Top Cable Chiefs Talk Tech HD Plans

[dkennedy]

Top Cable Chiefs Talk Tech HD Plans

June 01, 2006

By Alan Breznick, Cable Digital News

In another CableLabs-related development last month, the heads of Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable spelled out their somewhat divergent visions for recapturing analog bandwidth through the digitization of their company's cable systems.

Making separate appearances at the CableLabs annual briefing for financial analysts in New York, Comcast Chairman & CEO Brian Roberts and Time Warner Cable Chairman & CEO Glenn Britt both stressed the importance of introducing two-way digital TV sets and set-top boxes equipped with OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) middleware this year. But they differed over the need to roll out switched digital video quickly to boost cable bandwidth.

Appearing before analysts first, Britt said Time Warner intends to roll out switched digital video service in all of its cable systems within three years. He contended that this strategy will give North America's second largest MSO enough bandwidth to launch more high-definition TV (HDTV) channels to compete against DirecTV and EchoStar.

"We're going to carry all the high-def channels we can get our hands on," Britt said. "We'll be fully competitive with satellite."

So far, Time Warner has introduced switched digital in at least three markets, including Austin, TX and Columbia, S.C. Plans call for adding another four to six markets later this year. But Britt wouldn't say which markets would come next.

"We're putting in where we need it most," he said. In Columbia, he noted, Time Warner spent $10 million, or $16 per home passed, to roll out switched digital, digital simulcasting and its new "Start Over" time-shifting service at the same time.

Unlike Time Warner, Roberts said Comcast sees digital simulcasting as the best way to boost system capacity for such new digital video services as HDTV, even though it burns up more bandwidth in the short run. He noted that the continent's largest MSO has already launched digital simulcasting in 80% of its markets.

"We didn't think switched digital was here now ready for us," Roberts said. "So, while we were developing switched digital, we went to digital simulcasts" to reclaim analog spectrum for HD services.

While they don't see eye-to-eye on switched digital, Roberts and Britt agreed that the cable industry must finally move ahead with its oft-delayed rollout of OpenCable TV sets and set-top boxes. The two MSO heads termed OCAP implementation critical to rolling out new cable services and applications across the U.S. faster and more efficiently.

In fact, Britt likened OCAP's import to that of Microsoft's Windows operating system. Like Windows, he said, OCAP is a standardized software layer that will enable developers to write programs just once to run the same application on every cable system.

"It should open up this network to all [sorts of] different things," he said. He said Time Warner remains "on schedule" to introduce OCAP in five markets by year's end.

Roberts concurred that OCAP's pending launch is key to the industry's success. He argued that MSOs need "an open architecture" to create "a national footprint" and "open up innovation" in the equipment business. With Comcast aiming to introduce OCAP in four markets by year's end, he predicted that the industry will see "serious OCAP rollouts certainly within two years," if not one.

"We've been talking about this for too long and we don't have it in place," he said. "That is going to change."

Despite this progress, Britt and Roberts also agreed that the cable industry probably won't upgrade to all-digital networks for at least several more years. With just a "handful" of the 30 million TV sets in Time Warner households able to receive all-digital signals, Britt argued, it wouldn't make sense to force customers to take all-digital set-tops right now.

"If we could wave a magic wand and instantly make everything digital, obviously that's a great technical solution," he said. But, he noted, that's not going to happen.

Roberts confided that Comcast officials have held internal debates over whether 20 channels or 40 channels will remain on the analog tier until at least 2011. He indicated that the MSO will likely keep some level of analog service for customers who won't switch to digital.

"It would be better if we don't have to make hard decisions like that," he said. "It would be better to let consumers decide. If we have to make a big bet and we get it wrong, ouch!"

While clearly interested in plunging into mobile services, Roberts and Britt downplayed their companies' plans to bid for advanced wireless spectrum along with Sprint Nextel Corp. this summer. Although the new wireless consortium of four major MSOs working with Sprint Nextel -- Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Communications and Advance/Newhouse Communications -- filed applications with the FCC last month to participate in the agency's next big wireless spectrum auction, Britt and Roberts said the consortium partners have not yet decided whether they will actually bid for any spectrum. The FCC auction, originally scheduled for June 29 but now delayed until Aug. 9, will offer up 90 MHz of spectrum for new broadband and cellular services.

Roberts said the wireless consortium sought to participate in the auction mainly to keep its options open. But he added that consortium members, while committed to rolling out new mobile-oriented services quickly, don't feel great urgency to buy wireless spectrum immediately.

"It certainly feels like wireless is going to be very important down the road," he said. "They're going to auction off the spectrum. Why wouldn't we look?"

