It seems the beginning of the year brings two things—an endless slate of college football bowl games and everyone’s lists of trends in the broadband industry. Last week, we revealed our top ten predictions for 2012. We’re always eager to compare notes with the broadband press, so we eagerly awaited CED Magazine’s annual “Broadband 50”—the top trends and benchmarks as determined by CED’s learned editors and “high-ranking industry execs.” Not surprisingly, they chose a number of topics related to IP video—a subject near and dear to us at RGB:

#1 – IP Migration: A perfect circle: IP continues its inexorable progression to being the basis of all the services operators offer, not just video. The pace is quickening though as operators realize they can take advantage of the flexibility and economic advantages of IP to expand their TV Everywhere services.

#6 – Multiscreen on the move: TV Everywhere has left the proverbial drawing board for real-world mobile devices, and though not fully ready for primetime, advanced trials and early deployments are progressing nicely thanks to second generation transcoding and adaptive streaming technologies.

#12 – Transcoding for multiscreen: So many different viewing platforms, so many different screen sizes, so many different networks, and programming coming to headends in both MPEG-2 and H.264 – you bet TV Everywhere requires transcoding, and a lot of it (no complaints here!).

#20 – Putting the advertising puzzle together: Interactive “clickable” ads remain poised to move from trials into the mainstream, as are hyper-targeted ads, a leading-edge revenue booster we first discussed here.

#24 – Adaptive bit rate streaming: The secret sauce for seamless video delivery to mobile devices and PCs, adaptive streaming compensates for the bandwidth fluctuations inherent in today’s overburdened networks. Now a requirement for streaming video, look for more announcements from RGB in 2012 on additions that enhance our adaptive streaming solution.

#26 – TV Everywhere: Waiting game: Live TV on smartphones and tablets remains the next big thing. The technology is in place and we’ve had success in many trials in 2011, but it’s the content rights that are holding the industry back from full-scale deployments. With recent developments in this area, we believe the waiting game will soon be over.

It’s clear that IP video delivery will remain at the forefront of the broadband industry in 2012, with developments on both the technology and contents sides pushing it ahead. We look forward to helping make video a key component of the new mobile lifestyle for consumers around the globe.

Not to be left out of the trend of posting a trends blog, we’ve put together a round-up of the key trends in IP video that we expect to see over the year ahead. Here are our top 10 predictions for 2012:

1. Increase in uptake of multiscreen IP video services

Over the coming year we can only expect the uptake of multiscreen solutions to continue increasing. With a greater number of IP devices available on the market than ever before (just take a look at what next week’s CES holds in store for us…if you have any doubts), operators are going to continue to be pushed by consumers to up the ante on their TV Everywhere offerings.

2. Content remains king

Even as this posting was being written, things were changing in the world of content rights and we expect to see more. With Comcast and Charter signing significant content deals this week for multiscreen delivery, the landscape is shifting, opening up the floodgates for larger deployments of TV Everywhere services—declared by Neil Smit, president and chief executive of Comcast’s cable division, to be “…the future of entertainment.”

3. Accelerated opportunities presented by the Olympics

The London Olympics is going to present a massive broadcast opportunity in 2012 with content streamed all over the globe. Network infrastructure will have to be ready and advertising solutions firmly in place if operators are going to truly capitalize on the opportunities available. And not too far on the heels of London, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia will greatly accelerate the deployment of new television services in Eastern Europe (which we expect to be in evidence at the upcoming CSTB show in Moscow in February).

4. Advertising ups and downs

Talk of a double-dip recession will continue over the coming year, and with this will come concerns over the fate of the advertising market. New market opportunities, such as those presented by multiscreen strategies and adaptive streaming technologies, should work to alleviate these fears.

5. Social TV/second screen strategies will increase in use

The increased adoption of multiscreen strategies has led to changes in not only where content is viewed, but also how it is consumed in the home. A recent study by Ovum, a business/technology research firm in the U.K., found that almost 40% of TV viewers discuss particular TV shows via social media while they’re watching them. Adopting a ’second screen strategy’ will become the norm going into 2012 and operators will look to capitalize on this trend to encourage further loyalty and buy-in to programming.

