IBC Q&A with Henriette S. Sæther, Vimond Media Solutions
First of all, a quick progress report: sports and the second screen. How far have we come, and how far do we have to go to deliver memorable viewer experiences as a matter of course?
We believe that creating a complete ecosystem for sports experiences, regardless of screen, is important to engage the audience. We have a passion to follow the world as it changes, and today people have the world in their pocket, in real time, and on whatever device or screen they prefer.
Our point of view is that it’s not enough to serve the audiences only with a companion experience to the second screen but to also enable the end user to decide to use any screen as their preferred first screen whenever. At the same time, mobile has the inbuilt potential to work well as a remote for other screens, and the tablet works great for polls, maps, and supplemental games. By focusing on what specific inbuilt performances the different devices naturally offer, we believe we can enhance the experiences across the screens as well as create a complete sports offering on any screen.
Sports-wise, what has been the defining event of the last 12 months for Vimond — and why?
Sports-wise, delivering our platform and players to the World Championship in Ice Hockey for MTV3 in Finland, as well as the Tour de France for TV 2 in Norway, have been defining events for Vimond. In both cases, we’ve been able to engage fans with live and on-demand sports programming across multiple devices through our enhanced, extensive, and feature-rich online-video platform, and, by using our universal and advanced players, our customers have been able to create interactive viewing experience not available from traditional television. Value-added features such as statistics, polls, maps, chat, and sharing keep viewers involved and let them collaborate across the screens, thereby growing a community of loyal spectators.
What can you tell me about Vimond’s plans for IBC2013?
At IBC2013, we are introducing a whole new level of flexibility to our online-video offering. The Vimond Platform is already flexible and easy to integrate to customers’ existing broadcast and scheduling system, and we also let customers choose the engines that suit their needs best. Now we take this open and flexible approach even further by offering features within the engines as separate microservices and introducing Vimond Open Application Frameworks.
The microservice approach enables our customers to choose the services they need within the engines to enhance their already exciting online offering. Microservices already include Resume Playback, Device Management, and Instant EPG features, and we are continually working to expand the features within each engine to be offered as microservices.
The Vimond Open Application Frameworks are specifically built so that a broad variety of portals can take advantage of the feature-rich Vimond Platform. Each framework acts as a layer between an API and a portal, tying everything together for a rich viewer experience in a shorter time to market. When licensing the Open Application Frameworks, it is possible for our customers to have full control over their portal development, connected TVs, and other screens without having in-depth knowledge of Vimond APIs.