Q&A SeaChange Photos courtesy of SeaChange. On-demand innovation Thousands of SeaChange deployments are helping broadband, broadcast and satellite television companies to streamline operations, expand services and increase revenues. Helen Jameson spoke to Lincoln Owens, Director of Broadband, Asia-Pacific about the state of the VOD and IPT V industry at present, what is new at SeaChange and what the future holds for both the industry and the company. SeaChange is an innovative company that is leading the way in the Video-on Demand and IPTV business. The company provides software applications, services and integrated solutions for video-on-demand, digital advertising, and content acquisition monetisation and management. Its powerful open VOD and advertising software and scaleable hardware enable cable and telco operators, as well as broadcasters, to provide new on-demand services and to gain greater efficiencies in advertising and content delivery. Question: How is the VOD and IPTV industry as a whole faring at the moment? Have you seen an increase in demand as people are more content to entertain themselves at home due to the economic downturn? Lincoln Owens: These are pretty trying times, not just for SeaChange, but for business in general. It's pretty tough. It's fair to say that our customers in Asia (and I am pre- dominantly talking about Korea and Japan and China) are seeing heavier usage of VOD services. Smaller operators have expanded the size of their systems as they are getting more usage, and its not just about providing free content because they have been doing that for a period of time. I think that VOD is generally being recognised as a service that's available to those subscribers who are becoming more aware and more comfortable with new services on offer. This is what we would expect to happen, and we are used to seeing this behaviour in the more mature markets like the US and the UK. Some operators are more successful than others. For example, we have got some customers in Japan who are a little bit more conservative in how they market their content and how they promote it and therefore they are seeing a slower take-up. However, there are other things that have been a great boost for general on demand services like the BBC iPlayer service. The Japanese broadcaster NHK has introduced the same equipment to Japan (NHK on Demand) in the last 6-12 months and that has been quite popular with IPTV and cable VOD players in Japan. So we see some operators doing better than others with heavier usage, but it tends to be the ones that market their services well that are more successful. In the other less developed markets like India, where we tend to do quite a lot of business, it is still very much penetration-focused rather than getting your existing subscriber base to use a lot more of it. It's about trying to get more subscribers so it is still early days there. We are seeing a change in people's general habits thanks to the online video trends like YouTube. It's not just developed broadband markets like Japan or Korea where that is having a general impact. It's South and South East Asian markets where they are aware of those type of services, and that's helping general recognition of VOD. There is certainly a move towards on demand services of all kinds and a general 46 w w w.satellite-evolution.com | September/October 2009 seachange.pmd 46 20/09/2009, 23:13