Cable operators have a big problem with silos. Not the pretty cylindrical buildings in which farmers store corn, but the kind that segregate various areas of an MSO’s business.

The incremental way in which the cable industry has evolved – adding services and gradually consolidating with other operators over time – has left it with an infrastructure characterized by a series of self-contained and for the most part proprietary operational elements that are largely separated and isolated – in other words, siloed – from each other.

Silos can be defined as self-contained centers of functionality that can’t easily interface with other systems. There are several overlapping types that operators battle against, often on a daily basis.

• The first type of silo separates business elements such as marketing, engineering and sales.
• The second separates applications centers, such as high speed data, voice and video service offerings. If operators don’t act proactively, wireless will soon have its own silo.
• The third are the devices between systems originally put in place when the operators were separate companies. Consolidation has put them on the same team, though they are playing with different equipment and, to a great extent, by different rules.

The lack of coordination between the back office operational support systems (OSS) and front office business support systems (BSS) may not technically qualify as a silo, the same difficulties in communications exist.

There are cultural and physiological issues as well. The demarcation lines between each of these technologies can be accompanied by a less tangible but real dividing wall between the staffs that work on each side.

Departmental Angst

Perhaps the most common silo is the one that separates different departments, such as engineering, billing and marketing, from each other. An offer developed by the marketing department is difficult to quickly put into action because it requires the combination of elements that are buried elsewhere in the organization.

Stephane Bourque, the President and CEO of Incognito Software [www.incognito.com] – which conducted a survey this spring that the company says revealed operators’ understanding that silos are a problem that must be confronted – suggests that they seriously limit flexibility. “The take away for us is that there is a large disconnect between what sales and marketing want to offer and what engineering is able to provide in a timely fashion,” he said by way of an example.

The industry long has had an issue with silos. It has blossomed into a problem that threatens its future as cable operators evolve to triple and quad play status and the need to customize service offerings for subscribers being courted by the telcos.

The problem is deeply engrained in how the industry operates. “Yes, they have siloed systems,” said Michelle Nowak, the Director of Cable Strategy for billing vendor Convergys [www.convergys.com]. “It is not only in the order and billing systems and product catalogs. There are even further silos in having multiple vendors in the same departments doing the same thing.”

In some cases, Nowak said, the operator may have not been totally committed to settling on one vendor. Having competitive companies installed in the same MSO – for instance after an acquisition — tends to send the message to both that they are not indispensible. Thus, the motivation to centralize on one platform isn’t always strong.

Now, however, operators are facing increased pressure in at least three areas: the number of services and applications they are called upon to deliver, the competition from telephone companies and the demands of ever-more sophisticated subscribers. This means that operators must be more strategic and less tactical. A less polite way of putting is that operators must stop playing games.

In addition to special offers and other customer facing elements, breaking down the silos and creating a flat operational structure is important because of the need to keep exceedingly close tabs on network resources.

The level of information necessary to keep things running smoothly has grown far deeper as operators got into the high speed data and voice. Another leap will be taken when they inevitably begin offering wireless services. Offers thrown together by marketing – which result in a spike in take-rates – could have consequences on the ability of the operator to provide adequate service.

“What you really want in the end state architecture is to know who the sub is, what he has purchased and what resources are used to supply that service,” said Rich Mallon, the Vice President of Product Management for Sigma Systems [www.sigma-systems.com]. “For voice services, for instance, operators need to know what he bought, what telephone switch he is using, information about the MTA [and other elements] to provision him properly.”

The good news is that the industry appears to be responding to the need to create systems capable of seeing the big picture for each subscriber. “We are seeing a lot of cable companies looking at their operational models and reevaluating how to compete in the next wave of innovation and service offerings,” said Arturo Pereyra, the marketing and business development director for Oracle [www.oracle.com]. “What is driving this is the shift to IP networks and IP-based services.”

Not an Overnight Sensation

The change is long term. It increasingly looks like it will be based on standards, and it is a good bet that the TM Forum [www.tmforum.org] will have a hand in creating them. The cable industry is a growing presence in the IT standards group. “Over the last year or so, the cable industry has really begun to adopt [the forum's] tools and frameworks and participate in the forum,” said Craig Bachmann, who is the head of the Forum’s Cable Market Support Center.

It’s a long road from a series of proprietary systems thrown together haphazardly over time to a standards-based infrastructure in which data flows seamlessly to wherever it has to go. Bachmann said that the forum will help the cable industry create common data models, common process models, common application programming interfaces (APIs) and common architectures. Those, he said, will be used to create a common framework from which bridges between operating structures can be created.

There are five active programs in the TM Forum that involve the cable industry. They focus on business processes; the increased use by the cable industry of business intelligence, data analytics and benchmarking; the creation of updated OSS/BSS; increased flexibility for business class services and standardization of call detail records.

This is a complex undertaking, of course. But the bottom line is relatively simple: The TM Forum – which works with CableLabs [www.cablelabs.org] and, of course, individual operators — is working to create an overall infrastructure in which data can be trafficked seamlessly and operators can put together best-of-breed systems spanning native systems and systems acquired in the past and future. This approach will be enable services to be brought to market much more quickly, Bachmann said.

The increase in sophistication even is apparent at smaller operators, said Alan Creighton, the President and CEO of Momentum [www.momentumwholesale.com], a company that offers cloud-based telephone and related services to service providers, including tier two and three cable operators.

Many of these companies have rudimentary and antiquated systems – but show signs of the desire to change. “The more sophisticated operators are asking the right questions now on the integration in terms of willing systems: What level of integration, what data should be shared,” he said. “I would say that in the last year-and-a-half there have been more frequent questions and more important questions.”

Oracle’s Pereyra suggested that the industry may be at something of a crossroads. Instead of retrofitting existing services immediately to a standards-based status, operators may implement the new approach as it begins to offer wireless services and next-generation video and circle back to older services at some point in the future. “They may want to get services right for one of those and over time migrate the others to it,” he said.

The key, according to rob Kunzler, the Vice President of Marketing at CSG Systems [www.csgsystems.com], is that operators have to focus on the customers. “Continued pursuit of customer intelligence solutions is key,” he wrote in response to emailed questions. “What’s more, leveraging intelligence to then better – and proactively – communicate with customers via highly personalized channels where the customer is treated as a ‘customer of one’ is vital.”

The good news, echoed by Kunzler, Bachmann and Creighton, is that the growing importance of leaving silos to the farmers is apparent to cable executives. Integration of billing, broadband and voice systems has been an issue in three major meetings during the past couple of months for Momentum, Creighton said. “Front and center as part of the discussion is the integration of billing systems, broadband and voice and what we can do [for the operators] on the marketing side,” he said. “All elements are topics of concern for some of the largest customers we have.”

Carl Weinschenk is Broadband Gear Report’s Features Editor.

For years, operators have known that there this is a problem area. There actually are three distinct challenges, all related to inconsistencies between different programming elements. The key, as the election season approaches, is that one of these issues – the volume of commercials compared to the programming surrounding it — actually is getting Congress close to acting.

The other two challenges, which can be addressed with the same technical fixes as commercial volume, are inequalities between non-commercial programming on the same channel and differences in volume between channels.

While this is a trio of old issues, they have grown worse in the past decade. Miranda Technologies’ [www.miranda.com] product manager Guy Marquis said that the transition to digital transmission has heightened attention to audio disparities because the extremes are far greater than they were in the analog world.

