How Tring modernised its full Smartlabs stack and extended a four-year partnership

Tring is the largest pay-TV operator in Albania and one of the country's defining media and telecommunications companies. The service reaches hundreds of thousands of households, carries more than 170 channels — including 41 in-house productions across sports, movies, lifestyle, children's, comedy, and music genres — and operates the largest video-on-demand library in Albania, with over 13,000 titles. Its sports portfolio is the most comprehensive in the market: live rights to UEFA Champions League, Serie A, Bundesliga, NBA, and MotoGP, alongside the multi-channel Tring Sport lineup. Tring is also the only operator in Albania to bundle internet, telephony, and television into a single integrated commercial package, distributed through cable, digital terrestrial, satellite, and IP delivery. Internationally, My Tring IPTV reaches Albanian-language audiences worldwide via the public internet — particularly the diaspora across Europe and beyond.

That commercial position — pay-TV market leader, only full triple-play, broadest sports rights, deepest VoD library — translates directly into the technical requirements the operator places on its TV platform: carrier-grade middleware, multi-CDN content delivery, multi-device reach, universal DRM, and monetisation capabilities that can support both subscription and ad-supported business models.

By 2022, Tring's existing TV service needed to evolve along three dimensions at once. Albanian subscribers — particularly younger ones — had moved on from the assumption that television happens only on the TV; phones, tablets, and Smart TVs were where a growing share of viewing time was being spent. The new service needed to incorporate Tring's existing DVB-T2 terrestrial and satellite infrastructure rather than replace it, delivering broadcast and IP content through a single user interface on a single device. And the service had to be reachable not only domestically but internationally — over the public internet — to serve Albanian-language audiences worldwide.

Tring evaluated several middleware and OTT platform vendors before selecting Smartlabs in 2022. The decision came down to four factors:

“We have chosen Smartlabs for the completeness of solution and rich track record of successful projects across the globe. With the launch of the new TV service we hope to drastically improve the quality of TV viewing experience and to ensure our market leadership.”

Smartlabs delivered an end-to-end multiscreen platform: SmartTUBE middleware handling subscriber accounts, content metadata, EPG, entitlement checks, multi-profile management, and concurrent-device session control; SmartMEDIA processing and delivering IP content with HLS/DASH adaptive bitrate streaming; SmartCARE providing analytics and quality-of-experience monitoring; third-party hybrid DVB-T2 + IP set-top boxes running the SmartTUBE client framework; and native applications for iOS, Android, Samsung Smart TVs, LG Smart TVs, and Android Smart TVs. All applications shared a consistent UX synchronised through the SmartTUBE backend — same content rails, same continue-watching state, same recommendations across devices.

Four years into the partnership, Tring and Smartlabs signed a multi-year contract extension and completed a full modernisation of the television platform — covering every layer of the stack, from headend infrastructure to end-user applications. This was not an incremental release; it was a comprehensive platform refresh executed as a single coordinated programme.

Every layer of the stack on the current release

Smartlabs replaced and modernised all core OTT/IPTV platform components in a unified upgrade:

• OTT/IPTV middleware — the SmartTUBE control plane upgraded to the current release, with improvements across subscriber management, content metadata handling, entitlements, and the operator-facing back-office tools.
• VoD content delivery and transcoding — SmartMEDIA components modernised to the current release, with renewed transcoding capacity to serve Tring's 13,000+ title VoD library and improved CDN delivery characteristics across both domestic and international (diaspora) traffic.
• Monitoring and analytics — SmartCARE upgraded to the current release, with expanded telemetry, refreshed dashboards, and updated clustering analysis for proactive QoE management across the deployed estate.
• Universal DRM — the content protection stack consolidated and modernised, with current-release support across all the DRM systems required by Tring's content licensors (Widevine, FairPlay, PlayReady) — all unified through a single platform-level entitlement layer.

The structural outcome of the upgrade is that Tring's entire platform now sits on a single, unified platform generation. Components that historically diverge in release cycles across operators — middleware, CDN, analytics, DRM — are coordinated, current, and architecturally consistent. That consolidation reduces operational complexity for Tring's technical team and makes future platform evolution faster, because every new SmartTUBE release lands on a known, uniform baseline.

