Manycast are pleased to announce that they are partnering with Mirifice to promote the use of MiriMON technology for TV Content Consumption and QoE monitoring. (London, UK, 5 January 2011).

MiriMON provides the TV operator with real-time and historical intelligence about content consumption (linear channels, VoD, OTT etc), including popularity and the customer Quality of Experience. This intelligence empowers the operator to negotiate more cost-effective content contracts with their providers.

MiriMON for Content Consumption intelligence and Quality of Experience (QoE)

QoMiriMON has already been deployed to Telbo on Bonaire, and is providing daily reports which allow Telbo to better understand their service usage. Telbo are already using this intelligence to improve their service offering and better target their content spend.

MiriMON also arms an operator’s Customer Support staff with the information required to quickly and accurately diagnose and fix problems in the service, the network, and the Set-Top-Box (STB) remotely. MiriMON measures the TV service via an intelligent agent on the Set-top box, which provides real-time information on service quality, network performance and STB health.

Crucially this information is provided to the operator in real-time, and faults can be identified and rectified without requiring the customer call as the prompt to action.

MiriMON helps to resolve faults without home visits

In addition to improving customer experience, resolving faults without a home visit reduces operating costs: particularly when customers are geographically remote.

Jorris Uding, MD of Manycast, commented: “We have already experienced how valuable MiriMON is to our negotiations with content providers on behalf of our clients. Every market and operator is different and understanding the interest and consumption of subscribers helps to create a better and more viable TV product. Operators can for instance use MiriMON-generated reports to identify best to worst performing content which helps to negotiate better price or extended marketing support from providers. Manycast actively seeks innovative solutions which empower our customers, which is why we are delighted to be partnering with Mirifice to promote their MiriMON solution.”

Mark Longstaff, CEO of Mirifice added: “We are delighted to be working with Manycast to bring our powerful MiriMON solution to other operators in the Caribbean. Manycast’s credibility and brand recognition in the region can only encourage operators to look at how MiriMON can help them to enjoy the significant business benefits that are derived by better understanding your customers’ experience, and delivering a better service proposition..”

Media contacts:
Jane Stewart Mirifice T: +44 1225 460126 E: jane.stewart@mirifice.com

About Mirifice Ltd

Mirifice helps TV network operators and consumer device manufacturers to provide better quality services and products to their customers. MiriATE, a powerful system for testing set-top boxes and the Digital TV services accessed through them, reduces time-to-market and ensures that the consumer receives a high-quality product. MiriMON, the award-winning system for real-time monitoring of interactive TV, gives operators a live view of the customer experience they deliver. MiriMON alerts the operator to service delivery problems and provides root-cause analysis to support fault resolution.

For more information, visit www.mirifice.com

About Manycast

Manycast Consultancy Inc. is the leading provider of content, strategy, distribution and marketing consultancy services in the Americas. Whether clients want to acquire, manage or deliver the best possible content to their customers, or find new ways to take a product to market, Manycast Consultancy can offer powerful strategic solutions. It has successfully launched Content &TV services and delivered strategies to cable operators, telecom operators and ISP’s internationally.

The Manycast.tv International Content Distribution Platform that is deployed in the Caribbean successfully delivers Digital TV content such as Linear Digital TV Channels, VOD and PPV services to Telecom, Media and Hospitality companies in the Caribbean and South- & Central America.

For more information, visit www.manycast.tv

Mirifice will again be strongly represented at IBC2011 as another busy IBC network show is lining up for the Mirifice team this year.

Over the last few years we have had booths at the show and we have also worked with Partners. Again the partnership approach is one that we feel brings benefits to all parties. We will be featuring demonstrations on:

• the Amino booth – Stand Number 5.B40,
• the Concurrent booth – Stand Number 4.B78
• and on the Digital TV Group booth – Stand Number 5.A45

With distinct offerings these three partners have leading propositions and unique products and values for the broadcast industry this year. You can meet us for a chat on any of their booths, details below.

Check out the IBC2011 Floor Plan here.

Automated Testing is not right for everyone or every business. However there are many managers, teams and network businesses where the benefits are significant and a strong ROI can be demonstrated.

If you match the following characteristics and you’re not doing automated testing yet then we should have a conversation.

1. Any member of the broadcast ecosystem that tests STB functionality or interoperability, regardless of network type (MiriATE applies to Cable, Satellite, IPTV, Terrestrial and Hybrid devices).

