Cable operators love the idea of delivering content to televisions, computers and mobile devices. More precisely, they love the revenue these services will create. What they don’t love — or, more precisely, what their technical staffs don’t love – is the complexity involved in making it all happen.

During the first months of 2011, the industry’s effort to remake itself into a provider of three-screen services is at once becoming more complex and a bit simpler.

The simplification involves moves by vendors to use the three common adaptive streaming (AS) protocols in a manner that requires as little duplication of effort as possible. The complexity involves an issues related to AS, which is the desire on the part of some operators to create their own content delivery networks (CDNs). Continue reading →