In the older scenarios, Marquis said, the spread between the loudest and softest audio was only 40 to 50 decibels (dB). Now, he said, the range between an exploding bomb in a war movie and a whispered conversation in a romance can reach 90 to 100 dB. That big difference is exacerbated by program creators, who tend to accentuate the volume because of the better overall quality of digital audio, which is particularly apparent in high definition action programming. “You jump out of your seat because it is really loud,” Marquis said.

Politicians have taken on the issue in a head-on manner. It seems odd that politicians would spend time on this issue in the context of the vastly more important work that they have before them. But subscriber feelings are strong – one of the most common complaints received by the FCC is that commercials are too loud – and politicians are always eager to score points on issues that clearly are easier to deal with than dicier matters, such as the environment or the war in Afghanistan. This is doubly true in an election year.

One politician who apparently sees it that way is Anna Eshoo (D- CA). She introduced The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act. (H.R. 6209) in June of 2008. Those who don’t like the thousands of pages that comprise a typical Congressional bill should be fans of CALM: The entire bill is about two pages long. It gathered 90 co-sponsors and passed last December.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D.-RI) has introduced companion legislation in the Senate. The bill has passed the Commerce Committee, but is awaiting action by the full Senate. There are minor differences between the two. Thus, if it does move forward and passes, the two must be reconciled before being sent to President Obama. This can be done via a conference committee to work out the differences or a move by one body to adopt the exact language of the other.

Thus, new laws could take effect in the very near future. To an extent, the very brevity of the bill had a galvanizing effect on the industry. The fear was that the mandate to the FCC was so simply stated – essentially, “there’s a problem, go fix it” – that the industry feared that solutions would be imposed upon it.

Eric Conley, the Vice President of Video Network Monitoring for Tektronix [www.tektronix.com], said that Comcast was the driving force behind a working group aimed at figuring out a solution that satisfied the legislation – and, by extension, the FCC – in a way that was operationally sound and financially feasible for cable operators.

“If [the FCC was] to come up with something, it may be extremely expensive and impractical,” Conley said. “The goal of Comcast and the rest of the working group was to put together a solution that worked, and propose it.” Conley had been the CEO of Mixed Signals, a cable test and measurement firm that was acquired by Tektronix in May.

Be CALM

The one piece of guidance in the CALM act was that within one year of passage the FCC would use the A/85 best practice recommendation developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), an organization that develops voluntary standards for digital television.

To an outsider, it might seem that keeping an explosion in a war movie from shattering subscribers’ ear drums and otherwise controlling audio levels is a relatively easy job – at least compared to turning a cable network into a phone system, delivering 3D television and some of the more exotic challenges that cable operators have surmounted on a routine basis during the past few decades.

That’s true – and misleading. The actual job of maintaining audio levels on a single or limited number of adjacent channels is not too difficult. The complexity comes when the process has to be replicated on a 24/7 basis for hundreds of channels.

The approach to controlling audio levels starts with a standard called BS.1770-1, which is a product of the Radiocommunications sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R). Part of BS.1770 is an equipment monitoring standard called LKFS, said ATSC President Mark Richer. The goal is to create a consistent way to translate loudness and other audio readings and metrics into a true measure of volume as perceived by listeners.

Finding the LKFS enables monitoring gear to identify audio that has an unacceptable deviation from what is known as the dialnorm, which is a Dolby Laboratory measure at which audio encoders generally are set.

In a way, the process is similar to the mean opinion score (MOS) used to judge telephone network voice quality. “You have to model human experience,” Richer said. “We’ve made recommendations on loudness measurement which includes target loudness levels and peak values. We made recommendations on audio monitoring and set up and methodology to control interstitial loudness, which is the loudness [differences] between programs and commercials.”

Finding the LKFS and the comparing it to the dialnorm across hundred of channels is the challenge – and the vehicle by which the industry’s long standing volume problem most likely will be solved.

Solutions from Tektronix and Miranda

Tektronix and Miranda both offer solutions to the challenge. Conley said that its Sentry audio and video monitoring line keeps tabs on all programming from a wide variety of sources, including IPTV.

Its volume level control functions – which in many cases can be added to units that don’t have it via software upgrade – includes tracking of overall volume, dialnorm and channel history, and sends alerts if volume is outside of parameters. When that happens, he said, programming can be re-encoded or other steps taken. It is not uncommon, of course, for producers of commercials to record them in a way that is most likely to make them louder than the other programming. Sentry offers a way to squelch that little trick.

Miranda’s Marquis said that the company has developed automatic loudness control circuitry in association with Linear Acoustic [www.linearacoustic.com] and Jünger [www.junger-audio.com], a German firm. The technology is a standard feature on its XVP-3901 family of audio and video converters. The primary goal of the family of products, Marquis said, is to do such things as convert content from digital to high definition.

Mitch Askenas, Miranda’s Director of Business Development, says that the EVP addresses loudness within a channel by decoding the programming stream, correcting loudness discrepancies and re-encoding. Currently, Marquis said, a discreet XVP-3901 is needed for each channel. Marquis said that the company is working on a higher density approach, which Askenas says should be introduced early next year.

A separate Miranda product, the IRD family, essentially keeps program suppliers honest. The dialnorm part of the metadata – information about the programming stream – that accompanies the programming. In some cases, the dialnorm number in the metadata leads misleading and in essence tricks the STB into boosting the volume beyond the surrounding programming. The IRD makes sure that the dialnorm numbers are accurate. Since no decoding and re-encoding is necessary, one IRD card can support six programming streams, Askenas said.

The bottom line is that the solutions to the volume issue don’t seem to be out of reach. What is necessary is motivation to develop and harness them. This clearly is emerging as competition increases – and subscribers are less willing to put up with annoyances from their service providers – and legislative pressure builds.

“This is a problem across all industry segments,” Richer said. “It is really important that those in the industry settle this problem, regardless of the [fate of the] CALM Act. It really does bother some customers.”

Video was, of course, the first big thing and still is its signature service. Two decades ago, Internet access became a big money maker. Voice services soon followed. Broadband – which essentially makes voice and data work better and seamlessly adds video to the mix – is the most recent high profile item on the hit parade. Taken together, these services form a deep, solid and stable business.

The next big item is well under way, though it perhaps is riding a bit under the radar. Bringing cellular signals from cell towers and base stations back to the switches or elsewhere in the network – cellular backhaul – is not sexy. But it can be very big.

Operators are deeply into cellular backhaul, and will increase their activities. “Within our wholesale business there is no question wireless backhaul is the fastest growing segment,” said Jay Clark, Cox’s [www.cox.com] Director of Carrier Product and Sales Operations. “It is growing robustly.”

Others were equally enthusiastic. “I think [cable operators] are in a very advantageous position in the market with their depth of fiber outside the urban market, mostly in suburban areas,” said Taylor Salman, the Director of Global Marketing for Ciena. [www.ciena.com] “One of the dynamics right now is that the mobile operators have to get off copper. There is not enough bandwidth and it is too expensive.”

The stars that are aligning involve growing demand and the fact that the competitors’ copper approach to satisfying that demand is old and creaky. “This is just getting started,” said Shirag Trivedi, the Vice President of Professional Services for Arris [www.arrisi.com]. “In my opinion each operator has significant RFPs for a large number of towers. It’s a huge and growing market.”

Like all good trends, cable’s promising foray into cellular backhaul has more than one cause. The most important, however, clearly is exploding demand. A bookend driver is the transition of traffic from predominantly voice to a mix of IP-based voice, data and video, which cable’s newer Ethernet-based infrastructure is better able to support.

