uC28 Release: Strengthening the Platform for Multi-Operator Growth

Modern IPTV and OTT services are becoming more complex to operate. Operators are building services across multiple screens, working with external content partners, serving different markets, supporting different device types, and meeting user expectations shaped by the world’s leading streaming platforms.

For viewers, all of this complexity should remain invisible. They expect the service to feel fast, polished, personal, and easy to use. For operators, delivering that experience requires a platform that can scale reliably, adapt to different business models, and simplify day-to-day operations.

The uC28 release strengthens the UniqCast Platform in exactly that direction. It improves the foundation needed for multi-operator growth, while also bringing practical user-facing upgrades across STB, Mobile/Web, Smart TV, Apple TV, and Backend systems. The result is a release that helps operators manage increasing service complexity while continuing to improve the viewing experience across every screen.

Why Multi-Operator Platform?

For platform providers serving multiple operators, IPTV/OTT growth brings a different level of complexity. The challenge is no longer only to deliver a good service for one operator, one market, or one user base. The challenge is to support several operator environments in a way that remains scalable, manageable, and commercially efficient.

In practice, each operator may have its own content strategy, subscriber base, packages, regional requirements, branding, device mix, delivery setup, and operational processes. One operator may focus heavily on live TV and catch-up, another may prioritize VOD and transactional content, while another may depend more on aggregation partners or localized catalogues. Even when they share the same platform foundation, they still need enough separation and flexibility to operate as distinct services.

Without the right platform architecture, this can quickly lead to duplicated infrastructure, repeated configuration work, higher operating costs, and slower rollout of new operators or markets. Every additional operator can become a new layer of complexity. Teams may need to duplicate workflows, maintain separate environments, repeat integrations, or manage service differences manually. Over time, this can slow growth and make the platform harder to evolve.

A multi-operator-ready platform changes that model. It allows platform providers and large operators to manage several service environments more efficiently, while keeping the flexibility needed for each operator to have its own commercial and regional identity. The goal is not simply to host multiple services in one place. The goal is to support growth without multiplying operational effort at the same speed.

This is especially important for existing large operators and platform providers that are expanding across markets, brands, subsidiaries, or partner networks. They need a foundation that helps them onboard new operators faster, adapt to regional needs more easily, and reduce unnecessary duplication in infrastructure and operations. At the same time, they must continue delivering a reliable and polished experience to end users, regardless of which operator, device, or market they belong to.

That is why multi-operator readiness is becoming a strategic requirement in IPTV/OTT. It gives platform owners a stronger way to scale their business while keeping control over complexity. It also creates a more efficient base for future development, because new features, integrations, and performance improvements can be introduced across a broader platform environment instead of being handled as isolated projects for each operator.

This is the broader context behind uC28. The release strengthens the UniqCast Platform for environments where scalability, operational flexibility, and efficient growth are becoming critical. It supports the needs of platform providers and large operators that want to grow beyond single-service deployments and manage more complex IPTV/OTT ecosystems with greater confidence.

General Version Highlights

The central idea behind uC28 is platform readiness for growth. As IPTV/OTT services expand across more devices, content sources, delivery networks, and operator environments, the platform beneath them must become more flexible, scalable, and efficient.

This release brings important progress in that area. Platform and Operator Multitenancy in Content Manager strengthens support for multi-operator environments, where better separation, scalability, and resource management become essential. CDN-specific transcoding clusters give operators more flexibility in preparing content for different delivery networks. At the same time, broad backend performance improvements help reduce server load and improve response times across the platform.

uC28 also improves how operators control and shape the service experience. Layout handling is becoming more device-aware, external audio and subtitle support is being extended across client platforms, and the platform is better prepared for services that combine native and aggregated content catalogues. 

On the user-facing side, uC28 continues to modernize content presentation, personalization, and everyday usability. The release adds new ways to highlight popular and exclusive content, improves profile distinction, strengthens multilingual viewing options, and refines the experience across major client platforms. 

In this sense, uC28 is a release focused on making the UniqCast Platform ready for rapid growth: easier to scale, easier to control, and better prepared for the operational reality of modern IPTV/OTT services.

