CES 2016: Opera TV 2.0 debuts

Smart TV, Blu-ray Disc player and set-top-box manufacturers will now be able to offer their viewers an interactive content discovery experience with Opera TV 2.0, which made its debut at the International Consumer Electronics Show last week.

The new Opera TV 2.0 brings video content to the forefront, offering greater content personalization and an enhanced understanding of consumer preferences. The next generation of this popular HTML5-based application platform provides a tailored consumer viewing experience that also creates new after-sale revenue opportunities for manufacturers and operators.

“Consumers today want a dedicated video experience where app content is delivered to them based on their preferences, location, language, and what content is new,” says Aneesh Rajaram, Senior Vice President for TV & Devices at Opera. “Opera TV is a turn-key, Smart TV solution with a truly global footprint. We’ve made it simple for operators and OEMs to deploy, allowing them to easily differentiate and monetize personalized content offerings, and allowing content owners and publishers to bring their content to the top of the consumer experience, increasing user engagement through fresh content.”

Opera TV 2.0 is a managed cloud solution that provides a wide selection of popular OTT content – including video channels and clips, movies, apps, games and live TV from sources such as CinemaNow,  Crackle, IGN, Feeln, Pitbull, Paula Deen, Red Bull, TED, Washington Post and Young Hollywood, among others – directly to households. A new user interface (UI) organizes recommended, trending and most popular HD movies, videos and channels into neat rows, incorporating Opera curation for increased user engagement. This UI can be customized for increased viewer stickiness, with curation and promotional scheduling system tools in place for enhanced personalization.

Enhancing the HD viewing experience, Opera TV 2.0 allows consumers to engage, favorite and enjoy HD content on their biggest screens. In addition to prioritizing content at the top of the consumer experience, the entire solution is built on top of our backbone of over 800 apps in categories such as Lifestyle, Music, Kids, Nature and Travel, News and Weather, Sports, Social, Internet TV, and as well as many more. A Games section allows easy access to games developed using HTML5 and hosted in the cloud. Universal search across all sections simplifies user discovery, allowing them to enjoy the extensive portfolio by searching for specific terms or accessing trending keywords. With the emphasis on a “lean back” experience, consumers can use a standard TV remote control to navigate, select and launch content. They can also favorite and follow the channels they are most interested in.

Monetization opportunities and billing support

Opera TV 2.0 creates a hybrid approach to content discovery that enables increased consumer engagement across all touch points of the OTT platform. This capability opens up new after-sale revenue opportunities based on the content consumers view, including advertising and billing capabilities.

Opera TV 2.0 comes with fully integrated support for video advertising. Built on Opera Mediaworks ad-serving and mediation platform, a robust and scalable advertising infrastructure used by more than 19,000 sites and apps across smartphones, tablets and connected TVs, and reaching 1.1 billion users worldwide. Content owners and manufacturers can rely on Opera’s fully managed monetization service, as well as leveraging the self-service tools for their directly sold campaigns. The Opera TV Ads SDK is a one-stop solution for placement of video advertising anywhere inside the device user interface, including targeting of users across apps and interactive advertising via linear broadcast, where available.

Opera TV 2.0 also simplifies billing support with the seamless integration of a PayPal-powered certified payment solution. Billing is integrated into the overall user experience, allowing consumers to purchase additional items or extend subscriptions within seconds. The solution supports multiple markets and currencies with account authentication done securely through a second screen. Premium content owners can also charge customers for premium content access through the billing API.

Opera TV 2.0 to premiere on Hisense Smart TVs 

Opera TV 2.0 is coming to Hisense Smart TVs in the first quarter of 2016. Hisense is the fourth-largest global TV manufacturer, and this recent integration extends a partnership begun in 2013.

“Hisense believes that technology should make what we want to do, where we want to go and what we want to learn easier,” says Charlie Wang, Vice President of Hisense Group. “Opera TV 2.0 maximizes the capabilities of today’s Smart TVs by delivering to consumer’s highly-customized content based on their viewing habits and preferences.”