Capablue feature in VoD Professional

• Tom Cape is interviewed in VoD Professional about 'Connected' and the exciting developments for Capablue

  Tom Cape is a true VOD professional. He lead the delivery team for the original 'Sky Anytime' which eventually became 'Sky Player', was the Programme Manager for the first incarnation of Channel 4's '4oD' service in 2006, was the interim CTO of 'Project Kangaroo' (remember that?) and now, with his own company, Capablue, is one of the de facto pioneers in the new world of Connected TV.

  I met Tom at Capablue's offices in Waterloo and, like the two good geeks that we are, we had an enjoyable chat about television technology, the BBC iPlayer, ITV's online strategy, Samsung Connected TV and about Tom's career over the past 10 years...

  Kanji: So let's talk about Capablue. What does it do?

  Cape: We've been going 5 years and, as a company, we've changed a lot. Up until 18 months ago we were more of a consultancy. We'd meet customers and help them design, build and integrate a VOD site. So we did lots of small projects for people like Orange and Turner and several iPlayer-related pieces of work but it was all a bit piecemeal and we wanted to do something a bit more sustainable in terms of revenue. So me and a couple of the guys sat down and said, first, we want to carry on building and creating services. That was a given. Then, looking at the market, we also knew that most of the Tier 1 companies were covered and already had live VOD services in place. So we started looking at Tier 2 / 3 companies, content-owners, traditional media, sports-rights owners who couldn't necessarily afford to pay Tier 1 money to build their own platform. And that's when we decided to use our knowledge to create a platform and sell it on to these firms as a managed service. That's how our VoD and Connected TV platform 'Connected' was conceived. We have spent the last year and a half developing it based on our experience and are now already running 5 channels on it with a whole bunch more on the way…

  Initially launched with STV last year as an ad-funder service on PS3 and in the past few months we've built in account management and micro-payment systems and can connect VOD services to Connected devices. And that's where Samsung comes in.

  Kanji: How did you get to work with Samsung?

  Cape: We did some work with SES Astra (the big satellite company) and they asked us to create a couple of Connected TV apps which they wanted entering into the Samsung App Competition. The first app was called "How to install your own satellite dish" which is really for the German market where everyone installs their own dish and the second was a social recommendations app. And incredibly, the second one won! Since then, we've become a key Samsung partner.

  Kanji: Fantastic! And that's where Capablue's future lies?

  Cape: We still build websites, mainly VoD for broadcasters but Connected TV is definitely an area of rapid development and we are really enjoying being at the forefront of this new market. It is going to be a very interesting year or 2 ahead for the industry and Capablue as the VoD and Connected TV space continues to develop.

  For the full version of the article, please go to:

  www.vodprofessional.com/features/interview-with-tom-cape,-md-of-capablue