Some interesting comments from Nick Thexton ( formerly with Cisco, now YouView CTO) at a digital media conference in London.
Thexton said that with cloud infrastructure it is possible to strip out a lot of complexity of a connected platform like YouView – which is a hybrid digital-terrestrial and internet service.(quoted in the YouView forum, no citation, https://community.youview.com/youview/topics/youtube-app-player-33-is-this-ever-going-to-appear-on-the-youview-platform?topic-reply-list%5Bsettings%5D%5Bfilter_by%5D=all&topic-reply-list%5Bsettings%5D%5Breply_id%5D=15668910#reply_15668910)“A typical refrain is how difficult it is to make changes in set-top boxes. One of my subtexts of joining YouView is to change that dynamic very rapidly and to basically move out of the set-top box as much complexity as possible and move that into the back office.
“When you do the analysis you find that not much needs to stay in the set-top box. Actually an awful lot can move out. As you start to work in multi-device and fragmented universe you don’t want to store quite so much in the set-top box,” said Thexton.