Bell taps ExtendMedia to link TV content to web portal; hints of more services in 2010

Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. aims to buck the web TV trend with a new “TV anywhere” service supported by ExtendMedia Corp.’s technology. According to a Bell TV spokesman, the portal begins by offering up premium channel content instead of run-of-the-mill programming. Rather than showcase the regular network content available via the Bell TV service, the online portal’s first station will be Astral Media’s The Movie Network (TMN). And instead of insisting that the viewer has to be at his or her PC at home to access TMN’s films, the service allows users to log on and watch from any computer, anywhere they can find an Internet connection. Bell says it’s the first TV-web service in North America that follows the subscriber. “Why not offer something more valuable?” says Shawn Omstead, VP, product marketing at Bell TV in Toronto. Bell is relying on ExtendMedia’s OpenCASE technology for the system. Designed to carry content across computers, TVs, and mobile devices, OpenCASE integrates with advertisement servers, distribution networks and encoding technologies from digital rights management (DRM) providers, helping content distributors protect programming online while providing a monetization path for the web service, ExtendMedia says. Tom MacIsaac, ExtendMedia’s CEO, won’t say how much revenue his company expects OpenCASE to bring in, because ExtendMedia is a private company that doesn’t disclose financial details. But he did say that Bell’s service is just one of three OpenCASE “over the top” video systems that the company plans to help roll out. The next two will appear in the first quarter of 2010, MacIsaac says. OpenCASE comes in two flavours: a hosted cloud-based service, whereby all of the equipment and processing power behind the system resides with ExtendMedia; and an on-premises version, for customers that prefer to control and manage the equipment themselves. Bell is using the hosted iteration, and according to MacIsaac, most customers will probably choose that route. “Over the next five years we expect most of our deployments will use the application service provider model,” he says. “That’s the trend.” ExtendMedia has two locations: Boston, and Toronto. About 35 of its 50 employees work in the Toronto production facility, MacIsaac says. The TV-anywhere concept seems to be gaining traction. It may have started a couple of years ago with Sling Media’s Slingbox technology, which allows users subscribers to watch their TV services over the web. Now, U.S. content distributors including Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Verizon are trialing TV-anywhere (or “TV-everywhere”) services similar to Bell TV’s TMN Online offering. According to a recent Digital Life Canada study from Solutions Research Group Consultants Inc. in Toronto, consumer are keen on the TV-anywhere concept. The company found that seven out of 10 Canadian TV viewers say that being able to access their TV channels online or via mobile devices is “excellent” (26%) or “good” (41%). Convenience, the ability to take full advantage of the service subscription, and the ability to catch up on shows were among the top reasons for the popularity of the idea. Subscription enhancement was a major factor in Bell TV’s decision to offer TMN Online, Omstead says. The service is free of charge to customers who already pay for a Bell TV package that includes TMN. “I think this is a sustainable model,” Omstead says, pointing out that web TV services that rely on advertising revenue, such as Comcast’s Fancast service, sometimes struggle to recover their costs. “Consumption has gone well. But the business model has not. You have to have a balance.” Omstead wouldn’t specify future plans for the Bell TV Online service, but he did say that the company is “actively looking at other channels,” particularly premium-content channels, to add to the TV-anywhere platform in the first quarter of 2010.

Bell taps ExtendMedia to link TV content to web portal; hints of more services in 2010

News | 10/18/2009 7:34 pm EDT

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