Entone aims managed hybrid TV service at connected home

As vendors continue to strategize on how best to address service providers’ hybrid TV needs, Entone is coming at the market with a somewhat new philosophy about how to deliver hybrid content, and at whom it should be targeted.

The vendor of set-top boxes and related gear has announced FusionTV, a managed service delivered through Entone’s Janus media hubs that support the blending of over-the-top” Internet video content and linear HDTV programming delivered to multiple TVs in a single connected household. Entone previously partnered with Vudu on OTT content for its hubs.

Entone is targeting both prospective IPTV service providers and broadband service providers that currently lack a video offering. The IPTV Edition of FusionTV is enabled through a web video-on-demand software download to the Janus hubs, while the Broadband TV Edition is being aimed at ISPs or service providers that have IPTV in some markets but want to expand their footprint with a less expensive video strategy than deploying a full-scale IPTV system. Both versions are currently in trial by service providers.

Entone acknowledged the ongoing debate over video cord-cutting, which has witnessed industry analysts diverging on the causes for cord-cutting and who is most likely to cut the cord. The company has a slightly different perspective on which customers are primed to switch services and what has been keeping them from doing so already. Ameer Karim, vice president of Hybrid TV for Entone, said, “There’s a group of consumers that is cordless and relying on OTT video that is very small, and there is a group of premium pay TV customers who represent about 20 to 30 percent of the U.S. market, but there is a middle class that is caught in between that is intrigued by OTT, but will not cut the cord because there is some content, live TV or sports, for example, that they would miss.”

The obvious solution is to give them both kinds of content, which is where a hybrid TV platform like Fusion TV comes in. Ironically, a hybrid TV offering could actually get this group to finally cut the cord on their current service provider if another provider can offer them the best-of-both-worlds hybrid package.

Other companies have been busily developing hybrid set-top boxes, but Karim said Entone instead has been working for about two years behind closed doors to come up with a whole-home offering that leverages the hub concept and the broadband home network without requiring set-top boxes for every TV in the home. In addition to hybrid TV content, the platform also offers full DVR functions, content place-shifting to different devices, as well as applications like personal media sharing.

Entone plans to demonstrate Fusion TV at the TelcoTV Conference & Expo in Las Vegas next week.