The end of our Broadband player.

When i first arrived at A+E I was asked to review and review on then tech + UI side a VOD broadplayer. Now the term Broadband player alone means this; it was at least 5 years ago. The system was a complete pay VOD product, which our channels licensed and then managed locally with our management on a product level. It was looking old back in 2008, so we did a large review over our options; I looked at and talked to almost every video platform provider in the world. It was ridiculous, most of our options made zero economic sense. I had already been using Brightcove as our video player on our AVOD based sites; the pay model just wasn't working that well.

Long story, after looking into all this stuff, my boss left, I asked if we could kill the entire project (showing cost versus benefits), and we did. So no pay VOD player anymore. However, we did discover a useful company that could develop a pay VOD option with Brightcove Cavi.tv later in date, however by that time it made more sense to have a simple AVOD model supported by Brightcove.

Below is our notes on the finalist. Interestingly a lot of them have been bought, like Kyte (our favorite), and Brightcove became the clear leader in this space and has been a stable technology (the travails of my 3-year BC relationship is another post)

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The core requirements: Flexibility in terms of use and management, publishing in difference webs and supports etc... will allow us to:

1) increase our audience in our portal thanks to our contents and...

2) Generate sales in our vod through an attractive and easy to buy platform and...

3) generate extra potential advertising incomes in the platforms.

have a Consistent Pay VOD System  to set up a strong base for future growth.

We've looked at about 10-14 options for a new video system to replace our current pay-VOD platform. Companies looked at in various levels where: Brightcove (winner), Flowwork,Stream5, Kwego, Kyte, Tvinci, Cavi, Vodeo, Visono, TV1, Stream5, Entriq, ipercast,  Ooyala and Kickapps And others

We have focused on 4 of those companies: Tvinici (Israel), Kewego (France), Hubee (France), Stream5 (Germany) and Kyte (US with European offices), in order to find a solution - with Brightcove being our default option if we don't want to have a pay vod system.

All three companies have some core characteristics that made us explore a partnership in detail.

1) they all have been used by international media brands as core video platforms

2) They all have existed as companies for more than three years

3) They each have a clear, core focus, the distinguish them in the Video Platform world

- Kyte:  Scale of Features

- Kewego: Ease of Use

- Tvinici: Focused on Payment Model

4) They each have substantial APIs and well documented developer boards (a must)

5) They all have options for agnostic CDN's

6) They all came with recommendation from a partner who has worked with them before.

7) They all have offices in Europe

8) Mobile applications can be built out of their Systems.

9) Their business model is dedicated only to Internet Video

10) They all have a substantial CMS to manage data, videos and playlist. etc.

Differences

On a product side,  there are clear differences between all three systems.

The core issues around  the Pay VOD requirement, in both Kyte and Kwegeo's case is the pay service. The pay systems is an "add on" to the video player,  not the company's core focus. The payment module can be developed by a third-party as part of the initial build process and integrated into the player, potentially resulting in a second CMS system (one for the video player, one for the pay VOD - being added to your existing site CMS).

Tvinci is the only system that is explicitly designed for a Pay VOD System.

In our original RFP, Pay VOD is a major core requirement, so before we remark on the pros and cons of each system we have to recognize our end goal.Do we want a product that focuses on Pay VOD First, or do we want a product that gives us flexibility first and pay capability second.

Hubee

www.hubee.tv (nothing there yet) Office: Paris Type of Company: Custom Pay VOD service, provider. Most famous for Vodeo.tv Total First Year cost:  127k (90k one time setup + 37 (3k x 12 months, not including streaming) On going monthly cost 3.3kOverview: Hubbe is a new company made by the builders of Vodeo.tv and other french pay Vod platforms Good 1) Lot of experience with pay VOD platforms 2) Have worked with the technical team before with Vodeo and know they are competent. 3) A robust, flexible payment system build into the CMS, all managed in one place and fully integrated in your website. 4) worked with lots of media companies.Bad 1) The Application is linear, meaning video can only live in place within their application, so the url would look like this history.com/videos/Video_title.html or like this history.com/video/irt/video_title.html the player could never live in this url history.com/shows/irt/video.html 2) Not much international experience just France. 3) no built-in mobile optionsChris thoughts: I think they can work, modestly priced, good experience in pay VOD, not so into the limitations with the player and URL but it could be fine, especially if we pair it with BC and Kweggo. The real question is to the site managers, since all video would have to live within the video url so in would history.de/video/show/clip.html and not within the minisites (out side of the intros). This also works for SEO.