Location may not be everything in the cellular backhaul game, but it is a lot. Cable’s fiber infrastructure is concentrated in residential neighborhoods, where the most cellular action is. In many cases wireless carriers – who have become comfortable with cable’s equipment and procedures – would rather buy capacity from them than from phone companies with whom their parent companies compete. Finally, cable operators are more likely to be aggressive in cellular backhaul because they recognize that investments are synergistic with their other commercial initiatives. Completing a ring around a city for a cellular company will enable the MSO to market services to SMBs who otherwise would not be within the operator’s footprint.

It All Starts With Demand

That’s quite an array of rationales. By far, however, the biggest driver is demand. Cable operators should smile at every introduction of a smartphone, every new bandwidth-eating service or application and every announcement of a Long Term Evolution (LTE) or WiMax 4G network buildout. Visant Strategies [www.visantstrategies.com], which recently did a study of cellular backhaul, suggests that during the next few years about 70 percent of existing backhaul links may need to be upgraded and as many as 146,000 base stations may be added.

It is the nature, not just the volume, of this universal upgrade that puts cable operators in such a good position. Cell towers historically are served by T1 lines. This was fine in a bygone era, but the great increase in bandwidth demand makes cable and its fiber far preferable. Visant co-founder Larry Swasey credits the wireless industry with working hard to improve its backhaul capacities, but suggests that cable may be the key to weathering the storm of data – and a storm that will get worse as 3.5G and 4G rollout in earnest.

“The cable operators are now in the mix since the carriers are still moving fast on backhaul upgrades and the cable operators are there where and when needed at good price points,” according to Swasey. “Wireless carriers are looking in some instances for readily available backhaul links and the cable operators are meeting that need with carrier grade services.”

Steve Hratko, the Product Marketing Manager for Mobility at Juniper Networks [www.juniper.net], agrees. In big cities, he said, the appetite of each cell tower is increasing exponentially – and outgrowing T1s, both from capacity and cost points of view. “Now you are talking 100 to 200 Megabits per second,” he said. “[Towers] need fiber for that, and not many people in this country have more fiber than cable. It’s a match made in heaven. I think they will do very well, and the build will go on for a long time.”

Moving to Ethernet

In addition to the raw capacity that fiber brings to the table, cable operators are in good shape because of the networking approach that they use works well with the mix of services that cellular carriers increasingly offer. “New carrier Ethernet protocols are more flexible in carrying this divergent type of application traffic than TDM,” said Ciena’s Salman.

Cellular operators have been slower to embrace Ethernet than cable operators, who don’t have a legacy T-carrier business to protect, said Stuart Bennington, the Director of Global Portfolio Marketing for Tellabs [www.tellabs.com]. “They are a little more unencumbered by the legacy,” he said. “LTE and WiMax are heavily IP,” he said. “The trajectory is to Ethernet as well as to fiber.”

With the need and the preference for (or at least openness to) cable’s approach established, the next step is determining whether the industry’s fiber is close at hand. The answer is that, indeed, it is. Cable operators and cellular carriers target the same consumer and small business customers and thus have a complementary geographic emphasis.

Stu Lahti, Vice President Access Networks for network services provider CCI Systems [www.ccisystems.com], said that his firm is likely to help prepare 40 or 50 proposals by cable operators this year, after only having done about 10 last year and one or two annually in earlier times. Cable operators are in the right places, and in many cases can reach the towers in a way that makes sense. “Their [fiber loops] go by the towers, or it takes only some tiny incremental built to tie it into the cell towers,” Lahti said.

What’s Old is New Again

Reini Florin, vendor Axerra’s [www.axerra.com] General Manager for the Americas, suggested that microwave will play a role in the wireless backhaul. “An MSO may go through an analysis and say the ROI models allow 80 percent of the towers [to be reached by fiber],” Florin said. “But the provider may say they need 100 percent covered, so the MSO may augment the other 20 percent with microwave.”

The bottom line is that cellular backhaul is a great opportunity for the cable industry. “Obviously it has huge growth potential,” said Frank McCullough, the Vice President of Product Management and Procurement at TVC Communications [www.tvcinc.com]. “From all reports and indications, it’s a $2.5 billion to $3 billion annual revenue opportunity for cable operators. Capex is increasing in this space, and they should have a good run for the next four to six years as the need for 3G and 4G bandwidth is required.”

In the final analysis, the wireless carriers may be hard pressed to keep up with the demand from iPhones, iPads, Android devices and other emerging gadgetry. This may mean that time to market – not the cost of the technology – may be the key, said Tom Huegerich, the Vice President of Global Fiber Engineering for ADC [www.adc.com]. “This is going to be a horse race, and a real fun horse race to watch,” he said. “Cost will be a factor, but not the entire ball game. A big issue will be who can get it out there faster.”

Carl Weinschenk is a freelance writer and the Features Editor for Broadband Gear Report. He can be reached at carlweinschenk@broadbandgear.net.

Don’t wait: The Early Bird period ends on July 9. Visit broadbandgear.net for more information and the 2010 Application.

Why Aren’t You Thinking About TV Everywhere?

By Carl Weinschenk

The traditional and primary job of the cable industry – long before it began delivering phone calls and linking people to ESPN.com and CNN.com – is to deliver an array of programming for subscribers to enjoy on televisions in their dens and living rooms.

That business remains strong. But, goaded by services such as YouTube and Hulu, the cable industry could be on the precipice (or, some would say, the edge of a slippery slope) of a gradual transition to a significantly different delivery platform.

The number of devices that folks are using to receive video programming is proliferating, seemingly by the week. Devices from Apple and vendors using the open source Android operating system lead the list. In many cases people are waiting in line for hours to buy these devices — and they aren’t planning to use them just to play solitaire. Video streaming is high on the list for many of these device owners.

Put simply, the primacy of good old linear delivery of programming to a boxy television set is on somewhat shaky ground. "Ten years hence people do not know all the devices that will be used," said Ron Frankel, the President and CEO of Synacor [www.synacor.com], a company that helps ISPs and content companies build their presence on the web. "They have to make their content available on other devices. It’s as simple as this: First there was one TV in the household, than another TV in the household. Now there is another screen. Do subscribers have the right to take screen out of the household?"

There is no reason for panic. Jia Wu, an Analyst in Strategy Analytics’ Digital Consumer Practice [www.strategyanalytics.com], thinks that over-the-top is an issue for cable operators to consider and plan for, but that the threat tends to be exaggerated. "We still see the cable companies growing," he said. "Over the top is a threat, but is has not affected the cable business’s revenues significantly."

The idea is generally accepted that the threat to the establishment is not immediate. "Hulu last year grossed $100 million, and half of that went back to the content providers," said Dan Rayburn, a Principal Analyst for Frost & Sullivan [www.frost.com]. "That’s peanuts compared to the broadcast industry…The whole idea that people are cutting cable is not happening in large numbers. Look at cable operators’ new subscription numbers. They are doing very well. [But] five years from now it might be a completely different story."

That five year window may be the key. The basic question is whether projects such as the TV Everywhere element of Xfinity from Comcast [www.comcast.com], services from Rogers [www.rogers.com] and trials being run by Time Warner Cable [www.timewarnercable.com], Cox [www.cox.com] and others are preemptive strikes against over-the-top services or initiatives that prudent operators should roll out even if the competitors that have emerged to this point aren’t considered to be major threats.

