TV Network Operators

  • TV is still the most popular form of entertainment in the home. Even with the rise of broadcasters' web services, viewers still prefer to watch TV and video on demand on a large screen in the living room. However, with the wide range of Internet content that can only be displayed on PCs, viewers have not been able to enjoy a seamless and personalised entertainment experience based around the TV, until now.

    It is now possible to connect TV devices to home networks, giving viewers access to a wider range of engaging video entertainment through their TV using their broadband connection. This global trend includes Free-to-Air and Pay TV networks, bringing broadband and broadcast together in the living room for the first time. But how do network operators take advantage of this convergence to deliver a more engaging and empowering TV experience, and increase ARPU through revenue share from interactive services? 

  • The Miniweb Platform enables the discovery and usage of broadband content on hybrid TV devices. It performs key viewer functions as well as providing business management facilities and services such as the storage of data to provide a personalised TV experience, content indexing, quality control, search, micro-billing, localisation and recommendations.

  • Viewer Profiles

    Through the Miniweb Platform, TV viewers can enhance their interactive and entertainment experience by saving personal information including demographic information, payment mechanisms, search preferences, bookmarks and playlists to create their individual viewer profile. They can also link their profile to social networking sites, allowing them to interact with friends via the Miniweb Platform.  

    Search & Recommendations

    The platform enables smart search, recommendations and community functions allowing viewers to discover and manage internet video content from multiple sources. It is able to filter and manage video metadata making the content available to the Search & Recommendation features. Contextual recommendations for video are based on the broadband or broadcast content viewed, enabling constant 'new discovery'

    The platform is able to dynamically filter the available content and control what is displayed to the viewer based on the capabilities of the device, the speed of the viewer's broadband connection or location.

    Payments & Transactions

    Miniweb's payments solution enables content owners to set up secure payment services quickly and easily. Viewers can store their payment details securely before paying for one-off or recurring subscriptions to video or music content, taking part in competitions, voting and paying for goods and services quickly and easily.

    Social Networking & Community

    The Miniweb Platform offers a number of community functions enabling viewers to personalise their viewing and interact with each other directly through the TV.
    Send: Communicate a playlist, recommendation, message, interactive destination or programme between profiles
    Share: Make your playlists, favourites, saved searches etc visible to your TV Buddies
    Publish: Make your playlists, favourites, saved searches etc visible to the whole Miniweb community

    Miniweb profiles can be linked to 'real world' identies (Facebook accounts, mobile phone numbers, email addresses) making community functions easy to set up and maintain.

    Platform Management Console

    The Platform Control web site is the business to business face of Miniweb. It allows content owners to register TV Apps (TV Sites, Widgets, Flash games for example) and also their metadata feeds to publish internet video to TV devices via the Miniweb Platform. The Console also allows content owners and broadcasters to set up 'Content Owner Menus' creating a branded play environment for internet video and enhancements to linear TV channels. It also provides reporting, the ability to buy 'pay for' additional products such as TV Keys and set up payment structures for premium rate content, as well as allowing opt-in to syndicated advertising revenues.

    Content Menus and Branding

    Miniweb's Content Owner Menus help broadcasters and video content owners to make their content branded and more interactive and easily discoverable by a wider TV audience, extending the viewer's engagement with the brand beyond the current video (but without losing sight of it). While the video content or TV channel is playing the viewer can display the menu on-screen at any time with a press of a button to explore the brand's content further.

    Menu features include branded recommendations, branded content search, catch-up TV, directlinks to video and interactive pages and targeted adverts/sponsored links.

    The menus are easy to navigate using a remote control and work dynamically to deliver contextually relevant menu options to help viewers get what they want quickly and easily, and the Miniweb Platform ensures that they work seamlessly on any type of broadband connected TV device.

    Advertising

    The platform supports in-video advertising formats including pre/mid/post roll as well as on-screen advertising 'overlays' and banners. In this way each piece of content can be linked to advertising relevant to the viewer and the content they are watching.

    Contextual, demographic and behavioural targeting enables advertisers to deliver ads to TV viewers with a level of relevance and sophistication that was only previously possible on the internet. Web-style tracking and reporting enables advertisers to see clear return on their marketing spend. Miniweb's advertising feature is fully compliant with the current UK Data Protection Act and provides end user control over this data. Miniweb can offer a full service for publishers if required including ad sales/management and ad serving.

    Subscription Management and Entitlements

    This platform component keeps track of purchases and micro-subscriptions between individuals using the Miniweb system and content owners. It enforces the content owners' payment structures, providing unchecked access to content viewers are entitled to see and also provides a simple guided payment process for the viewer when a payment is due. The module also ensures that Adult content is appropriately filtered and generates revenue share calculations and reporting.

    Interactive & Image Transcoding

    The Platform can automatically transform images retrieved from internet services to appropriate sizes and formats for TV, allowing many more internet image formats to be used in content while still working across all TV devices even when they have limited image format support. For TV Sites authored in TVML (pure XML based ETSI standard for TV Sites) the TV Site can also be translated into various dialects of HTML/JS to allow 'author once for all' on the various types of TV browsers common in TV devices.