IndianMascot
Core Member
Q. How do you see the Indian STB market growing in future and what factors will contribute to its growth?
Analogue shut-off is just the beginning of the growth of consumer electronics. After India completely shuts off analogue TV, the growth will continue due to the following reasons. There is a continued influx of new TV sales which will require STBs, with older TVs being moved to another room or recycled to another home. There is also an increasing demand for HD STBs in tandem with growing HD content and TV sales. Additionally, as India exercises more demand for higher-end services and broadband-connected devices, we see the need for mid- and high-end STBs to replace some of the basic zappers that have been installed.
Watching better quality TV programmes is just the beginning of the beautiful new world of digital TV that India is experiencing. There is an additional demand for features or applications that run on STBs. Multi-room or multi-screen experiences, hybrid OTT content will all bring new higher-end STBs. Below are some examples of use cases that we expect in India:
- Mobile to TV mirroring: Miracast is an industry standard led by the Wi-Fi Alliance to standardise how Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones, TVs, laptops and tablets establish direct device-to-device connections using Wi-Fi speeds. As operating systems begin to roll out support for Miracast, the Indian market will see an uptick in smartphones that are Miracast-based. Use cases of Miracast include smartphone-to-TV screen display via an STB to display photos, play music, show video or gaming. Video could also be recorded on a user’s phone or downloaded onto phone and displayed in real time on the TV set. Similarly, with gaming, Miracast allows the user to go from basic display to multi-player gaming with a private personal screen in hand and a shared public screen on TV.
- Multi-screen experiences: We now have technologies to reformat video in real time in the home for alternate screens available in the home network. This is called transcoding and can be done on affordable STBs and some of our mid-tier STB portfolio also. This enables some very interesting use cases that operators are excited about and subscribers can benefit from. For instance, live broadcasts may be reformatted and transmitted to smaller screens enabling a second screen in the same room, a ‘picture out of picture’ use case where the child could be watching a second show using a tablet and a headset. Another use case would be to take video on the go; recorded shows could be securely loaded onto smaller mobile devices to allow catch-up of favourite shows while travelling.
- Multi-room experiences: STBs are now evolving to a client/server set-up with a primary server STB serving multiple clients across the house. The benefits of this architecture include the ability to have a central home recording and a pool of tuners to serve the full home viewing needs of a family. Multi-dwelling units: Evolution of technologies to bring outdoor units, and solutions like Sat to IP now allow solutions to be developed to serve high quality transmissions to multiple units within a building or apartment via a single system installation.
Read the Complete Interview here : ‘We are providing cost-effective STB solutions tailored for the Indian market’ | TelevisionPost.com