Particular examples are:

• STB Manufacturers use MiriATE to de-bug their products and ensure interoperability during development.
• Network Operators use MiriATE to automate STB acceptance testing, and to test that new applications, services and configurations function correctly on all deployed models of STB.
• Clean & Screen Operators use MiriATE to automate fault identification testing on ingress and to verify devices are functioning correctly before introducing them back into the consumer domain.
• Regulators use MiriATE to automate acceptance testing to ensure conformance to industry and national standards.
• STB Software Developers, such Middleware, CAS or applications Vendors, use MiriATE to test new product during development and also to regression test new STB images when other vendors have modified software in the build.
• Network Equipment Vendors will use MiriATE to automate inter-operability testing via representative STBs.

2. If you are in a position to allocate budget for a testing system of this type and you can champion the purchase.

3. If there is an economic scale associated with deploying automated testing: it is more expensive per device-under-test for very small deployments. This is not necessarily a blocking issue, but it will influence the business case and ROI.

4. If you are in a competitive market where you need to differentiate your products/services and to provide great quality in a cost effective manner.

Initially, you may feel you are ‘too busy’ competing and doing your day-job to consider automated testing and MiriATE. However the benefits will more than likely outweigh the cost of the system, and it’s worth taking time to at least have the initial exploration.

We can help you with the initial assessment and then, if appropriate, we can help you build the benefit case for Automated Testing.

Call Mirifice today on 01225 460126 and ask for Steve.

MiriMON provide a unique view of customer QoE, service consumption and faults with the consumer device, the network segment and the individual service.

This information, derived from the STB in the customer’s home, enables the operator to provide a more reliable service and more effective customer support, which improves subscriber retention.

The information also enables operational cost reductions and more effective investment in infrastructure, content and service packaging.

Here are just some of the comments from delighted customers:

COMSTAR Direct:

COMSTAR is a Russian IPTV operator, with 150,000 customers They bought MiriMON in 2008, as a superior alternative to probe and network equipment-based monitoring of QoE. After the successful initial deployment of MiriMON, Victor Belov, CTO of COMSTAR-Direct, said:
“Imagine you have a professional IPTV analyser installed at every household? Now imagine you have carrier-class real-time and historical reporting, consuming data from those hundreds of thousands of analysers, giving you any view, any time? And you have this at a very reasonable per-customer cost? This is the Mirifice MiriMON solution. You cannot monitor IPTV service on every DSLAM and access switch, on every cable closet. That is unreasonably expensive. But you can do it better. MiriMON is resident on every CPE device in use. Overlaying information from MiriMON onto our network topology, we see a crystal-clear service delivery
picture, end-to-end.”

COMSTAR Direct was able to measure the actual number of subscribers viewing each TV Channel. This provided COMSTAR with evidence to re-negotiate its content licensing. The savings on content license fees justified the entire cost of the MiriMON system: providing a quick Return on Investment.

COMSTAR-Direct provides a number of TV channels from outside Russia to its subscribers. These channels are acquired as a satellite feed and are then re-encoded for IP broadcast in Russia. MiriMON was able to identify that one of these channels was suffering a periodic fault due to poor source encoding. This problem was not identified by any other systems or equipment alarms.

Europa – Spain:

Alan Dobinson, MD of Europa, in Spain, commented:
“MiriMON was a must-have if we were to achieve our business goals. It has provided us with the intelligence to decide when and where to invest in our platform to have maximum impact on service delivery to our customers, and to be able to see the impact of this investment in real-time. We were so convinced by the business advantage offered by MiriMON, that it influenced our choice of set-top box platform – we made MiriMON support a pre-requisite for our set-top box.”

A North American IPTV operator:

During the pilot deployment of MiriMON, the operations team noticed that one particular channel was providing a poor customer experience. It transpired that one of the operator’s engineers had recently modified the encoding regime of the channel to reduce the stream bit rate. The engineer had concerns that the stream modifications might impact the quality of the channel delivered to
customers. MiriMON provided quantitative measurements from end-customer devices to show that the stream quality was indeed compromised by the new encoding regime. The operator changed the bit rate and customer experience was regained.

A large European Cable TV Operator:

During a trial, MiriMON identified that an interactive application was
loading incorrectly on a particular STB. The memory consumed by the interactive application would not be correctly release when the application was closed. This problem was not directly noticeable to the user, as there was no immediate adverse effect. However, when the STB was next required to load or execute a memory intensive process it would hang or crash. MiriMON identified the source of this intermittent fault.

A large European Telco:

This Telco was offering interactive TV over Broadband:
MiriMON enables the Telco to see the actual QoE delivered to the customer, regardless of whether the service is delivered over the Telco’s own Broadband service or via another ISPs network. This helps the Telco to manage the customer experience and to enforce SLAs. The consumer device supplied by the Telco also provides access to the national free-to-air TV channels broadcast over DVB-T. MiriMON’s ability to also monitor the status and quality of terrestrial TV service allows the Telco to support the consumer, identifying when there are potential problems with the arial or home cabling.

