@Flavour1 wrote:
It is confusing, so does Rogers have to ask permission from Comcast to ad the Canadian apps mentioned
Let me make this clear. Comcast owns the X1 platform and they have a developer program for anybody that wants to develop apps for Comcast's set-top boxes.
We have apps for the major streaming services, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, YouTube, etc., because those providers developed X1 apps for Comcast's platform, and Rogers (and other X1 licensees) are able to distribute those apps as well.
Presumably, Rogers developed (or contracted out the development of) their Sportsnet+ app.
We do not have a proper app for Crave, nor do we have apps for CTV, TSN or any other Bell Media properties because Bell has chosen not to develop X1 versions of their apps yet, nor do I expect them to.
Likewise, the onus is on CBC, not Rogers, to create X1 versions of their CBC Gem and News apps.
Rogers can partner with app developers to develop X1 apps (e.g. the Halloween and Christmas apps) and distribute them independently of Comcast but they cannot develop something like a CTV app independently of Bell.
The bottom line is that it is up to the media companies and streaming service providers to develop apps for each streaming platform. Of course, they will develop Apple tvOS, Google Android and Amazon Fire TV apps first because those platforms have the most marketshare. X1 apps get developed due to the sheer number Comcast Xfinity streaming customers, and Rogers can benefit from this if those companies operate in Canada. Canadian media companies will need to make a business decision as to whether or not to develop X1 apps for Rogers and Videotron customers.
@Flavour1 wrote:
It is confusing, so does Rogers have to ask permission from Comcast to ad the Canadian apps mentioned
I doubt anyone on the forum is privy to the terms of that agreement.
At a time when droves of people are "cutting the cord" and accessing their programming by streaming on devices, etc., do you have a business case for Rogers and other media companies or broadcasters to develop apps for the 1 or 2 people who might be interested in using them on the IgniteTV platform?
@Flavour1 Rogers did actually attempt to develop new software for the Nextbox's, contracting with Espial Group which is located in Ottawa. Apparently that came to a flaming halt and Rogers wrote off the $500 million dollars that they spent on the effort. I don't see how Rogers could have claimed it cost $500 million to get to the point where the project was cancelled, but, it is what it is. There are probably a few people around in the forum who remember that effort and how it turned out.
Fwiw, Espial was bought out by Enghouse Group:
Enghouse Buys Espial Group Inc. - Enghouse Networks
So, with the project cancellation, Rogers was probably in a hurry to implement some type of over the top services. I think Shaw was already using Comcasts Xfinity system at that point. With few market choices available, its possible that Rogers didn't think twice and simply decided to licence Comcast's system as well.
So, it wasn't without trying that Rogers is now using the Xfinity system. This might just be another lesson in software development projects that go off the rails at some point.
@Flavour1 The whole reason as to why Rogers adopted Comcast's X1 platform is not so simple.
I started to get involved with designing IPTV solutions more than 20 years ago. At the time, there were a bunch of unproven startups and niche players with a MVP for the hundreds of components that were needed to build a working IPTV solution, and there was no single vendor that you could go to for an integrated end-to-end solution. Residential broadband technology was still evolving, with ADSL (maxing out at 10 Mbps) and DOCSIS 2.0 (maxing out at 40 Mbps) being all that was available at the time. For home networks, 802.11g (maxing out at 54Mbps) was still just being talked about.
Fast forward to 2010 -- VDSL and DOCSIS 3.0 were rolling out, but many neighbourhoods were still stuck with 6Mbps DSL because deploying VDSL required Bell crews to prune out all the bridge taps... that were EVERYWHERE. Netflix and people working from home were still straining residential Internet services.
However, IPTV. was gaining ground because companies such as Microsoft (with Mediaroom) and Minerva developed middleware, established technology partnerships, and created reference architectures for end-to-end, supportable solutions. When Bell started rolling out Fibe TV, my 8300HD PVR was feeling very much like 90's technology. By 2015, Fibe TV was widely available, Rogers Digital TV was showing its age, and Rogers' attempts to give its Nextbox 2.0 a facelift with Navigatr was a disaster. If I remember correctly, Rogers also did not yet have a 4K set-top box either, so they were REALLY starting to fall behind.
Rogers now urgently needed to take action and update its offerings to remain competitive. Mediaroom was a great product, but not something that Rogers could deploy, for a number of reasons. For one, it wouldn't enable Rogers to differentiate itself from Bell. More critically, it delivered video over multicast streams, making it unsuitable for deployment over DOCSIS. Mediaroom's successor, MediaFirst was still in development, and not progressing well... and Ericsson, who had acquired Mediaroom from Microsoft, was planning to spin that division off again to anyone who would buy it. Meanwhile, Minerva was in the process of developing its next-gen platform, Minerva 10, but this was also still too much of a work-in progress for Rogers to consider.
This is why Rogers started to develop its own IPTV solution, and really wanted one that would allow it to re-purpose its installed base of set-top boxes. However, I know all to well what an undertaking it is to build an IPTV solution from scratch. It's even more challenging using available vendors that were still trying to establish a foothold in an already established market. In 2016, Rogers had signed a technology and intellectual capital licensing agreement with Comcast, who had been developing their X1 platform for years. When Comcast made the X1 platform available to its licensees, it was a natural choice for Rogers. Since adopting X1 would require Rogers to abandon its current IPTV investments and dismantle its Digital TV infrastructure (before its end of life?), it also allowed them to do some "financial engineering" by taking a pre-tax non-cash asset impairment charge of $500 million.
Another reason for choosing Comcast's X1 platform was that it offered not just a new, modern TV solution (that was designed to run well over DOCSIS) but also new gateways that could support Internet, Home Phone, and Home security... and Comcast had a roadmap for an entire suite of Connected Home offerings that were either ready to launch or well into development. Furthermore, Comcast was also actively involved in the development of a next-gen Distributed CCAP architecture and improvements to DOCSIS, so their X1 platform was pretty much guaranteed to be future-ready for whatever new technology improvements come out of CableLabs and get adopted by other North American cable companies.
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