The device-agnostic, multiscreen future is Technicolor ’s latest target, with the launch Wednesday of the MediaNavi TV content platform at CES 2011. The idea is to make content navigation for television “simple, seamless and social" for consumers, the company said.
The solution, targeted to consumer electronics manufacturers and pay-TV operators like telcos, cable companies and satellite providers, pulls together a full range of content, including broadcast, DVR recordings, VOD from the operator, plus over-the-top content from Netflix, YouTube and so on (the operator can determine which sites are accessible), plus audio and photo files from the home network.
A recommendation engine is part of the package as well, and the system “remembers" most-watched programs to present those first to the viewer. Integration with social media sites and star-ratings capabilities complete the picture.
“MediaNavi was developed to bring the real service power of networks to devices such as tablets, set-top boxes and mobile devices enabling consumers to discover new content, share their discovery with their social network and consume content in a rich and immersive manner," said Frederic Rose, CEO of Technicolor, in a statement.
The platform has a few different pieces: A client resides on hand-held devices for looking up ancillary related content; it talks over the home network to a set-top box, which performs tuning and records and playback functions for the DVR. Meanwhile services, metadata and content data is held and managed within the cloud.
Rose added that the goal is to deploy MediaNavi “as a cross platform, device agnostic solution that operators can deploy quickly, while utilizing many of their legacy set-top-box devices in the process."
Technicolor is showing the application at CES using an Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tab, the iPad, and a Windows Phone 7 device, talking to a cable DVR box, a legacy cable STB and a prototype for a standard DirecTV off-the-shelf box.
MediaNavi is available for trial in the spring of 2011; U.K. broadband provider Talk Talk is signed on for the trial phase already.