If operators consider the answer to be "yes" – or even "perhaps" — than today’s TV everywhere initiatives are not solely tactical reactions to the threats of the moment. Rather, they are longer term responses to the reality that a good portion of the audience – and the valuable younger demographic at that – will increasingly look for programming in non traditional ways. Prudent operators have no choice but to assume the new aggregators will grow more sophisticated and eventually drive better deals with programmers, just as satellite providers did a decade ago.

TV Everywhere Isn’t Easy

If the assumption is made that "third screen television" is not a flash in the pan, it becomes vital to prepare. The reality is that TV everywhere isn’t easy to do. These services present deep challenges in content management, billing, conditional access and marketing.

Another key is that, in a way, TV everywhere services could be a first step down the slippery slope of breaking apart subscription packages. While services may start out as free or low cost added features to existing programming packages, there is no technical reason that some day they couldn’t be used a way to present ala carte programming. Thus, TV everywhere could be the first step in a path that the cable industry traditionally has been reluctant to take.

It is that five year window that may have operators thinking proactively. Providing TV everywhere services is a complex job that operators have to think through very carefully on the technical, marketing, operational and legal levels. It’s not too early to start planning, even if fully fledged services are for most operators several years down the road.

An initial need to deliver programming via the Internet, said Jon Romm, the Chief Operating Officer of Avail-TVN [www.avail-tvn.com], a company that offers end-to-end video distribution platform, is the ability to compress signals and configure them into the right aspect ratio for delivery to a 42-inch plasma television or an iPad — and everything in between.

RGB [www.rgbnetworks.com], a company that offers advanced video processing systems, sees this as a two step process, said Ramin Farassat, the Vice President of Product Marketing and Business Development. It involves transcoding the initial program feed and readying different profiles – which could include multiple versions that are compatibility with Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and others – at a variety of bit rates.

A second major challenge is controlling where the streams are sent. The system needs to know a couple of things: What programming a particular subscriber is entitled to, and whether it is appropriate to send it to them where they are. Operators also have to position subscribers’ content, such as their video libraries, in a way that makes them accessible to folks who are accessing them over the Internet.

Avail-TVN’s Romm provided insight into just how complex the provisioning of content over the Internet can be, particularly when the subscriber is traveling. Suppose, for instance, a TV everywhere subscriber from New York is on vacation in Los Angeles and wants access to a Met game that is available on his or her home system — but is blacked out in the City of Angels. The system must be sophisticated enough to not deliver the programming.

Is Cable’s Best Defense a Good Offense?

In the world of TV everywhere, there is a key difference between cable operators and the other players. The telephone companies, despite the initial success of services such as Verizon’s FiOS [www.verizon.com] and AT&T’s [www.att.com] u-verse, still are the new kids on the video block. YouTube [www.youtube.com], NetFlix [www.netflix.com], Hulu [www.hulu.com] and others are just starting to dip their toes in the water.

Cable operators, on the other hand, have a huge revenue engine to defend. Perhaps they will do so by playing offense and focusing on supplementing their traditional programming with outreach to the new devices, while the telcos and emerging aggregators will focus on attacking the television. Indeed, operators’ skills at aggregating content may make them the vehicle through which mostly younger consumers of video reach the Hulu and the other sites.

"From my vantage point, cable operators are very motivated to get video to non-traditional viewing devices and mobile platforms, said Brian Baker, the CEO of Widevine [www.widevine.com], a company that provides digital rights management and other TV everywhere services. "They are less concerned with replicating the cable experience on a TV than someone like a Best Buy or Netflix." Widevine provides tools for the delivery of content over the Internet at optimum quality.

The next year promises to be fascinating. RGB’s Farassat said that as of yet tier two operators only are in the talking stage, while the bigger operators – as evidence by the ongoing trials – are being more proactive. CableLabs [www.cablelabs.com] issued an RFI on the topic last autumn, but declined to contribute to this article.

Farassat added that there are two essentially paths an operator can take: They can simply create an IP-based programming channel or two for delivery to new devices or completely rework their infrastructure for full IP operation. Farassat suggested that the move to IP could be surprisingly aggressive, with about half of the operators he talks too considering a gradual switch to full IP operation.

A complete transition to IP delivery would be dramatic. But, like much of the TV everywhere and the cable industry, the story essentially is all about the future. Frankel summed up this future orientation: "Adoption rates associated with TV everywhere is secondary at this point to just standing up a service and having it be a service consumers can really enjoy."

Carl Weinschenk is a freelance writer and the Features Editor for Broadband Gear Report. He can be reached at carlweinschenk@broadbandgear.net.

Carl Weinschenk, Editor

tru2way – the consumer moniker of CableLabs’s OpenCable initiative — is progressing nicely for cable MSOs. The reality is, however, is that it hasn’t been easy. tru2way’s survival to this point – and any success it has in the future — is a testament to the industry’s ability to change on the fly and adjust as conditions outside of its control change.

Essentially, tru2way is Java-based middleware that enables new STBs to carry sophisticated interactive programming. The promise of tru2way is extravagant, both for cable operators and for subscribers. In a tru2way environment, creators of electronic program guides and other content as well as operators, advertisers and application developers only have to write once to have their wares play across all participating STBs. Likewise, the creation of a middleware layer that any number of devices can plug into is perceived as a huge step toward making set-tops portable and creating a robust retail STB market.

The benefits for the parties at the other end of the coaxial cable – the subscribers — are great as well. The ability to write once to all STB platforms would invariably lead to a burst of creativity and myriad new applications, including those already developed for The Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) platform. The elimination of the set-tops would be welcome by subscribers, industry observers say. “This means cleaner installations, no tangle of wires, and it enables the consumer to have one remote,” said Phil Bender, CableLabs’ (www.cablelabs.org) Senior Manager for Vendor Relations for OpenCable.

Challenges Abound

The goals dovetail nicely. The dual challenges are the complexity of the platform and the chaotic world into which it was born. tru2way, according to experts, is anything but a slam-dunk to implement. Indeed, there are interoperability challenges between MSOs – and even within MSOs, according to Michael Hawkey, the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for EchoStar (www.echostar.com). “It is getting better every day, but it is not perfect,” he said.

Perhaps the bigger challenge is the roller coaster nature of the macro environment. tru2 way came along at a time when the economy was in trouble, technology and consumer tastes were evolving quickly and over-the-top video delivery was growing as an issue against which operators and television and STB manufacturers had to plan.

Regardless of the difficulties and complexities, the cable industry is aware that it needs to keep pace with the increasingly interactive and collaborative world. EBIF – which Broadband Gear Report took a look at two weeks ago (www.broadbandgear.net/2010/05/the-industry-rushes-to-ebif/) – was a first, interim swipe at this. tru2way is the more permanent approach.

The two are deeply related, but are not quite bookends. They differ in implementation and in what they can do. EBIF is a retrofit that is designed to provide rudimentary interactivity to the universe of older deployed STBs. tru2way, on the other hand, is a Java-based approach that can provide highly interactive content, and it only works with new STBs.

The two can work in concert. tru2way is a middleware layer that enables applications to be understood by a wide variety of STBs. Thus, an EBIF user agent can work in a tru2way environment.

MSOs Making Progress

Time Warner Cable (www.timewarnercable.), Comcast (www.comcast.com) and Cox (www.cox.com) are making progress on tru2way. In response to emailed questions, Steve Necessary, Cox’s Vice President of Video Product Development and Management, reported that its entire footprint is tru2way-ready.