A European IPTV operator:

A key factor in selecting MiriMON was the ability to integrate MiriMON into an existing sophisticated set of systems for Network Management and Customer Care. MiriMON can provide information and alerts via its native UI and via published and maintained integration interfaces.

Mirifice Ltd has been granted a UK patent for the key technology used in its MiriMON™ quality of experience monitoring solution. MiriMON measures TV service delivery parameters on the set-top box (STB) in each consumer’s home and provides information to the TV service provider to improve service quality, reliability and support. MiriMON provides dedicated screens to inform the Network Management, Customer Contact Centre (Support) and Business Management functions.

UK Patent GB2430828 “Monitoring Apparatus” is broad in its nature and covers a unique system to gather, process and present the vast amount of data available when monitoring a large population of multimedia devices on a network. Monitored devices can include STBs, IDTVs, and mobile phones that receive digital television. The patented technology supports the pre-processing of data on the device, according to configurable rules and thresholds, which is essential to efficiently manage large device populations.

MiriMON technology allows TV service providers to reduce their operational costs, by reducing customer support calls, average call handing time and the number of truck rolls, while providing more efficient customer support. The additional information provided by MiriMON on content consumption and consumer preferences can also inform improvements in the content mix and packaging provided.

Mirifice CTO Alex Dick said “This patent grant underlines the investment in innovation that Mirifice has made and the unique benefits our products provide for TV operators. In MiriMON our engineers have combined advanced embedded programming, expertise in TV devices and expertise in the operational systems used by TV service providers.”

UK Patent GB2430828 – Monitoring Apparatus can be viewed at the Intellectual Property Office: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-find-publication-getPDF.pdf?PatentNo=GB2430828&DocType=B&JournalNumber=6373

MiriMON^® measures IPTV service for Telefonia Bonairiano London, UK, 22 March 2011– Telefonia Bonairiano (“Telbo”) has selected the MiriMON solution from Mirifice to monitor its “MiTV” IPTV service, delivered over ADSL2+, VDSL2 and FttH, in the Dutch Caribbean. The “MiTV” Digital TV service offering has around 170 live quality channels and also includes 50 Audio Channels, Pay-Per-View and Video-on-Demand. MiriMON will give Telbo visibility of service delivery into every customer home. Andrew Barker, CEO of Mirifice explains: “Telbo can now measure how their service is performing end-to-end and identify where any issues occur. MiriMON also offers real-time alerts to problems with the service, the network, and the set top box, ensuring that Telbo can proactively respond to and fix issues – often before they receive a customer call.” Where Telbo’s customers have multiple STBs in the home, MiriMON includes the ability to correlate network and service performance across all the STBs in the premises providing Telbo with greater clarity on the root cause of problems  encountered. Customer Service representatives are able to see the status of the each device on a simple, graphical, display of the customer’s home. MiriMON will also provide Telbo with accurate channel and VOD viewing metrics, revealing customers preferences and informing Telbo when selecting content and negotiating content pricing.

Ziggo, a leading provider of television, internet and telephony in the Netherlands, has selected the MiriATE system from Mirifice to automate conformance testing of Set-top Boxes and Interactive Digital Televisions.

Test automation reduces operational costs and improves the resulting device and service reliability, leading to greater customer satisfaction.

Andrew Barker, CEO of Mirifice said “ We are delighted to win Ziggo as a new customer and look forward to working with them to automate their consumer device and service testing.”

MiriATE performs tests as a human would, ensuring existing manual tests can be automated, but runs the tests faster, more reliably, consistently and without getting bored or tired.

MiriATE has advanced features such as video analysis, motion detection, region comparison, and optical character recognition (OCR) that are critical in automating the majority of tests, as they replace the need for manual recognition and verification.

MiriATE’s 24/7 availability, remote access, test scheduling and multiple test concurrency capabilities ensure high productivity with minimal manual intervention.

The latest operator to launch an IPTV service in Spain, Europa Network, has selected the MiriMON solution from Mirifice to ensure the success of its TV service.

MiriMON is an industry-leading monitoring solution, which enables Europa to ensure the delivery quality of its over-the-top (OTT) services, an essential element in the success of their overall proposition.

Europa delivers TV over broadband for customers across Spain as part of its innovative triple play service, focused on the British expatriate community. The Europa service is delivered via Amino set-top boxes. Amino was selected due to its expertise in both IPTV and OTT, as well as, crucially, its out-of-the-box support for MiriMON monitoring.