6. Increase in sales of connected TVs

Research in this area suggests that this market is set to increase exponentially. According to Digital TV Research’s Connected TV Forecast report, the number of TV sets connected to the internet will reach 551 million by 2016, up from 124 million in 2010, bringing the IP video experience to the traditional living room TV (not to mention intense competition amongst manufacturers—especially if rumors of an Apple TV are true).

7. Increasing struggle to maintain subscriber loyalty

The competition is only going to increase further as more content is available and operators struggle to maintain loyalty in an ever crowded market. Traditional video service providers must deploy new services that support subscribers’ on-the-go digital lifestyle.

8. Standards still not standard

We expect to see progress in two important standards areas this year. A new adaptive streaming standard—MPEG DASH—has just been approved as a draft standard, with publication expected this March. We will be sharing some thoughts on the adoption of this new standard in a blog to be posted later this month. The second important area for standards development is for multiscreen ad insertion. After years of investment in SCTE standards, it will be important to integrate them with new adaptive streaming ad insertion techniques.

9. Working together

As you might imagine, delivering hundreds of streams to an ever-increasing number of devices isn’t an easy task—there are a lot of parts that must work smoothly together to ensure the reliable and efficient delivery of multiscreen IP video services. We closed out last year with the formation of a consortium of companies that delivers a best-of-breed multiscreen solution. We expect to see a lot of cooperation (by us and others) to continue to build out integrated solutions, adding new pieces as the ecosystem evolves and ensuring that operators have a proven solution for meeting their IP video goals.

10. Live TV continues to make its mark

Consumers may have benefited from the advent of on-demand services and this has altered the way that content is consumed, however, live TV continues to play a major part in consumers’ viewing habits. With competition-based shows like X Factor, American Idol, Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing with the Stars that encourage voters to watch in real time, live sports and award show remaining as popular as ever, and the growing engagement of social TV tied into all of the above, live TV will certainly continue to hold its own.

What do you think about these trends? Do you agree with us? What have we missed? As always share your thoughts with us here!

2011 has been a year of huge video moments. From the global screening of the UK’s Royal wedding, to the US’s equivalent, and from YouTube clips of national uprisings, to televised footage tracking the global Occupy movement—it has all been captured on camera and broadcast around the globe throughout 2011 on an increasing variety of screens.

In the world of RGB Networks, while the landmarks may not have not been as politically significant, there have certainly been many notable moments!

In the last of our blog postings for 2011, we have taken a look back over the year, and rounded up our top ten moments from 2011:

10. The Wall Street Journal ranks RGB as 13th most promising company in the U.S.

RGB was selected from a pool of more than 5,000 eligible start-ups to be recognized as one of the 50 most promising venture-backed companies in the U.S. What a way to begin the year!

9. Showing them what we’ve got

Providing us with the opportunity to meet with old friends and engage with new customers, trade shows are a huge part of RGB’s yearly calendar, but this year’s shows were a particular success. RGB stepped boldly into the mobile market at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where the announcement of many new video-enables devices helped ensure the future of mobile video. We made a huge splash at IBC with an abundance of operator interest in our multiscreen solutions and extensive coverage in the coveted IBC Show Daily. And we closed out the year with crowds of visitors at the SCTE’s Cable-Tec Expo seeking out help to meet their multiscreen video challenges (and that’s only a few highlights!).

8. Award accolade awesomeness

This year saw a continuation of 2010’s award winning streak with multiple accolades received. From shortlists to award wins, RGB Networks has done it all in 2011. The trophy cabinet is simply bursting at the seams!

7. Adaptive streaming hits its stride

We saw increasing focus on adaptive streaming, with our customers taking significant interest in our TransAct Packager—praised by many operators for its numerous unrivalled attributes—and designing it into their IP video deployments.

6. It’s all about the money

Providers started considering ways in which to monetize their multiscreen offerings. This has ultimately led to an increased interest in advertising and second screen strategies as potential investors consider how to make a viable return on their investments.

5. Accelerated growth

Due to the strong worldwide demand for our next generation solutions, RGB’s lifetime product shipments propelled past $200 million early in the year. The pace of RGB’s growth is accelerating as we completed our second $100 million in shipments in two years compared to over three years for the first $100 million.

4. Making the Forbes top list

RGB’s sustained success was recognized by top business publication, Forbes magazine, with RGB named as one of America’s 100 most promising companies. It’s nice to not only be recognized for our technology leadership, but also for the strength of our overall business.

