Spending on pay-TV operator software contracted by 5...

Spending on pay-TV operator software contracted by 5 percent in North America and Western Europe last year, compared with 2012, an ABI Research study said. The decrease was driven by classic end-to-end middleware functions, while newer experiential components did better, ABI said Tuesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1A2BPmw). The loss was offset by the growth of pay-TV in developing regions of Asia-Pacific, bringing the worldwide pay-TV operator spending on video software up about 5 percent to $4.48 billion, it said. The largest middleware integrators, like Cisco, “are being outpaced in terms of growth by smaller companies such as TiVo and Rovi,” ABI said. Some middleware providers attribute the decrease in part to the uncertainty of Comcast’s pending purchase of Time Warner Cable and the development of Comcast’s Reference Design Kit (RDK), it said, referring to an open software stack to support hybrid quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-IP and IP-only set-tops, gateways and video client devices. Larger middleware companies see RDK as a threat, while smaller providers “see it as an opportunity to decrease technology spending while offering robust solutions,” ABI said.