Roberts added that it's not yet clear whether cable subscribers really want wireless service in their bundles. Asked whether he considers wireless voice a must-have or nice-to-have element of the cable bundle, he leaned toward the latter view. "It's not critical to the bundle today," he said.

[hurnik]

Rumor has it that the Cable Card (even 2.0) won't work with switched video.

[dkennedy]

Several Ways to Skin the Proverbial Cat

Switched broadcast is on its way. But what's the best approach?

June 1, 2006

By Michael Adams and Majid Chelehmal, Terayon Communication Systems

Switched broadcast technology has been hitting the news as the next great bandwidth savior for the cable industry. As other service providers attempt to lure subscribers away with claims of a broader array of options and programs, cable operators must respond with equivalent or improved offerings. With the rapid move from analog to digital and broadcast to narrowcast, cable operators know that bandwidth efficiency is critical.

Switched broadcast is specifically designed to allow cable operators to offer a broader range of programs within existing hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) channel capacity. Consequently, many cable operators are actively investigating switched broadcast technology to remain on par with or ahead of their competitors. They realize that customer retention is at least as important as obtaining new subscribers.

Surfing the switched broadcast way

Switched broadcast technology is based on the principle that out of the (typically) 1,000 subscribers in a service group, not all available programs will be watched simultaneously. Depending on the programming mix, studies indicate that between 30 percent and 75 percent of the available programs are viewed at one time in a service group of 1,000 homes passed. Therefore, if we only transmit the currently viewed programs, we'll save between 25 percent and 70 percent of the bandwidth and capacity over conventional broadcast. This compares with statistical multiplexing with a capacity savings of about 30 percent that is relatively independent of programming mix.

As you might suspect, there is some commonality between switched broadcast and video on demand (VOD) because both require interactivity. Like switched broadcast, VOD allows a subscriber to demand a particular program and have it seamlessly delivered to his home. However, VOD is unicast (it is sent only to the requesting subscriber), while switched broadcast is multicast (a single copy of the program is available to many subscribers at once). Although additional processing is required to ensure programs are unwatched before removing them from the switched broadcast pool, the capacity savings makes it an attractive solution.

Switched broadcast thus provides a partial answer to the question of advanced digital service availability. Because of the feverish pace at which technology is advancing, the question has become not if, but when, cable operators need additional capacity.

Switched broadcast is still a very young technology with more than one possible implementation model. How cable operators implement switched broadcast is closely tied to when they implement it; and today's technology must be closely weighed against tomorrow's needs for providing a full range of services on demand.

Three models

There are three primary switched broadcast deployment models. They vary in cost and complexity, availability, bandwidth and capacity efficiency, flexibility, and ease of migration. Each model has its advantages and disadvantages, but when selecting an approach, you should carefully weigh each of the criteria on the basis of both your current and projected needs.

MPEG local switch

Broadcast switching is accomplished at the distribution hub or headend. Each distribution hub will have a dedicated switched broadcast session resource manager (SRM) and dedicated quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) resources to handle channel selection requests from subscribers served by that hub. The edge QAM devices must support a session control interface to be controlled by the session manager in response to channel selection requests.

The early trials of switched broadcast have used this model to verify and prove the statistical advantages and gains of switched broadcast. Switched broadcast channels are multicast via the Internet protocol (IP) transport protocol to the distribution hub level and then broadcast within the service group via MPEG to the set-top.

The session manager intelligently analyzes subscriber surfing behavior and determines which programs are watched by which service groups on the network. It creates a finite broadcast "pool" of channels that are watched or likely to be watched. These channels are then broadcast to the service group until new channels are added per user request.

Through a remote control and the set-top box, the user sends a request for a program to the session manager. If the requested program is already part of the switched broadcast program pool for that service group, the session manager identifies the QAM channel and provides tuning information to the set-top. If the program is not part of the pool, the session manager requests that the program be added and then provides tuning information to the set-top. The entire interaction is transparent to the user. (Note: CableCARD enabled devices cannot signal for switched broadcast channels)

MPEG central switch

In the MPEG central switch model, video is still delivered via MPEG to the set-top, but we can take advantage of the existing VOD architecture at the central headend. We add extensions to the signaling control plane to allow the set-tops to request channels. The switched broadcast signaling requests can be accommodated using the same digital storage media command and control (DSM-CC) protocol as VOD. The VOD SRM can then be extended to support the multicast session management and allow the edge QAM devices to be shared statistically between VOD and switched broadcast sessions.

While the central switch model leverages the existing VOD architecture, it also unicasts multiple copies of each switched broadcast channel to the distribution hub.

