SeaChange announces Axiom On Demand 5.0, the only open VOD content delivery platform to bring social networking, time-shifting, advanced advertising and gaming to television. Shaped by billions of on-demand streams delivered for cable and IPTV television operators, Axiom 5.0 will be demonstrated for the first time at the Cable Show in New Orleans. Breakthroughs including Affinity, ReStart TV, and Game Now Lite are just three of the new add-on applications that best embody Axiom On Demand’s innovation, and its ability to ensure viewer loyalty and new revenue streams.

New share for VOD

The company separately announced SeaChange Affinity, a social networking application that uses the Internet to bring personalization to television’s on-demand navigation at long last. The Affinity web portal, branded either by SeaChange or by TV operators, lets subscribers use their mobile phone or PC to find content among thousands of on-demand titles and organize their on-demand TV experience per their unique preferences.

Just like the best of Web 2.0, Affinity offers automated recommendations and also allows subscribers to share their own recommendations, searches, ratings and commentaries with friends and family through social networks such as Facebook and others.

Introducing ReStart TV

Viewers are now only one electronic program guide click away from controlling scheduled broadcast television with SeaChange ReStart TV. This new Axiom application lets viewers rewind, pause and re-start programs from the beginning – less than 10 seconds into a broadcast airing – to catch all their favorite shows without planning ahead to program a DVR.

ReStart TV runs on Axiom On Demand’s infrastructure and integrates with major electronic program guides and most any digital set-top box, even giving new returns to operators with low-end set-top models. Each operator determines time-shifting business rules per their unique requirements and content contracts. ReStart TV’s adaptable distribution management scheme can control multiple VOD operation sites from one centralized location, or it can be deployed in a standalone configuration for smaller systems.

SeaChange rounds out its support for stream-intensive time-shifting by pushing resources to the network edge with its Flash Memory Streamers, which are already being widely deployed by SeaChange customers to meet the growing “long tail” of content demand. Like the open Axiom On Demand platform, the ReStart TV application also supports third-party video pumps.

VOD’s new game

Operators can also use Axiom On Demand to offer churn-busting, revenue-generating gaming experiences to subscribers with SeaChange’s new Game Now Lite, a game management and distribution system that operates on virtually any set-top box. SeaChange’s bundled content service spares operators any acquisition and licensing challenges, and includes game packs of ready-to-run favorites such as Sudoku, Texas Hold ‘Em and Chess among others. Flexible business models mean operators can create a games business based upon pay-per-play, pay-per-day, subscription and ad-supported strategies.

On target with VOD advertising

Axiom On Demand 5.0 is also the launching pad for SeaChange’s AdPulse VOD advertising software, giving operators the ability to monetize all of their VOD offerings – even on-demand games – through dynamic and targeted insertion. AdPulse helps deliver new revenues with on-the-fly insertion of interior, pre- and post-roll ads into on-demand program streams in real time. Making ads independent of the programs in which they run allows each to be trafficked separately, dramatically reducing lead times for ad copy and enabling ad rotation, targeting and message refresh throughout a campaign.

The VOD standard evolves

Axiom On Demand 5.0 extends the industry-leading VOD platform’s comprehensive management capabilities (spanning content, streaming resources and subscribers) with new reporting and monitoring tools that reduce operating costs and enable better informed business decisions. Axiom Dashboard is a visual, centralized means for keeping a close eye on real-time system performance and diagnosis to optimize system configuration and content propagation. Another strategic enhancement is Axiom Data Warehouse, which delivers invaluable business decision support from extensive, automated data collection that reflects system, application and asset use, as well as subscriber activity.