Synamedia launches white-label cloud TV services to cut smart TV costs by 90%

Synamedia is launching its Senza white-label connected TV application that it says can slash costs by up to 90% using cloud technology.

The white-label solution for big media companies is aimed at changing the economics of on-screen content applications.

Senza transforms video experiences and creates opportunities using AI-enhanced content while ending hardware obsolescence for TV viewing, hospitality, IoT and more. Synamedia Senza, is an exclusive, patent-protected network, that has reimagined the concept of IP streaming. It is a disruptive solution in the realm of Over-the-Top (OTT) video services, enabling ultra-low latency video distribution and facilitating graphic-accelerated user experiences at a lower total cost of ownership.

The Cloud Connector device used by Senza, receives content and the user interface over the subscriber’s Wi-Fi network and displays it on a TV. It utilizes unique proprietary hardware with a secure cryptographic core, serialized with a unique ID and keys by Synamedia during production. The Cloud Connector operates hardened, encrypted, and authenticated software booted securely to ensure maximum content protection. In addition, the device’s software image has limited functionality, minimizing the potential attack surface.

Despite the simple hardware, the Senza service, which procures the content from a CDN, is capable of transmitting it to the device over an ultra-low-latency protocol.

Using the cloud, Senza radically lowers costs and eliminates the traditional technology barriers to bring more engaging viewing experiences to TV screens in the home as well as out-of-home in bars, hotels, stadiums, and more. With this cloud-based platform, Senza’s customers across all industries can avoid ecosystem taxes as well as achieve a reduction of up to 90% in onboarding costs.

Origins

Synamedia is a private equity-funded company that was spun out of Cisco. It has around 1,500 or so staff worldwide, and there are three groups, including Synamedia which has focused on innovation for the past four years or so. It has a few dozen people in the group.

The device itself doesn’t have any applications on it. The hope is that anyone who wants to field an application on a smart TV will bring it to the operator that deploys the device.

“This little package can remove quite a lot of on-premise infrastructure that is sitting around in a lot of places,” Thexton said.

Given this particular tech and cloud infrastructure, Synamedia has no plan at the moment to deploy gaming applications and hardware. But it’s not entirely out of the question.

In an interview with GamesBeat, Nick Thexton, EVP of media cloud services at Synamedia said, “We’ve basically built a platform that is challenging the economics of the way that video applications are deployed today.”

“Video services typically are very dependent on things like operating systems and the kinds of gatekeeper commercial limitations that are imposed upon consumer electronics, whether it be TVs, whether it be other devices or plugin devices,” he said. “A few years ago, we were looking at Google Stadia and we got inspired by what they were doing. We thought it was pretty technically challenging and probably quite expensive to execute.”

Google wound up shutting down Stadia. But Synamedia saw that latency and the speed with which people could interact with streaming content was going to be a problem. So they built a prototype of a cloud-based device to see if they could make it work for TV applications.

“We were quite surprised to find that it actually works, and it worked really well,” he said.

They built a Wi-Fi connected device that can connect to the cloud to manage the video experience in real time.

“The user will really get the benefit of a completely different set of content sources and content integration options. So what we did was we built this and that’s what we’re launching. This project is called Senza, which in Italian means ‘without.’ We’re actually promoting a product without things, which is kind of an interesting little game in itself.”

Thexton added, “As a company, we spent a lot of time building very complex software stacks. So it’s delightful when you realize that a lot of the functionality you don’t really need in the hub, and you don’t need an expensive operating system in the device, and actually the best is still that you can make the device super low cost.”

They managed to bring the cost of the silicon going into the small Airpod-case-size device down to $6.

The device has an HDMI port on the back and it’s powered by USB, which typically is connected from the back of a TV. It looks like an Amazon Fire or Google Chromecast device — but it’s not like those devices in any other respect. That’s because there are no applications running inside it, with no operating system.

“This really completely changes the game in terms of setting the permissions to do things,” he said. “If you are a content provider or an application provider, that software is hosted in the cloud infrastructure. The cloud delivers that application to your TV screen, protected with a lot of security. And Synamedia will not take 30% of revenue for providing this service, in contrast to many other intermediaries.

“We’re just simply going to charge a SaaS free for however much bandwidth you use on on the video application itself, and this is another nice feature of the platform. If are a traditional streaming provider with content, you just connect this to you. We just connect this to your existing CDN. And the only time and the only kind of charge, if you like, charging structure or pricing structure, is related to the consumers use of the video app itself.”

“We’re not we’re a software developer. We’re not a hardware manufacturer, but we have designed the hardware to work with our platform, and we will, in the long term, license the design for free to other parties if they want to build devices which can connect to our infrastructure,” Thexton said. “Ultimately, we want people to have lots of innovation opportunity and to take the design wherever it goes.”

Thexton said the company has no plans to go direct to consumers. Rather, it is targeting providers and operators who want to avoid expensive lock-ins with operating systems and other software and hardware stacks. In doing so, they can dramatically reduce the cost of the box.

