AMSTERDAM – SeaChange is using the annual IBC Conference to show off its new user experience capabilities designed for multiscreen and OTT providers.
The company's new NitroX software offering is built for set-top boxes and RDK-based CPE as well as Android, iOS and the Android TV operating system.
NitroX features include restart TV, catch-up TV and network PVR services and run across set-tops, smartphones and tablets. The UX can incorporate multiple VOD services and can be customized to the customers’ preference.
Perhaps most importantly, though, is that SeaChange says its new UX solution is agnostic. Tony Dolph, SVP of marketing for SeaChange, told FierceCable that the service can be delivered by the same back-office software stack, either on-premise or in the cloud, whether a provider is using an HFC plant or IP.
Coupled with the ability to operate on legacy CPE, Dolph said NitroX allows Tier 2 and Tier 3 providers to get to a level of parity with the very big Tier 1 providers, with new capabilities that could be difficult to achieve within a heterogenous network.
Indeed, Starman in Estonia said it introduced an OTT video service based on the recent upgrade of its Seachange Adrenalin multiscreen video platform.
SeaChange has been building its software portfolio as the company has moved away from the hardware business.
“SeaChange is a software company now,” said Dolph. “It’s been a vertically integrated supplier in the past but right now the company is really about software. That’s the plan for the company.”
Dolph, who formerly headed SaaS provider Hubcast, said probably as early as 2014, SeaChange had mostly become a software company even if it didn’t necessarily express itself that way.
Now there’s a paradigm shift underway at SeaChange with the added flexibility a move away from hardware provides.
“It’s a cultural change,” said Dolph. “We have lots of habits that are still about vertical integration. So even if you’re just building software, you still kind of think in this function-specific way. We’re really looking to develop new processes and new modalities about how we work and how rapidly we deploy software. Not in these gargantuan six-month lurches but in a very modular, extensible way.”
With the introduction of NitroX, SeaChange says it now has four main product categories: content management, back office, advertising and user experience. The company says those capabilities give it a complete delivery chain for video products.
For more:
- see this press release
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