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While many companies are trying to figure out how to make money by offering basic IPTV services, Akimbo, a download and play IPTV service provider, is providing a self-service Internet IPTV system that has a focus on upselling services to the customer.
We were so impressed by the Akimbo demonstration at the CES show that we purchased and tested an Akimbo system (without any knowledge or help from Akimbo). Our goal was to evaluate how download and play services can generate revenue for IPTV service providers.
The Akimbo system requires the user to download programs through the Internet before they can begin viewing the programs. This ensures that the programs can be viewed at their encoded quality format (SD, HD) without any quality of service (QoS) issues.
Figure 1 shows how the Akimbo system downloads and plays programs through the Internet. This example shows that the user can either use the remote control for the Akimbo player or they can select programs to download via a web portal by logging onto their customer account. The user can navigate through a variety of program guide categories to find the programs. The program is then downloaded.
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The storage system in the Akimbo STB can hold approximately 80 to 100 hours of standard definition (SD) quality television programs. Although it is possible to fill up the Akimbo STB, the content expires after a period of time (1 to 30 days) and it is removed from the storage system.
The Akimbo system uses a rich navigation screen to allow the users to easily navigate and make their selections. When a user has selected a program to view, the system shows when the download is in process along with how much of the download has been performed (in percentage). We immediately selected several programs to download and the system seemed to prioritize on one program to download at a time.
The content Akimbo offers is a mix of traditional branded programming channels that include Discovery, Cartoon Network and Movilink along with many international and non-traditional programming choices such as movies in foreign languages such as French and Turkish.
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Our experience with downloads is it takes 5 to 20 minutes to download a 30 minute to 2 hour program or movie in standard definition format using a cable modem connection. For users that have much faster connections (such as Verizon's FIOS), the download may only take 1 to 5 minutes.
The Akimbo system is a completely self service system. After we ordered the system online without any communication from Akimbo or their distributors, the equipment was delivered ready to plug into the Internet. When the unit was first the turned on, unit displayed an account setup screen that required registration and entry of a form of payment (feed me).
The system starts off by providing basic download and play television services for about $10 per month. We were off and happily downloading lots of programs. Figure 2 shows a picture of the Akimbo system.
At the time we created this article, Akimbo had over 14,600 programs available from hundreds of channels and many of these were available at no additional cost. However, it wasn't long before we realized
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that some of the more interesting programs required additional fees and subscription services. Some of these programs provided free trial marketing periods that would get you interested (attached) to the media so you keep coming back for more.
Another interesting feature of Akimbo is to mix in some enticing additional forms of content that have resolution lower that traditional television. We quickly became interested in many of the funny user generated videos from Yahoo! that were selected by Akimbo (not all the 2.7 million Yahoo! videos were available). Some of these videos were created from mobile phones so the quality was very low. However, when we ran these programs in our IPTV training classes, these low resolution programs generated the highest interest in the class.
What our evaluation taught us is that IPTV is that it is easy to offer upselling in IPTV systems and non-traditional types of television content can generate lots of interest (and hopefully added profits) for IPTV services.
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