VoD with MHEG and CI+

S&T has developed a data-driven MHEG application that runs within the CI Plus browser in the TV, allowing subscribers to quickly and easily navigate through the entire content catalogue, select on-demand titles, and control media playback.

This VoD application runs across the diverse family of CI Plus TVs and other CI Plus equipped CE devices ensuring MSOs are able to deliver a consistent and visually rich VoD user experience to their subscribers.

MHEG is ideally suited to this type of application, as it was originally conceived as a technology for delivering device independent VoD solutions. The inclusion of MHEG in the CI Plus specification means it is relatively easy to develop, deploy and update such dynamic applications to a broad range of suitably equipped CE devices.

Coupled with more secure conditional access, this new interface enables applications – once downloaded from the CI Plus module – to be launched from a browser in a CI Plus TV or other compatible receiver, thus opening the door to applications such as Video on Demand (VoD) and Targeted Ad-insertion.

By running a full VoD platform including time-shift TV & nPVR (network Personal Video Recorder) on any CI Plus TV without a STB, Cable MSOs are spared the large capital expenditure of deployment by teams of technicians, as the system is simply installed by subscribers.

This dramatically cuts the operator’s costs of migration from analogue to digital, and by delivering PVR functionality from the network rather than an internal HDD, the life of installed devices is also extended – so slashing downstream maintenance commitments.