Expanded device coverage — Hisense VIDAA and Amazon Fire TV

Existing streaming applications — hybrid STBs, web, iOS, Android mobile, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, and Android TV — received full updates as part of the upgrade. Two new applications were delivered: Hisense VIDAA Smart TV and Amazon Fire TV.

Both additions matter commercially. Hisense VIDAA-powered televisions have substantial and growing market share across Albania and the broader Balkan region, particularly in the affordable-Smart-TV segment that often serves second and third TVs in the household. Amazon Fire TV is the dominant streaming-stick category globally and a particularly relevant device class for Albanian-language diaspora subscribers — who frequently buy Fire TV sticks to add OTT services to existing television sets in their households abroad.

With the addition of VIDAA and Fire TV, Tring now reaches subscribers across every major consumer device environment — hybrid STB for the in-home installed base, mobile for second-screen and out-of-home, and seven distinct Smart TV / streaming-device platforms — through one middleware, one DRM integration, and one content origin.

Refreshed UI/UX and ad-supported monetisation

The upgrade introduces Smartlabs' updated UI/UX patterns across the SmartTUBE applications framework, with particular focus on two capability areas:

• Content discovery — refreshed navigation, refined content rails, improved on-device search, and presentation patterns designed for a service with the scale Tring now operates: 170+ channels and 13,000+ VoD titles, with the live sports component as a first-class navigation surface.
• Ad-supported monetisation — Tring's platform can now configure pre-roll and mid-roll ad insertion through VAST integration, apply frequency capping, and target by subscriber profile and device type — directly from the SmartTUBE management console. That capability gives the operator a foundation for FAST channels, ad-funded VoD tiers, and hybrid monetisation models alongside the existing subscription business — without bespoke integration work.

The combination of carrier-grade content delivery, universal DRM, and integrated VAST ad insertion is what platform-level monetisation flexibility looks like in practice: the same content that serves a paying subscriber on a hybrid STB can serve an ad-supported viewer on a Fire TV stick, with the targeting, frequency capping, and reporting all coming from a single integrated system.

• Full platform stack on the current release — middleware, CDN, transcoding, analytics, and DRM consolidated onto a single unified platform generation. Operational complexity reduced; future evolution faster.
• Device reach extended to every major consumer environment. Hybrid STB; web; iOS and Android; Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, Android TV, Hisense VIDAA, and Amazon Fire TV — nine distinct client surfaces from one integrated platform.
• 170+ channels and 13,000+ VoD titles delivered through Smartlabs infrastructure — the largest pay-TV catalogue in Albania, including 41 in-house productions and the country's most comprehensive sports rights portfolio (UEFA Champions League, Serie A, Bundesliga, NBA, MotoGP).
• Ad-based monetisation foundation in place. VAST pre-roll and mid-roll ad insertion, frequency capping, and audience targeting — configurable from the management console, ready for FAST channels and ad-funded tier deployment.
• Multi-year partnership extension signed. Beyond the immediate upgrade, the contract extension commits both companies to continued platform evolution — additional regions, new configuration options for regional partners, and integration of the 2026 SmartTUBE roadmap.
• A four-year operator relationship maturing into a full-stack strategic platform partnership. What began in 2022 as a multiscreen-platform deployment is now Tring's complete TV technology stack across every device, every content type, and every monetisation model.

“This upgrade reflects how we work with long-term operator partners — systematically, across the full stack, with each release building on the previous one.”

Both companies are in active discussions on further roadmap items, including additional platform regions, new configuration options for Tring's regional partners, and integration of upcoming SmartTUBE features from the 2026 product roadmap. The structural commitment is in place — the multi-year contract extension signed alongside the platform upgrade — and the upgrade itself has brought every component of the stack to a unified, current baseline that the operator and the platform vendor can build on together. For comparable stories on different fleets and migration patterns, see the Ucom Uplay launch in Armenia, the O2 Czech Republic Android TV migration, and the Cooptel multi-tenant build in Québec, or browse the rest of the Smartlabs case studies.