As these ex-pat customers are used to high quality TV services in the UK, it is essential that Europa offers a service that matches their quality expectations. If customers are unhappy with their TV service, then they are more likely to churn, and potentially look to other providers for their broadband and telephony.

Traditionally, TV operators have relied on customer complaints as a metric for how well they are delivering service – an entirely reactive approach. MiriMON gives Europa visibility of service delivery into every customer home, so that they can measure how their service is performing and identify where the issues are. MiriMON also offers real-time alerts to service problems, ensuring that Europa can proactively respond to and fix issues, often before they receive a single customer call.

Alan Dobinson, MD of Europa, commented: “MiriMON was a must-have if we were to achieve our business goals. It has provided us with the intelligence to decide when and where to invest in our platform to have maximum impact on service delivery to our customers, and to be able to see the impact of this investment in real-time. We were so convinced by the business advantage offered by MiriMON, that it influenced our choice of set-top box platform – we made MiriMON support a pre-requisite for our set-top box.”

Andrew Barker, CEO of Mirifice added: “With MiriMON they are able to monitor the service delivery right at the end-user point, and can quickly highlight and address any problems along the way. For a new operator in an increasingly crowded marketplace, service quality is essential to the success of their offering.”

Mirifice’s automated test system to accelerate STB testing.

Mirifice announced that European telecommunications and internet service provider, Telenor Broadcast Holding AS, has chosen Mirifice’s MiriATE system to automate the testing of digital television set top boxes (STBs) before they are deployed to Telenor’s customers. Automating testing will improve the quality of the STBs, resulting in greater customer satisfaction and lower costs.

Telenor is the latest television service provider to select Mirifice for test automation.

Telenor chose Mirifice’s MiriATE system after a thorough evaluation process that considered a wide range of aspects of the solutions available in the market. Mirifice’s MiriATE automated test system is specifically designed to test customer premises equipment such as STBs by emulating a human user, so the results have the advantages of automation but reflect the experience of a real viewer watching television through the STB.

Telenor regularly introduces new STBs to its customers, after a thorough testing cycle to ensure that the STB meets stringent quality criteria. Prior to automation all tests were done manually, however manual testing cannot reliably test for long periods or repeat tests accurately, making regression testing, soak testing (long term) and stress testing difficult. Automation improves the quality and reliability of testing by increasing the accuracy and repeatability of tests, while shortening test time for greater efficiency.

Terje Storhaug, VP & CTO, Telenor Broadcast Holding, explained “we looked at a number of automated test systems and we were impressed by Mirifice’s technical flexibility and solution oriented approach to meeting our needs.”

Andrew Barker, Mirifice’s CEO, added “We are pleased to be working with the dynamic and forward looking team in Telenor and to having MiriATE contribute to their successful and timely delivery of new STBs to customers .”

About Telenor Broadcast Telenor Broadcast Holding is one of four business areas in Telenor Nordic. Broadcast had in 2009, revenues of close to NOK 8,5 billion. The business area Broadcast, consists of four companies: Telenor Satellite Broadcasting, offers distribution of TV signals via satellite. Norkring owns and operates terrestrial network.

Canal Digital is the largest distributor of TV-content in the Nordic region and offers TV-services on all platforms. Conax delivers conditional access and pay solutions.

Broadcast has 950 employees and customers in 70 different countries. Telenor Broadcast headquarters are located in Oslo, Norway. Telenor Broadcast is part of the Telenor Group (www.telenor.com). About Telenor Group The Telenor Group is an international provider of high quality tele, data and media communication services with mobile operations in 13 markets across the Nordic region, Central and Eastern Europe and in Asia. Headquartered in Norway, the Telenor Group is among the largest mobile operators in the world with 179 million mobile subscriptions (per Q1 2010), revenues in 2009 of NOK 107 billion, and a workforce of more than 45,000. Telenor is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (TEL).

The Mirifice team are pleased to release version 3.1 of our MiriATE Test Automation system. The existing systems deployed with our customers will be upgraded over the next couple of weeks.

Version 3.1 of MiriATE now provides:
• Set-top box power control (hardware required)
• Audio support
• Set-top box video output interface selection (hardware required)
• Out-of-the-box support for most fonts in OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
• Improved reliability of OCR with small characters or poor background contrast
• Capability to specify and recognise an acceptably close OCR string match
• Support for IR keyboard input testing
• New SOAP interface to allow an external system to invoke tests
• Elegant method of moving test scripts between systems
• Usability improvements for scripting and running tests
• Improved system administration tools