3. The birth of eVIA

In September, RGB Networks announced the launch of its Enhanced Video Intelligence Architecture (eVIA), a suite of products and technologies that provides for the integrated delivery and monetization of video to multiple screens over adaptive streaming delivery protocols with hyper-targeted ad insertion capabilities. This architecture represents the future of IP video delivery.

2. Customer deployments aplenty

This year RGB Networks was selected by the majority of top U.S. and Canadian cable and telco operators for their trials and deployments of multiscreen services, showing the excellence of RGB’s technology and the company’s strength in IP video delivery. European operators also recognized the advantages of RGB’s unique solutions, with Waoo! and Swisscom Broadcast, among others, going live with RGB-powered multiscreen deployments.

1. Multi-screen, multi-fabulous

Multiscreen solutions dominated industry headlines this year and even reached mainstream tech trends as TV Everyone becomes a common term. As the proliferation of tablet devices continues and consumer video consumption habits change, providers have increasingly become aware of the need to diversify their offerings to incorporate a multiscreen strategy.

And there you have it – our list of our top ten favorite 2011 moments! As always, we invite you to share your thoughts.

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and we look forward to welcoming you back in 2012!

OK, so the answer is fairly obvious: over-the-top (OTT) is a thropportunity. That is, it’s a threat that is creating an opportunity for traditional video service providers to offer their subscribers enhanced services and ultimately change a video delivery model that has been in place for decades.

As streaming services from the Hulus, Rokus and Netflixes of the world have gained popularity—with consumers enjoying the ability to watch video anywhere and on any device—the established operators are being forced to expand their offering beyond the television for viewing on iPads, PCs, smartphones and other mobile devices.

The ‘TV Everywhere’ model being undertaken by most operators around the globe—with recent launches by Cox, Rogers and Ziggo—is for operators to leverage the advantages of their managed network to deliver video streaming services with quality superior to what the OTT competitors can deliver piggy-backing on their networks. Simply, operators can apply considerable quality of service (QoS) controls to their own IP streaming services, ensuring adequate bandwidth is provided and that streaming traffic is prioritized. OTT providers have no control over the cable modem service and consequently cannot provide any real quality assurance. Rights issues are still at play in this scenario, but starting with a service confined to subscribers’ homes gives operators an entry into the streaming world as they negotiate rights with content owners to expand for on-the-go viewing.

And as they implement multiscreen IP video services, operators are learning that they can be technically quicker and easier to deploy. On the beta launch of their steaming iPad app, David Purdy, Vice President of Video Products at Rogers told CED Magazine, “The cycle times for innovation are much faster in the IP space, for sure.” He also stated that ultimately Rogers plans to move to all-IP for their entire video offering.

Despite the initial challenges, it is clear that video service providers need to move forward with a multiscreen offering in order to fight off the threat from OTT competitors and take advantage of the benefits of this new model (an added revenue bonus is the opportunity for hyper-targeted advertising that IP video opens up).

CNN just published their list of the top 10 tech trends for 2012, which includes TV Everywhere at #5, showing that this service is going mainstream—a clear sign that operators aren’t backing down from the threat, but instead seizing the opportunity.

The coming year should be an exciting one as we see more operators—large and small—taking control of their destiny. We look forward to continuing to help our customers to maximize the opportunity as they deploy this new generation of IP video services.

We’ve received many honors this year (RGB is Lucky #13 on the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Next Big Thing’ List, SCTE Award Recognizes Adaptive Streaming as a Key Technology, RGB Shortlisted For Two Prestigious Awards, IP Video Drives Company of the Year Finalist Honor, And the Diamonds go to…, eVIA: Another Win for IP Video Innovation at TelcoTV) and as we head into the last few weeks of 2011, we’re very happy to add one more to our list. Forbes magazine recently published their list of America’s Most Promising Companies, and RGB Networks is on it!

This list recognizes “…100 privately held up-and-comers with compelling business models, strong management teams, notable customers, strategic partners and precious investment capital.” Please take a look at the press release for more details.

It’s wonderful to be recognized for your accomplishments within your industry, and it’s even more telling to take home an honor when compared against thousands of other companies on the rise throughout the U.S. in a wide range of industries. The comprehensive approach to compiling the list compared a number of key factors that go into building a great company and our successes over the last several years brought RGB to the top.