STB App Upgrades

For many IPTV operators, the set-top box remains the central screen in the home. It is where live TV, VOD, catch-up, applications, and household viewing habits come together. In uC28, the STB app receives upgrades that make this main-screen experience more engaging, more controlled, and more responsive.

The dashboard becomes richer with branded “Top 10” and “Exclusive” VOD rails. These rails give operators a stronger way to present popular, premium, or editorially selected content directly on the STB home screen. Instead of expecting users to browse deep into catalogues, the platform can bring important content forward and make discovery more immediate.

This is especially valuable in large content libraries, where the main challenge is often not availability but visibility. By giving operators better tools to showcase content, uC28 helps make the STB experience feel more active and closer to the content presentation users know from major streaming services.

uC28 expands household control with parental control for external apps. Operators can now restrict access to third-party installed applications on a per-profile basis. This is an important step as operator TV platforms increasingly include not only managed TV and VOD content, but also external applications. 

Aggregated content also becomes richer on STB with Megogo multi-audio and subtitle support. Users can access multiple audio tracks and subtitles for Megogo VOD assets, making external content feel more complete inside the operator’s service. For multilingual markets and services built around content aggregation, this is an important improvement because users expect external catalogues to behave with the same level of quality and flexibility as native content.

uC28 also improves the everyday speed and smoothness of STB usage. Live thumbnails are optimized for a more stable and jitter-free browsing experience. Channel list navigation becomes faster when users browse through category dialogs. Fast Channel Change improvements, supported by an updated FCC library, help reduce waiting time when switching channels on supported devices.

Together, these STB upgrades improve both the presentation and responsiveness of the living-room experience. Operators gain better control over content promotion and access, while users benefit from smoother navigation, richer content options, and a more polished TV interface.

Mobile and Web Features

Mobile and Web applications serve a different role in the IPTV/OTT journey. They are often used for quick browsing, personal viewing, replaying content, managing purchases, or continuing the service away from the main TV screen. In uC28, the focus is on making these experiences clearer, more convenient, more regionally adaptable, and more stable.

A dedicated Purchased TVOD Content Rail gives users a simple way to find and replay movies and episodes they have already purchased. This is an important improvement for transactional content because the experience does not end when the purchase is made. Users need to trust that paid content remains easy to access. 

The release also introduces configurable date and time formats. Operators can adapt how dates and times are shown in the application, including regional formats and 12-hour or 24-hour time display. This kind of localization detail may seem small, but it matters in multi-market services. 

Category shortcuts also receive visual improvements, with better title positioning on shortcut cards. This supports readability and consistency in the browsing experience. Discovery elements need to be clear at a glance, especially on mobile and web screens where users often move quickly through the interface.

Stability and performance are also major parts of the Mobile and Web upgrade. uC28 includes significant crash improvement efforts on Android and iOS, along with fixes across playback, navigation, and UI flows. 

With uC28, Mobile and Web become more convenient for users and more adaptable for operators, while the continued stability work helps make the service feel more dependable across different usage scenarios.

Smart TV

Smart TV applications bring the operator’s service directly to connected screens, often without requiring a separate set-top box. Users expect these applications to feel polished, fast, and familiar. uC28 strengthens the Smart TV experience with improvements in resume viewing, targeting, app discoverability, recording transparency, notifications, and perceived performance.

The new Last Watched Card on the dashboard helps users quickly continue recently viewed content. This reduces navigation steps and supports one of the most common viewing behaviors: returning to something already started. 

Subscriber tag-based banner filtering gives operators a more precise way to manage promotions and campaigns. Instead of showing the same banner to every user, banners can be targeted based on subscriber tags. This supports more relevant communication inside the service and gives operators better tools for segmentation.

Third-party applications are now displayed in a dedicated Apps rail on the Smart TV dashboard. As IPTV/OTT services become broader entertainment hubs, organizing apps clearly becomes an important part of the overall service design. uC28 also adds NPVR storage usage information, allowing users to see their network PVR storage usage directly in the application. 