Comcast said that almost all of its major markets are tru2way-capable, though the approach only is operational in the Chicago, Denver and Atlanta areas. Time Warner Cable did not respond to requests to participate in this story, but various reports suggest that the company is moving aggressively as well. Indeed, Richard Loechler, a Senior Product Manager for Motorola (www.motorola.com), said that Time Warner Cable has been the most aggressive operator in its tru2way initiative.

It takes two to tango, and two entities – and perhaps more – to successfully launch a new platform. Initially, observers say, there were three ways in which planners thought tru2way would enter subscribers’ homes: In consumer electronics devices and in STBs leased from operators or bought through the retail chain. To date, only one of these approaches is bearing fruit. A retail business is not forming, nor is there great interest by television manufacturers.

The most interesting element of the path to tru2way is that the model has shifted without the project cratering. “If you look at the retail presence, it hasn’t materialized as it was anticipated a few years ago,” Loechler said. “Set-top boxes have always has been an objective as well. That piece is moving forward.”

On the television side, Panasonic’s (www.panasonic.com) Viera line seems to be the only one incorporating tru2way. There are a number of reasons that the television manufacturers have to a great extent bypassed tru2way. This sector is extraordinarily conscience of margins, and is reluctant to add anything to the cost of a set without virtual certainty that their will be a payoff. This always has been true, but the natural reluctance was no doubt exacerbated by the recession.

The growth of Internet-delivered television broadcasting certainly played a role for a couple of reasons: Why should manufacturers commit to internal tru2way functionality as a greater number of viewers – and the choice younger demographic at that – are choosing to access programming over the Internet? And, from an architectural point of view, isn’t it possible that many of the benefits of tru2way will be deliverable over the Internet in the near future? If so, the need to build functionality into the set would be reduced.

If anything, things have slowed as the consumer electronics industry watches events unfold “Over the top has proven well suited for accessing IP-based video content, but there is a wait-and-see attitude for other things at this point,” said Chris Ulmer, the Director of Applications Solutions for Alticast (www.alticast.com)

Demonstrations and displays of tru2way-enabled televisions at trade shows are down, points out Peter Putman, the Senior Contributing Editor for Pro AV (www.proavmagazine.com) and the Editor of HDTVexpert.com. (www.HDTVexpert.com). He said that there is no proof that people object to STBs, at least to the extent that they will pay extra for televisions just to get rid of them. He adds that set tops are shrinking and becoming less intrusive.

Key Time Ahead

The fate of tru2way likely will be determined in the coming months. While freely saying that its major markets are ready for tru2way, Comcast would not comment on penetration of the platform. This, of course, is not a sign of success. Likewise, the Cox responses attributed Necessary seemed to suggest that the MSO’s tru2way initiative is nearing crunch time.

“We have not seen Tru2way devices available at retail in our markets, so our penetration with Tru2way is small,” the email said. It noted, however, that the operator is in the process of deploying gear from Cisco (www.cisco.com)– the 8642 HD/DVR and the 1642 HD receiver – that support the platform. The devices are “in front of friendly customers now,” the email says.

Motorola also is doubling down on tru2way. Loechler said that the company’s higher end products – the 3400 digital tuner/DVR and the 3200 single tuner, as well as their MoCA variants — support tru2way. Thus, MSOs deploying products from the top two set top vendors are likely to have tru2way capability, even if it is not immediately utilized.

The bottom line is that tru2way is still has a tremendous amount of support while it struggles to navigate a constantly changing landscape. “I would say there is a lot of life still in tru2way,” Ulmer said.

A Product Sampler

To a great extent, the tru2way and EBIF application and support universes look similar. This is because EBIF user agents can be recognized by tru2way, enabling the applications to run on both.

There are a number of products available. For instance, EchoStar is offering the T2200S HD DVR, which the company said it adds Sling’s placeshifting functionality to the device. Unisoft (www.unisoft.com) features a number of products – the TSBroadcaster 2 OCAP, the TSBroadcaster 2CDL, the TSDeveloper, the OCAP SFT, the XAV, the SoftOC and the OCAP ATE Host. Many, the company says, are written by Strategy and Technology LTD.

In addition, ADB’s (www.adbglobal.com) entire cable platform, the company says, supports the OCAP/tru2way platform. iN DEMAND (www.indemand.com) offers the Interactive Mosaic App, the Sports Package Upsell App and the Send to Cell Phone App. Alticast features AltiCaptor Middleware, AltiSynchro Application and Data Carousel, AltiInteractive 2-way Communication Gateway, the AltiVBM Viewer Measurement System and AltiRMS Remote Monitoring System. BlackArrow (www.blackarrow.tv) offers its Advanced Advertising System, which has demonstrated with FourthWall Media (www.fourthwallmedia.tv), Sigma Systems (www.sigma-systems.com) and Arris (www.arrisi.com).

Carl Weinschenk is a freelance writer and the Features Editor for Broadband Gear Report. He can be reached at carlweinschenk@broadbandgear.net.

Carl Weinschenk, Editor

Back in the early 2000s, cable operators, advertisers and related companies saw the wave of interactivity that was heading the industry’s way. They didn’t want to face it with set-top boxes that couldn’t provide more than the most rudimentary interactive capabilities to subscribers.

The problem was that that generation of STBs weren’t going anywhere. As usual, the industry set about solving the problem in a methodical and innovative way. The challenge was particularly daunting due to the diffuse nature and huge number of content sources – from programmers to advertisers — and a universe of STBs that ran the gamut from old and lower functioning to new and highly capable.

The effort, which began in 2004, has resulted in EBIF — the Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format. This, essentially, is a fancy name for a system that teaches old dogs (or set-top boxes) new and valuable tricks.

According to CableLabs (www.cablelabs.org), EBIF – which has its own website at www.ebif.tv — starts with the creation of interactive content, which is authored according to its “User Experience Guidelines” either from scratch or by use of preexisting templates. Once done, the content — in the language of EBIF – becomes an “enhanced virtual service.” The content is either bound (linked with a particular piece of programming) or unbound (independent of a specific piece of programming).

The bound or unbound enhanced virtual service is transmitted through the system to the “user agent” in the STB. The user agent is a special area of complexity, since different variants of the basic agent must be created for each STB being used. An older STB, for instance, might only operate smoothly with a user agent that creates images from a 16 color pallet, while a newer device would support a user agent offering 256 colors.

If the subscriber takes an action – for instance, asking for more information on a product being advertised – the request (after a second action by the subscriber, which serves as an opt-in) is sent via an out-of-band connection to a server at the headend for fulfillment, according to CableLabs.

The headend gear dips into customer records to approve and validate requests and get any other necessary information. The server links to outside sources to take an action, such as requesting content on the subscriber’s behalf or delivering consumer information, such as a request for more information or vote in a poll, said Jim Elayan, itaas‘ (www.itaas.com) Vice President of Marketing. Other software, such as tools to ensure that spots run as scheduled and consumer responses get directed to the right place, also play an important role in the world of EBIF.

An Important Time for EBIF

Clearly, the message at The Cable Show earlier this month in Los Angeles was that EBIF is entering a crucial time. Phil Bender, CableLabs’ Senior Manager for Vendor Relations for OpenCable, said that the goal for 2010 is to get the functionality into about 25 million homes.

Aslam Khader, the Chief Technology and Product Officer for service provider Ensequence (www.ensequence.com), said that operators are moving at different speeds on EBIF. Their initiatives are based on priorities and the size of their workforces, he said. Comcast (www.comcast.com) and Time Warner Cable (www.timewarnercable.com), Khader said, are deploying at a steady clip, with others moving a bit more slowly. “Others are coming a little later,” he said. “Hopefully, by the end of the year many of them will have [more] of their footprints enabled with EBIF.”