We won’t let this go to our heads—we’ll keep pursuing the IP video innovation and sound business practices that got us here—but we’d like to stop to thank everyone that has worked so hard to help us reach this achievement. It takes a strong team of employees, partners, vendors and other supporters—thank you.

Could you use a little help identifying the differences between the three main adaptive streaming technologies and the pros and cons of each? We don’t think you’re alone. Adaptive streaming is rapidly becoming a dominant force in our industry, and with its quick adoption by video service providers, many people may be left feeling that they could use a few more details to round out their knowledge.

To help, we’ve put together an overview comparing Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Microsoft’s Silverlight Smooth Streaming (MSS) and Adobe’s HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS). This paper includes an overview of adaptive HTTP streaming, discussing delivery architectures, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, and discussing live and video-on-demand (VoD) delivery; it then delves into each technology, explaining how they work and highlighting how each is different from the others; finally, it looks at specific features and describes how they are implemented or deployed.

Other topics mentioned include: CDNs, DASH, encryption, DRM, packagers, stream latency, targeted ad insertion, transcoders and trick modes.

To download this paper, please click here.

According to Terry Cordova, Program Committee Chairman for the 2011 Cable-Tec Expo and Senior Vice President and CTO for Suddenlink Communications, the transition to IP video is one of the top engineering issues faced by cable operators.

At this week’s gathering of cable engineering professionals, RGB Networks will highlight solutions that will help operators to make a smooth transition to IP video and deliver the multiscreen services that are becoming a must-have in a very competitive environment, including adaptive bitrate ad insertion to monetize these services.

As a member of a very vibrant and exciting industry, I’m sure you’ll agree with our CEO that TV is Not Dead Yet! Cable operators still hold many cards, including content rights and live video delivery, as well as the power to harness new innovations, such as social TV—all of which keep subscribers engaged. TV is still very much alive and we invite you to visit us in Atlanta at Expo booth #342 to discuss its bright future.

Last week’s TelcoTV show proved to be yet another outstanding gathering of video professionals from large and small service providers around the country. We met with current customers to update them on our latest developments (RGB Networks Unveils First-ever Standards-based Product Suite for Multiscreen Video Delivery and Monetization), as well as new telco operators who were drawn in by recommendations from industry friends and our recent announcements (Industry Leaders Enable Easier Deployment of Multiscreen Streaming of Live Video).

Another highlight of the week was our TelcoTV Vision Award win for Innovation in Video Processing. Our new eVIA multiscreen IP video solution caught the attention of the judges with its unique combination of scalability, ease-of-deployment and unmatched capabilities. If you’d like to learn more, please download our white paper.

Thanks to everyone who helped make TelcoTV another great show!

Those of you who visited with us at IBC last month got the first peek at our new Enhanced Video Intelligence Architecture (eVIA) ecosystem for the delivery and monetization of multiscreen IP video services. This first-of-its-kind architecture, incorporating adaptive bitrate ad insertion for hyper-targeting, gained significant attention from operators.

With TelcoTV 2011 marking eVIA’s debut on this side of the pond, we expect to have some interesting conversations with telecom operators in New Orleans this week.

And never a company to rest on our laurels, we’re enhancing our multiscreen solution for our North American customers by working with itaas, a well-established system integrator, and Verimatrix, a specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for multiscreen digital TV services. With extensive expertise and best-of-breed products, together we’re offering a TV Everywhere solution that allows service providers to quickly and cost-effectively deploy a complete multiscreen IP video service for streaming live video to any device, without the headache of piecing it together on their own. We’ll be giving a demonstration of this solution at our booth—#233—at TelcoTV.

We invite you stop by to learn how you can easily transition your network for the delivery of any video to any device. And if you need more motivation, we can offer you a cocktail (or two) during the booth crawl, starting at 4:30 on Wednesday, October 26. We look forward to seeing you.

As we head into TelcoTV this week, we’re very pleased to share the news that our eVIA multiscreen IP video solution is a finalist for a TelcoTV Vision Award for Innovation in Video Processing. At RGB we never stop innovating and this is proven out by our shortlisting in this category for the third straight year. Winners will be announced during the general session on Wednesday.

If you’re attending the show, please stop by our booth—#233—for a demonstration. We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans!