• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, January 5, 2017

There’s a pretty strong bet that launching OTT channels is going to become an even bigger tech sport in 2017. Lots of well known vendors are going to playing the game.

At CES, Comcast made headlines by introducing its smart home Advanced Gateway product that it hopes will replace old style modems.

But for a certain segment of the deeply-imbedded creative world, as big a deal might be Comcast Technology Solutions’ new, multi-platform, turnkey direct-to-consumer product to help would-be content providers build, launch and manage OTT locales.

It’s one of the first products out of the gate for the newish Comcast Technology Solutions unit.

The D2C product  joins together a lot its technical know-how into one package a product that offers video processing, management, multi-CDN distribution, and playout capabilities, and a variety of monetization schemes.

“Content providers are increasingly interested in establishing direct-to-consumer businesses, but quickly become overwhelmed by the challenges of building, deploying, and managing OTT solutions seamlessly across any screen,” said Barry Tishgart, vice president of Comcast Technology Solutions.

In a phone interview a little while ago, he pointed out the D2C solution can handle intricate new-world problems like serving ads in several languages to several different countries for OTT content providers.

Comcast Technology Solutions is partnering Accedo and You.i TV as the first users of the interface to provide integration that can be tailored to a specific brand and business model. But more may be on the way.

Also, at the CES, Vimeo with its own  slick revamped online look, unveiled VHX, a  new white-label partner app support for Android TV, Amazon Fire and Xbox One, which  it claims is the “simplest, most complete turnkey solution for launching OTT streaming video channels. VHX also supports launching apps on

The Web, iOS, Android, Roku and tvOS.

VHX selling points include the ability to handle in-app subscriptions on most platforms and integrated payments and analytics. VHX is also touting 4K playback from partner-branded channels.

At the big tech show, Vimeo said VHX would be providing the back-end and app development for Love Nature, a 4-K documentary/nature OTT  joint venture between Blue Ant Media and Smithsonian Networks. Vimeo will also serve as Blue Ant’s technology partner.

VHX selling points include the ability to handle in-app subscriptions on most platforms and integrated payments and analytics. VHX is also touting 4K playback from partner-branded channels.

pj@mediapost.com