In-app messages become more flexible with configurable screen positioning. Operators can decide where notifications appear, helping them communicate with users without unnecessarily disrupting the viewing experience. This is especially important on large screens, where message placement has a strong impact on usability.

Several Smart TV improvements focus on making the interface feel smoother and more responsive. Focused card animation provides clearer visual feedback when users move through content cards. Skeleton loading placeholders improve the experience while content rails are loading, reducing the feeling of waiting. Channel list behavior can now be defined from the layout screen, giving operators more control over live TV navigation.

uC28 also introduces inactivity notifications for in-room TVs, supporting hotel and hospitality use cases where TV applications may remain open for long periods. This gives operators better tools for managing inactive sessions in specialized deployment environments.

Apple TV

Apple TV also moves forward in this release. 

Dynamic Catalogues are now fully supported, including dedicated catalogue sections, dashboard integration, and multiple catalogue screen navigation. This brings Apple TV closer to the capabilities already available across other major platforms.

Accessibility settings have also been added to Apple TV, including Help & Documentation and a feedback mechanism. This improves usability, supports Apple platform expectations, and gives users a clearer path to guidance or feedback when needed.

Backend

The Backend section is where the central value of uC28 becomes most visible from an operator perspective. While many improvements in the release enhance the user interface, the backend upgrades strengthen the platform layer that makes scale, flexibility, and operational efficiency possible.

One of the most important improvements is Platform and Operator Multitenancy for Content Manager. Content Manager now supports multitenancy at both platform and operator level, enabling scalable content processing in multi-operator environments with better resource isolation and management. This is especially relevant for deployments that need to support multiple brands, regions, subsidiaries, partners, or commercial models within one broader platform environment.

uC28 also introduces CDN-specific transcoding clusters. Operators can configure transcoding clusters per CDN, allowing content preparation to be better aligned with different delivery networks. This gives operators more control over content processing and helps the platform adapt to more complex infrastructure setups.

Layout management in CSMS Admin becomes more flexible with separate configuration for Web and Mobile/Tablet device types. This gives operators more granular control over how the service is presented on different form factors. Instead of forcing one layout approach across all screens, operators can adapt presentation more precisely to the way users interact with each device.

The new external API for ad media file ingestion helps optimize advertising workflows by allowing media files to be ingested programmatically into internal infrastructure. This reduces manual handling and supports more efficient campaign operations as advertising and promotional activities become more integrated into IPTV/OTT services.

In-app notification positioning can now be configured from the backend, giving operators central control over where messages appear across client platforms. 

EPG handling is also improved. The EPG parser now supports two additional image types, a new API route, and custom XMLTV tag mapping has been extended. These enhancements improve integration flexibility with external EPG sources and support better metadata handling.

CSMS Admin also receives practical operational improvements. Administrators can now reset passwords directly from the admin interface, reducing friction in daily platform management. Dynamic Catalogue forms have improved display formatting, making them easier to read and manage.

Together, the backend upgrades make uC28 a stronger foundation release. They help operators scale more effectively, manage more complex environments, reduce load, improve flexibility, and support better experiences across all client applications.

A Release Built for the Next Stage of IPTV/OTT Growth

uC28 improves the UniqCast Platform on two levels. On the surface, users receive a more polished and convenient experience across STB, Mobile/Web, Smart TV, and Apple TV. Content is easier to discover, purchased assets are easier to access, Smart TV navigation feels more modern, multilingual options are stronger, and applications continue to become more stable and responsive.

Underneath that experience, operators gain a stronger foundation for growth. Multitenant content management, CDN-specific transcoding, improved backend performance, more flexible layouts, stronger metadata handling, better caching, and more efficient operational tools all help the platform support more complex IPTV/OTT environments.

uC28 is not only a release of visible improvements, but a release that prepares the platform for the next stage of operator growth. As services expand across more screens, catalogues, partners, markets, and infrastructure models, UniqCast gives operators a stronger foundation to manage that complexity while continuing to improve the everyday viewing experience.

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