Author Archives: Tim Hermes
Tim’s Top 10 List, nah, Make it 12
Why does Letterman have all the fun? It's August, it's slow, and the fish ain't biting. Tim's Top 10 List, nah, Make it 1
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Over-the-Top Is Off the Hook
Yet another day, yet another acronym for us cable-philes. Over-the-Top. This one I like. And I don't. At the same time. Kind of like being a Washington Redskins fan over the past decade.
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Who’s Got the Juice?
A legitimate question…
For us publisher-types, trade shows and conferences usually have us drooling. All those potential customers and advertisers in one place, all those contacts and big-wigs we can schmooze with. I love trade shows, although in 15 years I have yet to attend the “perfect” trade show. Many have come close. For the average [...]
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The Holy Grail of Broadband Technology
Vendor sales people across the country speak of it only in the dark of night. Some dare not speak its name at all. After all, this fleeting digital apparition appears mainly during MSO budgeting season (which is right now for the main operators) and then recedes into its hermitage where sales reps across the globe [...]
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Little White Cables for You and Me
OK. If you are lucky enough to live in the Hoosier state, you have a bounty of good fortune. A perennially good football team (despite a not-so-smart coach), the Indy 500, John Mellencamp, Farm Aid, the occasional tornado (admit it … you want to see one too), friendly people, great history, The Jackson 5, amber [...]
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I Attempt – And Fail – To Answer the Big Question
So this question knocked me out: "Why do you have 'Broadband' in your title if you're a cable telecom website? Broadband isn't cable. Broadband is telephony." Uhhh...ok....
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Alive on Planet X
The X-Men, X-Rays, The X-Factor, Generation X, X (the band for those of you who went to college in the eighties), XTC (ditto), Racer X (who, incidentally, was so much cooler than Speed Racer), X marks the spot. And now...xfinity or XFINITY.
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Acronymplistic. That’s Me.
EBIF.
What?
Here I am, walking around the show floor at NCTA, minding my own business, when EBIF rears its little profitable head. What the hell is EBIF? It practically ran up and bit me on the leg. I just finished learning about QAM, DOCSIS-with-a dot-not a point, GPON, FTTX, FTTH, QoE, QoS, yada yada. Now this one sounds just as important.
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Brian Roberts Look Out!
You have competition, sir.
My 10-year-old son is not your normal kid. Granted he likes football (Redskins thankfully) doesn’t like girls, loves video games, hates homework, and has every Lego toy imaginable. And when he had to present who his personal idol was at school, he presented me, his old man. I floated for a [...]
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3DTV N U N ME N NCTA
Acronyms combined with tweet-language - can it get any better? Oh yes it can. After what seemed to be a fairly light afternoon on Tuesday, the Cable Show roared on Wednesday with a packed house - and the big buzz - from one end of the floor to the other, was 3D.
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The LA Express
...and it all starts next week. And it will go by in a flash. Possibly in 3DTV... Many people have wondered about the dividing of annual cable trade shows into two big events - Cable Connects Spring and Cable Connects Fall. And while I cover mostly the vendor community in this blog, I have seen the pros and cons.
Come Back Soon…
Writers. I give them credit. Making a living out of words - and crafted words at that - is an enviable living. One that I doubt I could ever do. Oftentimes it's a tough gig, and when you are a journalist specializing in a specific vertical discipline like sports, business, or technology, it can get downright ruthless.
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Hey, it’s My Horn…
Hey, it’s My Horn…
So let me blow it! Two months ago here at BGR, we undertook a reader survey to best gauge how well we are serving our subscribers. We encouraged honest feedback and wanted to get a better grip on not only what BGR IS, but where it should be going.
Let’s face it. [...]
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And Now, Ladies and Gents, the Big G
Speed. Speed. Speed Speed.
“Think Big with a Gig” is Googles little chant – a plan to to start “trialing” an experimental fiber optic network delivering FTTH at one Gig per second.
That is really fast. Now, think about all the times you were on a phone, and you said to a colleage “sorry my [...]
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Taking a World View
Can it be True? Well, can it?
A press release hit my in-box March 1 where UK-based STB provider PACE announced it was now the second largest set-top provider in the world. Wow. I woulda never guessed it because in my usual way of thinking, if its not used primarily in a US system it must [...]
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V+V+D =$
There’s gotta be a formula. Somewhere some big-brain types are hunched over statistical software crunching numbers on the Big Question – and one that I, frankly, probably have wrong.
If I understand correctly cable operators get their revenue in two key ways – subscriber revenue through monthly service fees, and local and online ad revenue [...]
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3DTV and Me (and you, and whoever else has it)
Car keys. That's what I think about when I think of 3DTV. Go with me on this. I can NEVER find my car keys (or phone, or wallet, or sunglasses) when i need them. It's a source of constant embarrassment for me. How can a silly little piece of metal ruin my day so often?...
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OK, There IS a Difference
The winter blues. Never had em so bad after the winter we have had here in DC. So last weekend I grabbed the wife, kid and pot-roast-with toenails we call our bulldog London and headed south to our little beach place that we had used our son’s college savings to afford. ANYTHING and I mean [...]
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Putting a Contract Out on Contractors