One of the things that has been sorely lacking in TV Everywhere is the "everywhere" part. Until now, operator TV-E deployments have mainly focused on the PC. Although some operators have delivered TV guides that run on an iPad or mobile phone, few have allowed streaming of subscriber video to these devices.
That could be about to change - at least from the technical standpoint. Clearleap announced a set of APIs this week that handle just about everything an operator would need to stream TV Everywhere content to an Internet connected mobile device. The set of APIs handle all the backend tasks like authentication, billing, parental controls and the like. The main technical issue left for the operator is creation of the end user experience. Although most will want to handle this themselves, Clearleap is partnering with itaas on the client creation to allow operators to get a complete solution.
With most of the technical hurdles to the delivery of content on mobile devices solved, the only barrier to widespread deployment remains the rights issues to the content. Unfortunately, the news there is not quite so good. Operators continue to negotiate with content providers one-by-one pulling together a patchwork quilt of TV content available through their TV-E deployments. The latest announcement was AT&T obtaining rights to Turner shows like The Closer and Southland. But progress is painfully slow, diminishing the value of the feature to consumers dramatically. Alas, we see no near-term resolution to this issue.
In the meantime, at least the content for which the operators do have the TV-E rights can now easily be delivered to customer mobile devices.
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