Six months into a rollout of an apps platform that integrates YouTube with the set-top box, the percentage of available subs accessing the popular online video service via the STB UPC Hungary’s footprint has risen to 80%, Arpad Jordan, CTO of UPC Central and Eastern Europe, said at the OTT World Summit in London, according to remarks supplied to Multichannel News.
As we noted in June, UPC Hungary, a unit of Liberty Global, is using ActiveVideo Networks’ CloudTV StreamCast system to deliver YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and other apps to legacy, non-IP boxes.
According to Jordan, 80% of UPC Hungary customers who access YouTube at the set-top return for repeat views. He also estimated that the hardware cost to UPC Hungary for this functionality is less than 1 Euro per set-top.
UPC Hungary launched the effort in May on about 200,000 HD set-top boxes. In the coming months, the MSO plans to introduce it on another 250,000 standard-def boxes, which will complete the rollout to UPC Hungary’s installed base, he said.
Jordan touted the cloud-based approach, which gives UPC Hungary the ability to deliver advanced services to its full subscriber base without having to first deploy IP-capable devices.
“I think the beauty of this solution is 200,000 set-top boxes all overnight,” he said, according to the remarks supplied to us. “This is not like the usual OTT ramp up where you need to somehow distribute your devices or you need to deal with a very fragile or fragmented operating system or platform in general.”
