Curzon Home Cinema signed a multi-year deal with multiscreen cloud video software company Easel TV during IBC2016, extending a collaboration that began in 2013.
Easel TV has operated Curzon Home Cinema since its relaunch in May 2014, using its cloud-based video platform Suggested TV on 12 different connected devices including smart TVs, operator set-top boxes, Apple iOS, Android, desktop and soon on Apple TV and Google Cast.
Curzon Home Cinema director Phil Mordecai said the company’s partnership with Easel TV and the Suggested TV product “has been significantly enhanced as we have both invested to support our future growth. A key strategic focus for the Curzon group is to expand both our physical and digital footprints and
Easel TV has been, and will continue to be, part of that.”
For Easel TV co-founder and chief operating officer Bill Scott, the contract renewal is a further vindication of the product’s evolution in the last 12 months. “We have done a lot of work to productise our technology,”
Scott said, noting that the platform has gained functional upgrades and promotional capabilities such as the ability to place banners on trailers.
“It’s a much more complete business offer,” said Scott, “including new analytics tools that can be used to analyse the consumer experience as well as for marketing strategies”.
Like many exhibitors at IBC this year, Scott stressed the growing importance of analytics for tracking and measuring how consumers use digital media services. “However, it is not a deal breaker yet as it can be added in,” he stressed, pointing out that the main requirement is still to provide high-quality video services with a good quality of experience.
Easel TV has also picked up some new customers in recent months including NBCUniversal (NBCU) in January, building the hayu app for NBCU’s reality subscription VoD service on the TiVo service provided by Virgin Media. Scott commented that the fact that NBCU has launched hayu as an app rather than a channel is an interesting development for the industry, reflecting a move away from traditional TV content delivery.
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