheduling means that editorial staff are frequently forced to ordering and provision content after the schedule has been drafted.
AssetHouse ensures these are captured once and forever – and the process is done swiftly. Many of BT Vision’s content assets are highly perishable. The rights to blockbuster films are invariably strict and short term. If BT Vision is slow to get the product ready for the consumer, it can quickly lose a substantial share of the profits it was expecting to make.
When the content is ready, it passes into AssetHouse’s central Editor’s Desk where BT Vision orchestrates pricing, packaging and promotion, making it easy for customers to buy.
The need for rapid prototyping
Using the Editor’s Desk, product managers create reusable products packaged according to individual service specifications. The first generation of digital content services involved guessing consumer desires and building expensive services specifically designed to meet them.
BT rejected this unsustainable approach and uses AssetHouse’ solution to react quickly to new ideas and opportunities by building prototype or full pilot services quickly and cost-effectively. Creating nimbler, more flexible services, means they can be changed to reflect early user experience, then scaled up to millions of users when ready.
Finally, packaged products are passed to despatch where they are validated to ensure compliance with BT’s delivery network requirements. This integrated approach allows BT Vision easily and quickly to refresh the consumer offerings they are aiming to market to customers. For example, it is a straightforward process to update product promotion on the set top box regularly, keeping the offer fresh and relevant.
How it works
The AssetHouse solution simplifies digital proposition development and management for BT Vision by separating content from its delivery. It sits behind and functions independently of the delivery application and set-top box. The secret lies in AssetHouse’ ability to use metadata to describe and manage content, model content services, and uphold business and service rules consistently across BT Vision’s IPTV service.
As a result, AssetFactory™ is the world’s first content product factory and it streamlines the entire process of turning raw content (like movies) into profitable on-demand products.
Key benefits for BT Vision
Lowering the cost of delivering services to end users
Creating, piloting and scaling BT Vision is easier with AssetHouse
Easier management of content inventory
Including centralised management of contracts and rights
Getting content to market faster
Easy orchestration of pricing, packaging & promotion
Testing easily and learning fast
Automation of resource-intensive content handling tasks including content validating and cataloguing, loading, tagging, aggregation, retrieval and delivery
Automation of proposition creation, including scheduling, tracking, billingResponding to users more effectively
Differentiate the service
Rapid adaptation to customer feedback
Avoidance of complex, hard-wired, inflexible infrastructures that increase risk of failure
Cross-sell more effectively
What is BT Vision?
BT Vision combines digital TV (essentially the UK’s Freeview free-to-air digital TV and radio service offering over 70 channels), a digital hard disk video recorder (called a V-Box) offering recording and live pause, and on-demand TV and video content that’s downloaded over a broadband connection.
The downloadable on-demand content includes films, music, sports and kids programming, and BT has deals with a number of big name content providers, like Warner Music, i-concerts, Eagle Rock (for music), Dreamworks, Paramount, NBC, Disney, Pixar, Miramax, BBC, HBO and many others (for film and TV content).
BT won the rights to carry 242 ‘near-live’ FA Premier League football matches per season until the 2009-10 season, allowing subscribers to watch matches on a pay per view basis. From August 2007, the Setanta Sports channel joined the portfolio offering live football and other sporting events
BT’s V-box (produced by Philips) has a 14-day electronic programme guide, as well as an on-screen guide to allow selection of downloadable content. This EPG is searchable, to help consumers find TV shows and films by name, actor or genre. The set-top box lets people record up to 80 hours of Freeview television on a 160GB hard drive.
The whole application is delivered to consumers over Microsoft Mediaroom and the aim is to attract “hundred of thousands” of customers by the end of 2007 and two-to-three million in the medium term.
BT Vision has plans for new Web 2.0-like interactive services based around audience participation, voting, gaming, gambling and communications, enabling customers to chat with each other or use video telephony, as well as control their BT Vision services via a web portal and/or cellular device in addition to the set top box.]
About AssetHouse
AssetHouse specialises in Digital Proposition Management for the new on-demand content marketplace.
Our AssetFactory™ helps operators and media brands turn content assets into profitable products quickly, easily and at lower cost. Unlike the passive, hard-wired on-demand model, AssetFactory lets you actively sell, cross-sell and merchandise differentiated content products, promotions, packages and price plans.
AssetFactory™ also lets you drive inefficiencies out of the entire process of buying, packaging and delivering content products.