The EBIF train shows no sign of slowing down. Bender said that IO6, the next iteration of the EBIF standard, currently is a candidate spec. The biggest advance this next iteration will bring, he said, is to allow the EBIF approach to work with time shifted programming such as VoD.

An important deal also was announced in conjunction with the show. On May 17, Canoe Ventures (www.canoeventures.com) – a company founded by the largest cable operators in an effort to facilitate advertising in the interactive age – said that Comcast Networks (www.comcastnetworks.com), Discovery (www.dsc.discovery.com), NBC Universal (www.nbcuni.com) and Rainbow Media (www.rainbow-media.com) will launch its EBIF-based services. The first offering, a request-for-information feature for 30-second advertising spots, will launch this quarter, Canoe said.

Products are Plentiful

The EBIF landscape is nothing if not diverse. What follows is a look at several companies that are at work in the sector.

ActiveVideo’s (www.activevideo.com) CloudTV acts as a standalone interactivity platform or operates as an EBIF application that uses available EBIF triggers and processing. The difference is that CloudTV uses a cloud computing approach to provide a fuller experience than functionality available in STBs, according to Jeremy Edmonds ActiveVideo’s Director of Product Management.

CloudTV currently is being used by three cable operators, though none of them currently are using it as an EBIF application.

BigBand (www.bigbandnetworks.com), according to the company, is offering EBIF functionality as part of the Broadcast Video Services software component of the BMR1200 broadband multimedia services router. The BMR capability facilitates EBIF in a number of ways. Among other things, it delivers bound and unbound program IDs and applications to the STB. BigBand says that the EBIF component of the BMR 1200 has been deployed with a number of operators, but won’t identify which.

BlackArrow (www.blackarrow.tv) provides support for EBIF platform providers for advertising campaign management and to aid in the decision-making process for advanced advertising applications, the company says. The company claims to have relationships with multiple MSOs, but won’t disclose which ones. It has demonstrated its technology with Arris (www.arrisi.com), Sigma Systems (www.sigmasystems.com) and FourthWall Media (www.fourthwallmedia.tv).

Comcast Media Center (www.comcastmediacenter.com) HITS AxIS product suite serves application developers, networks and content providers and MSOs, according to the company. It offers developers a centralized development, launch and operational structure for interactive content. The AxIS ETV Solutions for Programmers provides a number of services, including packet ID distribution (PID), management and monitoring. Cable operators, the company says, can get all necessary elements for AxIS, including user agents and headend servers.

AxIS is being tested by Comcast (www.comcast.com), Buckeye CableSystem (www.buckeyecablesystem.com), MetroCast Communications (www.metrocast.com)and Sunflower Broadband (www.sunflowerbroadband.com). The company also works with icueTV (www.icuetv.com), FourthWall Media, MediaFriends (www.mediafriendsinc.com), FreedTV (www.freed.tv/) and EnableTV (www.freed.tv) CMC announced the programmer’s platform and a 3D application earlier this month.

The Ensequence iTV Manager, the company says, is aimed at making the creation and deployment of high volumes of interactive content feasible. The only announced user is Showtime, the company says.

The core product, according to Chief Technology and Product Officer Aslam Khader, enables programmers and operators to rapidly create and deploy interactive content, which can be managed in a scalable fashion across large systems.

FourthWall Media’s EBIF products include Ad Widgets, TV Widgets and FourthWall Media Measurement.

One Link Communications and SureWest (www.surewest.com) are using FourthWall’s products. Ad Widgets and Yellow Pages just launched on One Link (www.onelinkpr.com) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There are agreements in place to work with Time Warner Cable (www.timewarnercable.com), Charter (www.charter.com), Rovi (www.rovicorp.com), Knology (www.knowlogy.com) and the Comcast Media Center, the company says.

iNDEMAND (www.indemand.com) offers a couple of products. A sports package upsell application places interactive ads on out-of-market sports packages and another that enables pay-per-view reminders to be sent to cell phones.

itaas (www.itaas.com) is a reseller, installer and provides support for the TVWorks EBIF user agent that runs on Motorola (www.motorola.com) and Cisco (www.cisco.com) platforms. The company says that Comcast is the biggest user of TVWorks. The MSO owns TVWorks, so this makes sense. Charter was recently announced as a customer. Others are in the wings, but no announcements have been made, itaas said.

Mixed Signals (www.mixedsignals.com), which was acquired in mid May by Tektronix (www.tektronix.com), offers the Sentry. According to the company, it offers the ability to monitor hundreds of programs, ads and widgets to track EBIF-based applications.

Sentry integrates with other network management systems that use the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). In an EBIF system, triggers for bound applications are embedded in programming. When a viewer activates one of these triggers, additional data must be delivered, the company says. Sentry ensures that this happens correctly. Sentry is deployed worldwide – including use by nine of the top 10 domestic operators and Canada’s top five operators.

Rovi technology, when it launches in North America and Latin America, will work with FourthWall Media to facilitate EBIF on Motorola and Cisco STBs. The platform, consists of an EBIF User Agent and an ETV server that will provide personal information services including news, weather, sports, business, eBay on TV and yellow pages functions.

UniSoft (www.unisoft.com) is a reseller of software products written by Strategy and Technology Ltd. (www.s-and-t.com/), a British company. Among the products UniSoft is offering on Strategy and Technology’s behalf in North and South America are the TSBroadcaster, the TSProcessor, the ETV CoDF Application Inserter and the TSBroadcaster Enterprise Manager. The company says that the company’s main roles are to deliver and monitor EBIF applications. Partners include FourthWall Media and Ensequence.

Carl Weinschenk is a freelance writer and the Features Editor for Broadband Gear Report. He can be reached at carlweinschenk@broadbandgear.net.

Miss the show? Couldn’t see everything while you were there? Revisit the Cable Show 2010 with BGTV’s TECH-LIVE.

TECH-LIVE Day 1	TECH-LIVE Day 2	TECH-LIVE Day 3
Arris	Commscope	Concurrent
Cox	Ericsson	iControl
Incognito Software	Mixed Signals	RGB

The 2010 Cable Show is behind us and day three of BGR’s TECH-LIVE is now ready for viewing with news from Cisco, Cox, Applied Broadband, Motorola, Bridgewater Systems, Dreamer, FourthWall Media, NDS, S&T, Unisoft, Trident and Vidiom Systems.

Miss a day? Check out Day 1 and Day 2.

CableNET Helps Cable Cope with Change

By Carl Weinschenk

CableNET, an industry staple for 18 years, has never been timelier. Cable is dealing with an array of opportunities, competitors and challenges – perhaps unmatched in its history.

Participants show a surprising unanimity when asked why they opted for CableNET instead of (or in some cases, in addition to) the general show floor at this year’s NCTA (www.ncta.com) Cable Show. CableNET, they say, deemphasizes immediate deal-making in favor of deeper technical explorations. This leads to visits from high-level decision-makers from MSOs’ engineering, technical and business areas.

The following is a sampling of some of the innovations in the exhibit.

Backoffice Management

Sandvine (www.sandvine.com) wants operators to know what’s really going on. Data generally is optimized by and for engineers, says CTO Don Bowman. The goal of Sandvine’s new device is to couple deep packet inspection (DPI) data with other types of data to create a holistic picture for marketing and sales folks.