For decades, broadcasters and streamers have been constrained by the cost, effort and limitations of
supporting the proliferation of user devices and massive fragmentation.

Instead, Senza moves the entire user experience from devices – such as connected TVs and streaming sticks – into the cloud and offers an HTML5 interface to quickly launch free, low-cost or premium services. This results in a personalized, immersive user experience with advanced graphics and AI-generated synthetic video by “writing once and running everywhere,” a concept foreign to TV developers but commonplace for those developing for the Internet.

With more than 25 patents filed, Senza reshapes today’s TV ecosystem by tapping into the common framework of the Internet, removing the need to download apps or replace outdated in-home devices and eliminating traditional cost barriers, such as ad revenue shares, to reach mass audiences.

Using a Cloud Connector of similar size to an earbuds case, Senza turns any TV screen into a high-performance, smarter TV and unleashes unlimited creative and business opportunities across entertainment, digital signage, hospitality, IoT and retail industries. Details about the Senza partner network and use cases are here.

By building the managed platform around a Cloud Connector that uses low-cost silicon, Synamedia has achieved a base component cost device price of around $6 that goes even lower with volume, and an ability to free license the hardware design and device software to third party OEMs in 2025. Synamedia has also implemented Google Widevine L1 security.

Working closely with Google Cloud, Senza has achieved this breakthrough by not only uncoupling the
rendering of the user experience from the device and moving it to the cloud, but also eliminating the sluggish and frustrating user experiences by using low latency video protocols that are optimized for
graphics applications.

Further, Senza’s AI features will enable more creativity in advertising and synthetic media, and it will empower brands to reach consumers directly with a customized experience through the Cloud Connector.
Senza enables broadband providers and ISPs to differentiate their consumer offerings by adding a
video service with minimal up-front investment.

UMAXX.TV

One of the early adopters, SuperCloud International, a pioneer in streaming and television, will use Senza to deliver its consumer in-home streaming service, UMAXX.TV, which offers over 350 live TV channels via a military-grade, proprietary 5G network. UMAXX opted to add Senza to its hardware offering because of its reliability and cost advantage.

Ben Keen, independent industry analyst, said in a statement, “For many years a debate has raged about whether the set-top box has a future. Now Synamedia has redrawn the terms of that debate by radically rethinking the role of the in-home device using a cloud-first design that promises to fundamentally change the economics of TV delivery. A strong culture of innovation has always been at the heart of Synamedia — along with its legacy predecessor entities — and it is great to see that tradition continue with the unveiling of Senza.”

Paul Segre, CEO at Synamedia, said in a statement, “Senza flips the accepted economics of TV on its head with its Internet-based framework. It eliminates the need for specialist developers supporting a technologically limited and fragmented ecosystem and enables us to think of a TV screen as an Internet greenfield. As CEOs look to build new paths to revenue, this is their dream come true.”

Developer, reseller and partner programs will extend Synamedia’s reach and applications.

Underlying tech and strategic options

Synamedia is trusted by service providers and content owners to deliver, enrich, and protect video. The
flexibility and agility of its cloud and SaaS products enable customers of all types and sizes to
launch, monetize, and scale services at speed. Synamedia is backed by the Permira funds and Sky.

To deploy the tech, a consumer needs a broadband connection of about five megabits per second. A healthy connection is around 10 megabits a second. In North America, bandwidth norms are approaching 100 megabits a second.

“Now what we are doing is bringing that capability to effectively any TV screen without the additional big cost overheads,” Thexton said.

For gaming, the question becomes what level of gaming do you want to provide on such a service, as it won’t be able to run high-end games.

Lena Wasikowski, head of content, said in an interview with GamesBeat, “We’re not creating a walled garden for this. We are not requiring people to go through some kind of an app approval process. Once they have an agreement with us in place. They get access to publish their their content applications where it’s hosted, their backend CDN, and playback is all done on their own networks.”

The consumer no longer has to constantly update their device, as that is done in the cloud infrastructure. Synamedia has a developer portal that developers can sign up for and pay a $100 fee. That gets them access to all the documentation instructions.

“We have a simulator that runs on the web that lets them try out how all this works,” Andrew Zamler-Carhart, director of product management, said in an interview with GamesBeat. “The whole infrastructure around development is really easy for people to take their existing web apps or to write apps specifically the platform, and get them written and deployed.”

That reduces the barrier to entry in terms of getting an app in front of consumers.

Zamler-Carhart said, “Our job is to make sure that the additional cost of you having brought your application to our platform is super low. Everything you’re looking at here is running in Chromium, and it’s effectively an HTML5, JavaScript environment with access to the GPU capability to do the hardware acceleration,” he said. “And there’s nothing really to learn specifically beyond that. Any decent web developer will be able to create an app to get their content onto our platform. And better still is that once that app is deployed, it actively gets supported for the life of that device.”

He added, “The beauty of it is we’re not taxing you for being on the platform. We’re not taxing your revenues. We’re not looking for a slice of your subscriptions or your advertising. And we will guarantee that the life of the device will be a lot longer than anything that the smart TV manufacturers will be interested in.”