Stream5

www.stream5.tv Office: Munich Type of Company: Custom Pay VOD service, provider. Most famous for Vodeo.tv Total First Year cost:  249k (144k one time setup + 105k yearly operating expense, not including streaming)Overview: Very Robust custom-made multi platform system. Good: 1) A big custom services based on the same CMS that Germany websites uses. 2) Aware of all German privacy laws 3) a flexible player system as well as a standalone VOD system Bad: 1) So many parts! Payment and CMS are separated, two different systems to manage both. 2) Payment not their core business its an add-on, custom build system, didn't/couldn't show us a working system. 3) lots of hosting costs though they aren't hosting our videos 4) no built-in advertising module on the player level. 5) the most expensive system we have seen to date, and i don't know why....Chris: The cost is so high. We've agreed we are really looking for payment solutions since we have modular video solution in BC and Kewego don't think showed us one. Bad 1) So many parts! Payment and CMS are separated, two different systems to manage both. I understood and even reasked them. It's a flexible payment system build into the Typo3 CMS so all is managed in one place and fully integrated in our website.

Tvinci http://www.tvinci.com/ Offices: Israel/Tel Avi Type of Company:  Tvinci is interested in being the web TV solutions for online Pay-TV providers. Total First Year cost:  82k + 15% rev share 60k (annual cost) + 1k (akamai hosting estimate) + 12k (2 MS SQL server s)  + 15% revenue share. Ongoing monthly Cost: 6k (annual 60k charge + streaming/ 12 months) Note contract is designed for 3 years.Chris's Overview: Tvinici is focused on pay VOD. Their integrated payment system is all-encompassing and they are dedicated as a company to improve upon it.PRO: a) Integrated Payment System b) Flexible, adaptable payment systems on the assets level (by individual video) c) Dynamic Playlist and suggestion engines based on meta data. d) Full time customer support built-in, with all the requisite vouchers, user admin functionality. e) Embeddable player but needs API built each time f) Analytics system very elaborate; allows for third-party trackingCON: a) No flexible player templates or systems. You essentially create a video aggregate application, integrate it within your site, and then have a few player templates you can embed in other parts of the site. b) No video player skinning GUI c) Have to purchase, maintain and monitor a local MS SQL server for the application d) The video aggregate is a stand alone app, so there will be some major integration issues with the app. e) No multiple formats, so will be harder to create web apps since content is only stored in .flv format Concern, Don't really like the flash application part since everything has to restart. Don't see any SEO best practices.

Kyte http://www.kyte.com/platform/pg/kyte_platform_videos Offices: London, SF, Switzerland, NY Type of Company: Kyte's focus is to create an Online, Mobile and Social Video platform. Total First Year cost: 188k 22k (One-time platform fee with Omniture and Google integration)  + 80k (Pay VOD system creation) + 80k (8k a month x10) Ongoing Monthly Cost: 8k a month.Chris's Overview: As I mentioned above, Kyte's major advantage as a platform is its features, most notably is the out-of-the-box mobile applications. No other platform comes close to level of Player level features that Kyte offers out of the box. With that said, I don't know how many of these features we will actually use. The scale of what a Product offers doesn't necessarily correlate to its use or value to the consumer.PRO: a) Features, social integrations, built-in UGC, Twitter, syndication, Chat, widgets, subscriptions etc. b) Easy to create Customizable players on the fly, so very easy to integrate in existing website structures. c) Dynamic playlist creation based on meta data d) Mobile Apps galore e) No Metadata requirements, you can have 1 or 16 words, tied to a clip.CON: a) No integrated payment system. Payment done by third-party b) Maybe too many features? Does it affect ease of use from a producer side? I'm technologically biased here. c) No advanced Analytics system (by users, click path) d) In order to do a lot of cool fun stuff, like advanced mobile development, there is an added cost, as well as dependency on using there SDK/API. (Which no one really knows except Kyte!) e) Cannot download source fileConcern: sharing accounts possible? Can we scale back the development cost for the Pay VOD system (currently 80k)? we can use akamai so our hosting charges will be less.

Kewego http://www.kewego.com/ Office: Paris Type of Company: Creating an easy to use, and customizable, Video Management system for each client. Total First Year cost:  172k 114k (set up estimate) + 58k (5.8k x 10) Ongoing Monthly Cost:  5.8k

Chris's Overview: There are two Kewego systems: one is a dead simple to use CMS, beautifully designed and intuitive and another one is a totally customized to your needs CMS based on their powerful API/Developer kit. As of now, I've only seen the latter, but have gotten hints at the former by looking at their developer website.

PRO: a) Very easy to learn and simple CMS b) Easy to create customizable players (to a limit) c) Large API/SDK library for development d) Able to download source file e) Able to use their stream f) Can stream akamai links

CON: a) No integrated payment system. Payment done by third-party b) The core platform is very simple, don't know the scale of development we could do to their system through the API c) No advanced Analytics system d) Kewego stores all video, designed to be their own CDN network. e) There are Metadata requirements and rules tied to assets. f) All categories have to be created by them g) Creating players controlled by them via PSD submission or developer (only two out of the box player templates)