Bowman explains that the addition to its reporting suite ties the technical data to internal and external databases to create a more useful context that tackles this challenge. Suppose that an operator sees a slump in its VOD sales, and senses that it may be due to subscriber use of over-the-top services. Sandvine’s Network Data Analytics tools will help assess the precise dynamics of what is going on and the costs associated with that loss. This data, which may reside in a number of places, will help the operator develop a competitive response.

Synacor (www.Synacor.com) is demonstrating gear for “TV Everywhere.” The Synacor piece of the pie, according to Director of TV/Video Jim Brandt, is to ensure the increasingly broad and complex array of services a subscriber is told is available to him is correct – and ultimately what is bought is correctly billed.

This is tricky, Brandt says, because the precise details change quickly and on an increasingly localized basis. The most basic step taken by its Content Management System is to continually compare billing data to information about the subscriber, such as the tier and operator region data and the local channel lineup, which can be pinpointed as narrowly as a zip code.

Today, subscribers can request programming from a number of places. If the request goes to the programmer’s Web page, Brandt said that messages, written in the SAML, travel between the programmer and Synacor. Synacor gets the necessary authorization and other information from the operator it represents.

Maxxian (www.maxxian.com) is in the detective business with the CounterStryx Operations Center. The idea, according to CTO R.J. Juneau, is to compare outputs from the conditional access system, the billing systems and the network components that actually see traffic flows.

The result will interest MSOs – especially those that want to find unauthorized or incorrectly programmed boxes and other inefficiencies. “We put it all together and the end result is that we find boxes that are authorized on the CA system and that either are not [really] authorized or are unknown in the billing system,” Juneau says. The tests run over a significant period of time, ensuring that yellow flags only turn red when there really is a problem.

3DTV

Content is more varied than ever before, and it will end up on a wider variety of devices. THX (www.thx.com), a company started by George Lucas as a way to standardize audio and video between movie makers and the theatres in which they will play, aims to make presentations more consistent.

The idea is simple, says Geoff Tully, the company’s director of technology development: Content contains metadata that, if fully and accurately communicated, will enable playback devices to do their jobs better. The THX Media Director makes sure this meta data is delivered to the end user device. The THX demonstration at CableNET involves transmission of 3D content to an Avtrex STB.

Steve Tranter, VP of broadband and interactive services for NDS (www.nds.com), explains that a new approach to closed-captioning is necessary in a 3D environment. The challenge is to present 3D closed captioning in a 3D program in a manner free of conflicts. The company is helping to write a standard for this through DVB in Geneva.

It is pursuing a proprietary approach to 3D program guides. The company will show visitors ongoing design work. One option, Tranter says, is simple to transition back to 2D. This isn’t optimal, since it requires viewers to remove their glasses and otherwise disrupts the 3D mood and flow. It will use CableNET to display its progress so far.

Another tricky issue is forwarding and rewinding in 3D environments. The approach used in 2D scenarios — simply speeding frames – isn’t a good idea. “When you do that with 3D, it has a nauseating effect. The objects shoot by too quickly,” Tranter says. He explains that there are two potential answers: transitioning back to 2D for the duration of the fast operation or remaining in 3D but skipping groups of frames.

tru2way and EBIF

The industry is working through parallel approaches to providing high levels of interactivity and flexibility to set-tops. EBIF can be overlaid onto most existing boxes, while tru2Way only is an option for newer devices.

Softel-USA (www.softelgroup.com) is displaying its MediaSphere system, according to Director of Business Development Chip Newton. The system enables graphical data to be inserted by the programmer or operator and appear on the screen without any action by the subscriber. The content, Newton said, generally is a call to action. Newton said that MediaSphere is compliant with two standards: The OpenCable Content Distribution Format (CoDF) and SCTE-130.

Quality control is a vital element of all video presentations, including 3D. Indeed, it may be a bigger issue in 3D: This emerging format is prone to errors and traditional measurement and monitoring tools are inadequate, says Dan Donnelly, Mixed Signals’ (www.mixedsignals.com) SVP global sales/marketing He said that the company is using CableNET to demonstrate what he calls a “sidecar app” to its Sentry product line of EBIF digital content monitors.

Interactivity

FourthWall Media (www.fourthwallmedia.tv), according to Chief Product Officer Ellen Dudar, will display several of its widgets. The TV Widgets creates short and simple snippets of interactive programming such news, weather and sports; Short Ad Widgets are spots that enable subscribers to request information or carry out billing, polling and other tasks. The Ad Widgets Manager facilitates simple interactive spot creation.

Dudar said that the products all support EBIF and conform to CableLab’s Stewardship and Fulfillment Interface (SaFI) specification, which controls how embedded applications are inserted and served. They also conform to SCTE-130, a standard for handling advertising in the cable ecosystem.

D3

Motorola (http://motorola.com) is featuring DOCSIS 3.0 upstream and downstream options for the BSR64000 CMTS, reports Mike Cookish, senior director of product management. The RX48 decoupled upstream module groups four chips of 12 upstream channels each for a total of 48 upstream channels. Moto has reduced the wattage draw for each channel from 7 watts to 2 watts due to deepened integration and greater shared overhead.

Moto also will display the TX32 decoupled downstream module, based on the Broadcom BCM3215 chipset. The deeper channel bonding, introduced by Motorola late last year, enables support of eight downstream channels instead of the previous four. In theory, Cookish says, downloads running at 320 Mbps are possible. After overhead, however, the realistic limit is at about 290 Mbps. The BSR64000 will be linked to the SB6180 SURFboard eXtreme Cable Modem at the show, Cookish said.

Applied Broadband (www.appliedbroadband.com) will display the Pipeline family of DOCSIS 3.0 management tools. Pipeline uses the IP Detail Record standards. The new Pipeline Bandwidth Meter enables operators to create and enforce subscriber consumption policies. Pipeline Analytics enables the operator to see into subscriber consumption and behavior and the gauge the impact each has on system resources.

Carl Weinschenk is Features Editor at BGR. Email him at carlweinschenk@broadbandgear.net.

“3DTV presents a giant leap forward both in terms of technology and the user experience. Consumers are well aware of this and are excited by the prospect of enhanced cinematic immersion and gaming interaction,” Alex Perilla-Gayle, director of consumer insights at Zpryme Research and Consulting (www.zpryme.com), says. “Adoption will be driven by big ticket content and media events – think broadcast sports, movie night, gaming and so on. If the success of Avatar confirms anything, it’s that consumers are happy to overlook the perceived shortcomings of 3D ‘done right.’ ”

And those last two words – “done right” – are the key of course on the service provider side of the 3DTV equation. For cable engineers that means leveraging the existing network to deliver this new service and doing it in a bandwidth-efficient way, as Joel Daly, director of product management and marketing at BigBand Networks (www.bigbandnet.com) stresses. “3DTV really looks like it could become the checkmark for MSOs to differentiate themselves from other service providers in 2011 and beyond,” he says.

Frame-Compatibility and Full-Resolution

The recent attention paid to 3DTV has led to a good deal of talk around frame-compatibility and full-resolution in the technical community. While full-resolution would offer the best 3DTV viewer experience, for a variety of technical reasons, including bandwidth, it’s not going to happen soon. Frame-compatibility won’t offer as primo a consumer experience as full-resolution, but it leverages current network technology much more effectively.

