Lost in the Chromecast news yesterday was an announcement from LG and Entone on a new media streamer coming to retail. In itself, the streamer isn’t all that exciting. But pair the box with Entone’s 8-tuner gateway and you have a very interesting proposition for retail or the ISP channel.
To start, the streamer is called the LG SP530 Media Player, and it supports OTT services like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube via LG’s Netcast platform (no WebOS in this one). The Media Player is the only Entone box LG is bringing to market now, but there is an option for LG, or any other CE player, to pick up Entone’s Magi media gateway as a partner product as well. The Magi gateway can receive content from over the air and from a cable network, and it can transcode video and stream it back out to any connected device.
Think of the deployment scenarios.
At retail, a combination of the gateway and streamer would give us OTT and OTA video all in one interface. MSOs could ultimately add their own apps like with the Xbox and Roku… or not. And we’d be able to watch video on a TV, tablet, or PC interchangeably.
Sold by a service provider, the gateway and streamer would put OTT, OTA, and premium pay-TV content all in one place. Or, a broadband-only provider could use the combination of hardware to sell subscribers a TV service (OTT plus OTA) without the headache of negotiating content deals.
Entone CEO Steve McKay sees the ISP-only model as the “low-hanging fruit” for his company. There are some ISPs that currently bundle a Roku with their broadband offering, but those providers have no way to manage the OTT video service, or even to understand what consumers do with it. The Entone box changes that.
Meanwhile, McKay also says the retail gateway scenario “sits directly on our product roadmap.” While he doesn’t have anything to announce on that front today, McKay did tell me that not only would he love that to happen, but he would “expect that to happen.”
Ball’s in your court, LG.