It may be summer, but it’s time to go back to school – IPTV school, that is! Acentic is excited to host a FREE webinar this Thursday on hotel IPTV.
 
We aim to prove that sophisticated hotel entertainment and communications technology can drive up revenue and cut crucial costs at the same time as it exceeds the demanding expectations of your guests.
 
During this free webinar, you will learn:
 
●      All about the LG LD650 LCD screen that future-proofs your hotel technologically
●      How the integrated IP screen with embedded set-top box eliminates the need for an external box and ugly cabling
●      The ideal integrated high definition IP Hotel TV system that creates incremental revenue
●      Simple cost saving measurement methods of our integrated IPTV solution
●      How to increase your guest satisfaction
 
Sign up now (http://www.acentic.com/iptv-webinar) and join us Thursday, June 16 at 15:00-16:00 CEST.
 
We hope to see you there!

Acentic attended the Dubai Hotel Show last week and we showcased our Panorama HD integration with the new LD650 from LG. This show was the ideal event to showcase Acentic’s ability to deliver a cost effective IP solution with no in-room Set-Top Box. With the integrated solution from LG and Acentic,  IT departments at major luxury hotels no longer have to deal with disconnected rooms caused by removed cables. They can say goodbye to the simple day-to-day housekeeping of in-room systems with a simplified system installation. We did have some dubious visitors at the conference that believe the STB under the furniture is still the only way, but even they were impressed by the form factor and the speed of the Acentic Flash interface’s channel zapping times. Acentic is looking forward to further deployments in the Middle East region where we can leverage our Dubai network operations centre and local teams. We had a great show and had some fun, we even saw the most optimistic sales person we’ve ever seen at the Dubai show: a company that shall remain nameless actually selling outdoor heaters, tough sale with the outside temperature hitting 40 degrees C!

As additional content sources, viewing devices and delivery methods are introduced and quickly adopted by consumers, the various players along the chain must come up with flexible and creative solutions to answer market demands. Content is no longer consumed within the defined borders of the PayTV ecosystem, but via a wide variety of platforms and systems. Soon enough, these new trends will infiltrate and spread from the household to the hotel entertainment industry.

For 2011, we at Acentic have chosen to reflect upon a few New Year resolutions for the in-room entertainment industry, aiming to enhance service offering and entertainment experience for hotel guests.

Reviewing the numerous means by which content is delivered and retrieved by consumers, we find a few common factors that would leverage this experience regardless of content source, or viewing device:

• Ensure service continuity – deliver a consistent high quality of content, no matter which device or content source is utilized. One of the most important factors of user satisfaction from the in-room entertainment provided is the variety and quality of content served.   
• Provide rich and relevant functionality – enable guests to do as much as possible through the in-room system, and enrich this offering with relevant targeted local content. This can be achieved via integrating Digital TV services with targeted banners and promotions for local businesses, restaurants and cultural events.
• Offer intuitive interface – As families, business travelers and other guests frequent your hotel, they do not need to be burdened with learning how to operate the entertainment system from scratch each time. Middleware/UI providers need to ensure that the graphic and textual language used is intuitive and fun. Most guests arriving to their hotel room are either on vacation, or right after their work day has ended. Offer them the luxury to relax and enjoy entertainment.

As a leading supplier of digital interactive TV (iTV) and broadband systems for the hotel industry, we constantly seek and explore entertainment trends, to provide the most functional and engaging experience for hotel guests, while at the same time enable lucrative opportunities for hotel owners. Market trends are not necessarily specific to the hotel industry, and we therefore continuously look at the Digital TV and new media markets to learn and identify consumer trends and introduce them to our industry.

There was a recent article in PC Magazine that had hoteliers talking about investments they are making to  bring more high tech gadgetry to hotel guestrooms, despite the tough economy. The hoteliers, such as said Page Petry, Marriott's senior vice president of information resources, talked about wanting to give guests access to all the newest in technology, such as IPTV, iPod connectivity, the iPad, and smartphone applications to make it easy to connect in the hotel room and to go way beyond the basic wireless service.

Acentic understands this demand more than most since we are constantly talking to hoteliers about how they can get closer to their guests. With our recent launch of Panorama IP, our customers can now be running converged services like TV, HSIA and VoIP over the same network. The goal is to provide hotel chains with a holistic platform line-up suited to their chosen physical network architecture. The key element here is the potential for cross marketing so it’s important to have a consistent user experience across all hotel locations no matter which network is installed in each hotel.

Most converged service operators only end up converging on your bill with the different services run as separate entities and often managed by different departments. Convergence is much more than a unique bill. Acentic is introducing content promotion on its broadband platform with the objective to drive take up and revenue of iTV services, as well as differentiate its broadband offering. The same will apply with mobile technology moving forward. Each appliance or device should not be seen as a separate content platform but rather as part of a global content strategy driving usage of all services on all devices. The ability to extend, for example, a TV content program with additional applications on the mobile device can significantly increase the life span of a TV content program beyond the simple living room experience.

We recognize that it is also extremely important to remember that the TV is not the PC and we have to keep it simple. Past experience has proven that on-screen interactivity is successful only when the interactive content is relevant to the broadcast program being watched. Stand-alone interactivity with no correlation to the TV viewing experience just doesn’t lead to high take up rates. The implications of this are that interactivity must start from the outset of the creation of a TV program and be seen as a seamless extension. Therefore the majority of TV based Internet content will not be the Internet content we know today but new developments from the TV content world.

The TV remains a passive viewing device and as such, the interactive services and applications must remain as simple and as relevant as possible and be seen as a enhancement to the original passive experience. Program creators will have to adopt new skill sets to fully understand, develop and leverage web-based content. The use of social media may very much act as a tool to generate a following around a program, event and slowly migrate the TV experience away from the individual passive experience to a more sociable environment.

(As posted in videonet, the official IBC blog: http://v-net.tv/Blog.aspx?id=479)

A recent IPTV tender for a major international group stated that channel zapping needed to be under two seconds. So, let’s do a quick calculation- 100 channels to zap through is a full 200 seconds or 3.20 minutes. That is a long time if you consider that Alberto Contador just won the grueling 3642 KM Tour de France with a 39 second advantage over Andy Schleck. According to the analysis report that’s equivalent to 19.5 channel zaps!

The provision of TV over IP has had to face many challenges. I recall one of the first consumer deployments in 1999 actually had the equivalent of an egg timer during channel switching to ensure the viewer knew something was going on. Scary isn’t it? Actually for those of us who stay in hotels, that is still often the case. Hotels that have spent a fortune on upgrading to IP technology are seeing the simplest of activities frustrate the guests, especially with channel surfing and GUI navigation happening about as fast as paint drying. So rather than provide multiple interactive gadgets, which guests often never use, hoteliers should look at the basic must have functionality.

Acentic’s Panorama over IP has addressed these issues with a sub one second channel changing time. In fact, in many cases it’s even faster than the old analogue channel changing. Add to that an intuitive program guide and incredibly fast flash based interface and Alberto Contador could have zapped approximately 39 to 45 channels whilst waiting for Andy to catch up.