Cox Communications today said it plans to use Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) subsidiary thePlatform to provide the back-end video management for the MSO's new video initiative, Cox TV Online.
The two companies have been working together since thePlatform began managing Cox's video for Cox.com, but the new initiative helps take Cox deeper into the TV Everywhere landscape at a time when the space is really heating up.
A Parks Associates report said that by the middle of this year, 81 percent of U.S. and Canadian pay-TV customers would have access to TV Everywhere services through their current providers.
Cox, the third-largest MSO in the U.S., has been a bit slow out of the gate on its TV Everywhere initiative, watching as Comcast, Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) and Cablevision (NYSE:CVC)-not to mention AT&T's (NYSE:T) U-verse TV and Verizon's (NYSE:VZ) FiOS TV-have begun to broaden their collective reach.
Cox is using thePlatform's mpx video publishing system, which has had success in the U.S., Canada, and in Australia where pay-TV operator Telstra has chosen thePlatform as the central video management system for its BigPond TV service. It's using thePlatform's mpx video management system for aggregating both linear and on-demand video from various content sources, formatting video content to different device specifications and centrally managing and publishing this content for multiple purposes.
"ThePlatform developed a smart media management platform that allows each of our customers to approach ‘TV Everywhere' initiatives in their own way," said CEO of thePlatform Ian Blaine. "One of the exciting aspects of this deployment is the ability to present unified content search and discovery across a variety of programmers' video players. With mpx, Cox subscribers can watch premium video instantly, while the business policies and financial obligations between Cox and programmers are maintained."
As Parks Associates Senior Analyst Brett Sappington said in the report:"Service providers realize they need to be the consumer's primary source of video content on all platforms."
A year ago, TV Everywhere was, essentially, nowhere. What a difference a year makes.--Jim