This year’s IBC has been one of the most exciting shows ever for VO! In 2012, we had launched our new brand and a new strategy, with a clear focus on multiscreen solutions. In 2013, we have shared our vision for shaping the ultimate content experience, as represented in our engagement model. This year, it was all about “proven and deployed”: our vision is now translated into real life deployments, and users are enjoying it worldwide: In France they enjoy the DEEP service with OCS’ app for Game Of Thrones Season 4; In Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Romania they enjoy Voyage, VO’s multiscreen solution as users of Orange, Boxer or Telekom Romania . These services are personalized with our COMPASS platform, and in Israel, yes’ users also enjoy recommendations and personalization. In Finland, Turkey, Singapore Italy and more, users enjoy consuming their content securely on Android or iOS devices, protected by our Connected Sentinel Player. 
I can sense great market traction around our solutions and our ability to deliver: Orange Spain, Boxer TV and Telekom Romania are good examples of service providers overcoming challenges faced by many players in the industry, to whom we’ve recently delivered end to end solutions. For instance, Orange Spain and Telekom Romania are typical examples of providers with a need for a “next generation multiscreen solution”. As many other operators, they had launched different solutions over the past 10 years, for IPTV, mobile devices, internet/web TV etc. Their different silos were becoming obsolete, and a new, unified architecture was needed to enable native multiscreen services. This is where VO fits in. We deliver a silo-merging solution, one that is truly unified, converging all networks into one agnostic system, enabling a real cross platform, multi-screen service. These operators are not the only ones facing this challenge: it is a market phenomenon. And VO is surely not the only exhibitor to present multiscreen solutions, however such level of deployments as we presented, topping it off with the announcement of a deal signed with Olympusat establish VO as a market leader.
Olympusat deal announcement from the IBC daily
In the field of second screen, there’s a lot of buzz. It becomes clearer to the industry that the so-called second screen - the tablet/phone, is becoming the first one. Look at teenagers consuming content, look at remote controls moving into apps. The second screen is a clear trend and VO’s DEEP is an amazing way to utilize it. While beautiful 4K images were once again quite present in the show (like in CES for instance), awareness is increasing about HEVC as the next big thing, even for SD and HD, since it increases services eligibility. Another topic discussed at IBC was piracy of video content. While user experience across all screens is improving, pirates are also moving very quickly. The new pirates have become established businesses, monetizing their services with support for multiple devices, subscriptions or advertising. They leverage the same kind of technologies as legitimate video services, such as streaming over the top (OTT) and pay increasing attention to user experience; users of illegal services are not always aware these services are illegal! In the field of sport events, this takes off very quickly. At VO we had many discussions around Eye on Piracy with regards to piracy of sport events. Eye on Piracy has been awarded “Product of the Year” by Broadcast Beat Magazine at IBC. We also hosted a great panel, moderated by Steven Hawley, together with Alex Terpstra (CEO Civolution) and Aditya Aditya (Broadcast Rights Manager, International Olympics Committee) to discuss our piracy experiences during the Olympics and the World Cup. In conclusion, fighting sports content piracy is about:
- Building compelling legal offers and making the content widely available through more legal offerings
- Embracing technologies to detect illegal services, identify the stakeholders and content sources
- Taking industry actions, such as building awareness, sending take-down notices, following the money* etc. to act against those involved in piracy activities
The discussion progressed to topics such as “how can piracy monitoring become a tool for market research?” or “how should the industry work with public authorities against piracy?” We will share shortly the video of the panel, stay tuned. 
Panel: Fighting Sports Content Piracy
IBC 2014 was all about how to engage users and how to protect the value of services… in real life!
Check out the winners at TVB Europe's "Best of Show"
*Note: “follow the money” is a way to pursue investigations of the financial side of facts ; for example, if livetv.ru makes money from advertising for brands such as Nike, how does the money travel from Nike to livetv.ru? Through different legal entities and companies. If we understand how money flows to livetv.ru, we can identify bottlenecks or points where money flow can be cut.