CableLabs (www.cablelabs.com), which reported back in January that it had opened test facilities for development and support to vendors and TV designers to explore interoperability with 3D cable delivery systems, determined that many of the digital set-top boxes deployed by cable operators are capable of processing 3DTV signals in frame-compatible formats. A frame-compatible 3D format is one that carries separate left and right video signals within the video frame used to convey a conventional (2D) high-def signal by squeezing them to fit within the space of one picture. The advantage of such a format is that it can be delivered through existing plant and equipment as if it were a 2D HDTV signal, CableLabs said in a statement.

For further details around this topic, you can watch the BGTV video at http://broadbandgear.net/2010/03/broadband-today-from-3dtv-hype-to-3dtv-reality/. You also can download Motorola’s (www.motorola.com) guide to 3DTV there that, among a variety of other issues, highlights bandwidth questions operators are currently addressing. In addition, you might want to check out Motorola’s “3DTV Comes Into Focus” article.

More, More, More

Most people living in the real world know that 3DTV isn’t going to be widespread in an instant. And the excitement around 3DTV doesn’t mean subs will forget about HDTV. They’ll be expecting continued rollouts of HD channels along with 3DTV, not to mention all the other advanced services cable provides as well. While cable’s vendor community knows that 3DTV won’t happen overnight, they do recognize cable operators’ need to prepare for the further bandwidth stress. So, many companies are now prominently underlining how their technologies will help cable ops begin to drive 3DTV services while providing a wide variety of advanced services as well.

Take BigBand Networks for example, which is of course heavy into the bandwidth optimization game. It recently unveiled new features for its Switched Video Analysis (SVA) tool designed for switched digital video (SDV) networks. The enhanced SVA 4.0 software incorporates improved monitoring, performance and usability features to support large-scale SDV network operations. “Service providers are aggressively expanding their content packages via additional channel lineups, and supporting richer formats such as HD and 3D over IP delivery methods,” Paul Crann, VP of product management, BigBand Networks says. “Switched digital video along with advanced tools like SVA 4.0 offer cable operators fast and economical bandwidth expansion to support new services with greater visibility into the performance and utilization of their networks.”

Taking Fiber Deeper

Of course, a discussion about future capacity needs wouldn’t be complete without talking about the potentials surrounding pushing fiber deeper into cable’s networks.

“Cable operators can cost-effectively enhance existing networks to meet growing demand for hot new services such as 3DTV with the right mix of technology solutions and architectures,” John Dahlquist, VP, marketing at Aurora Networks (www.aurora.com), suggests. “One big step cable operators can take is to drive fiber deeper into existing networks, a very cost-effective way to increase capacity. Extending fiber to nodes in the network, thus placing fiber within a few hundred feet of subscriber homes, ensures cable operators have enough bandwidth to support growing demand for bandwidth-hungry services including 3DTV and other advanced services to customers. Fiber Deep is ideal for serving subscribers located in medium-density and high-density areas.”

Dahlquist also says that RFoG technology, which takes fiber directly to a subscriber’s home, is an optimal platform for cable operators in low-density areas. “RFoG deployments allow cable operators to continue using existing headend equipment, back-office infrastructure, set-top boxes and DOCSIS cable modems while bringing a robust fiber pipe to the home that can deliver any type of advanced service, including 3DTV,” he concludes.

Analysts’ predictions vary wildly about how long it will take until 3DTV will be pervasive in consumers’ homes. Some boldly say a just a couple years, while others think as much as a decade. But the majority of analysts do say that consumers certainly want it, and video service providers not preparing their networks for it are going to be at a big disadvantage given how much the technology has grabbed their customers’ attention.

And it seems that consumer awareness will only continue to grow during the next few months. The next big 3DTV buzz is probably going to be humming around the FIFA World Cup in June where ESPN plans to cover up to 25 games in 3D, a first for the sports network. So, grab those 3D glasses and stay tuned.

Editor’s note: As for the Cable Show, which is slated for May 11-13 in Los Angeles, it’s easy to predict that 3DTV will be a hot topic. The CableNET exhibit on the show floor promises to have 3DTV-enabling technologies as one of its highlights, and the kickoff session for the Spring Technical Forum is dubbed, “Depth Perceptions: Technical Approaches For 3D Video Integration.” At that session, participants will discuss challenges of 3D support in the set-top box as well as bandwidth and distribution implications for 3DTV. Comcast’s Tony Werner will moderate, and speakers include CableLabs’ David Broberg, Dolby Laboratories’ Walt Husak and NDS’ Kevin Murray.

Laura Hamilton is editor-in-chief at BGR. Email her at laura.hamilton@comcast.net.

Laura Hamilton

Optimum Lightpath, working with GetWellNetwork Inc., will supply interactive patient care (IPC) to The Children’s Hospital At Montefiore (CHAM). CHAM will implement Interactive Patient Care in all 130 beds throughout the hospital at no cost to patients. The advanced patient care service, which will be deployed for the first time in the New York metro area, will let the children’s hospital improve entertainment, education, patient safety, clinical care outcomes, and bed turnover rates while creating new workflow efficiencies for hospital staff.

Julia McGrath, SVP of marketing and business development at Optimum Lightpath told BGR in an interview that the company has been aggressively cultivating the health care vertical. In the N.Y. metro area the company has penetrated 70% of hospitals. Around Optimum Lightpath’s Long Island home base, it’s in almost 100% of hospitals, she says.

CHAM is rolling out GetWell Town, a pediatric version of GetWellNetwork’s Interactive Patient Care solution. GetWell Town will be powered by Optimum Lightpath’s fiber network and utilize the hospital’s in-room TVs for clinical teaching and entertainment. Using GetWell Town, patients and families will be able to learn more about their diagnosis, connect with friends using email and IM, and find out more about their caregivers.

McGrath calls the system "tremendously transformational" and says it takes the in-room TV system beyond entertainment and evolves it into a tool that recognizes individual patients and helps them better understand and deal directly with a particular diagnosis.

Automated patient education is an integral component of the new service, and nurses will be able to order education programs specific to each patient and track its completion all from their current Electronic Health Record system. The deal expands Montefiore Medical Center’s existing relationship with Optimum Lightpath, which has provided its communication services since 2001. Interactive Patient Care will be deployed throughout CHAM over a six-month period.

This kind of opportunity to supply new kinds of patient information via an advanced telecommunications network is just one sliver of the telehealth and telemedicine potential for the likes of Optimum Lightpath, and many other service providers for that matter. Just think of the billions the federal government has slated in stimulus funds for modernizing health facilities’ access to medical records as well as for other kinds of hospital information technology spending, and it’s easy to imagine the explosive potentials for operators that have the technical prowess to offer their nets as the pipe.

Toward the end of last year, analysts at Pike and Fisher predicted that the market for telemedicine devices and services could generate nearly $3.6 billion in annual revenue within the next five years. These factors might stand to establish 2010 as an unprecedented year for telehealth investment and development suggested Pike and Fisher’s Tim Deal, senior analyst in the company’s Broadband Advisory Services group. In its "Telemedicine and the Economic Stimulus: Broadband Opportunities in a Swelling Market" report, P&F provides descriptions on solutions offered by top U.S. carriers, including wireless, cable, mobile virtual network operators, as well as application developers as they apply to both professional and consumer end-users.

Just one recent illustration of all this opportunity for service providers in telemedicine revolves around modern telecommunications networks’ abilities to offer long-distance patient-doctor relationships. A good example of this involves a videoconferencing system that Cisco (www.cisco.com) developed specifically for health care. To read more about that and how it’s being used in the real world, visit www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_14876388?nclick_check=1.