IPTV

The software and the hardware necessary for Internet protocol TV (IPTV) are still in their infancy. While H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10 Advanced Video Coding) and Windows Media 9/VC1 compete for the codec, DOCSIS 3.0 specifications have yet to be finalized by CableLabs. DOCSIS 3.0 promises downstream data rates of 200 Mbps per channel and 100 Mbps per channel upstream.

IPTV uses a two-way signaling model in which an IPTV set-top communicates with a PacketCable Multimedia (PCMM) session manager or application manager. The architecture fundamentally supports switching of any content unique to every set-top. That is, every IPTV-enabled set-top could conceivably request any content that can be delivered via the IP network, including unicast VOD and voice or multicast switched broadcast and high speed data. Unlike the first two models, the IPTV model supports IP delivery all the way to the set-top box.

While the MPEG-based models require a specialized session manager, IPTV uses a shared session manager for all applications based on PCMM. It uses a shared set of QAM resources for all applications based on DOCSIS 3.0, and switched broadcast channels are multicast to the distribution hub level and then multicast within the service group.

Content aggregation is required to allow channels to be sourced to the IP network in the appropriate format. If channels are not available in H.264 format, then conversion to H.264 can be done by the content aggregator. The IPTV set-top will support direct termination of H.264 video encapsulated in a user datagram protocol (UDP) packet stream.

The application manager also interacts with the policy server to request quality of service (QoS) resources. The DOCSIS cable modem termination system (CMTS)/scheduler manages access to the DOCSIS environment and enforces the QoS on the access network using DOCSIS service flows. The recordkeeping server collects the event messages for accounting purposes.

Weighing the options

We evaluated the three models based according to:

*Cost/complexity of implementation

*Availability or time to market

*Data capacity and throughput efficiency

*Flexibility

*Ease of migration

When comparing the three models, cable operators must consider both the short and long-term implications of the chosen method. For example, some predict that by 2008, there may be more than 20 million subscribers worldwide to IPTV services.

Future demands for flexibility and capacity could be fulfilled by IPTV. However, the technologies required to implement IPTV are not yet readily available, while the two MPEG models are closer to realization. Thus, each of the evaluation criteria needs careful consideration.

Cost and complexity

The MPEG local switch model may be the simplest short-term implementation, but it is a dedicated solution for the switched broadcast service. Switched broadcast session managers must be deployed in each hub and managed by a central manager. The MPEG central switch model requires less initial cost, but is more complex because session and QAM management is shared and combined with VOD management. Moreover, the sub-second response time required for channel change requests is significantly faster than currently deployed VOD systems. IPTV requires potentially the highest long-term investment as DOCSIS 3.0 is deployed and new IPTV set-tops are deployed. Since it creates an all-IP network based on PCMM, session management is the most standards-based of the three models.

Time to market/availability

The two MPEG switch models can be deployed in the near term, especially as existing VOD devices are enhanced to provide switched broadcast capability. Because of its dependence on DOCSIS 3.0 and IP set-top deployment, cable operators will have a longer wait to implement IPTV.

Data capacity and throughput efficiency

Data capacity and throughput efficiency consists of both transport and HFC efficiency. Existing transport systems can provide many tens of gigabits per second of capacity at a reasonable cost. HFC capacity gains are much more costly to attain and are therefore of greater importance.

The MPEG local switch model uses the transport efficiently through the use of multicast, but suffers in HFC efficiency because of the limited compression of MPEG-2. Extensions to allow multiple services to share the HFC bandwidth are possible by implementing a global session resource manager.

The MPEG central switch model, using unicast to the hub, has a less efficient use of the transport capacity. HFC efficiency is the same as the local switch model, but capacity is naturally shared with VOD, reducing the probability of blocking.

Finally, the IPTV model is approximately twice as efficient as the MPEG local switch model in both transport and HFC bandwidth utilization because of the advanced coding of H.264 and the statistical multiplexing of all services through the DOCSIS 3.0 IP pipe.

Flexibility

The MPEG local switch model is the least flexible because of limited resource sharing, and the IPTV model is the most flexible because any service can be carried end-to-end transparently across the network. The MPEG central switch model allows the flexibility to integrate switched broadcast and VOD to offer a network personal video recorder (NPVR) service.

Ease of migration

Cable operators need to account for such factors as the overall migration path and length of the migration. The dedicated resources of the MPEG local model make it an easy transition. Although a software upgrade is required to implement the MPEG central model, once done the cable operator is simply using existing components. The migration to IPTV may prove to be the most challenging, but laying this foundation will help cable operators stay ahead of satellite and telco providers in three to five years.

Summary

Although there are three distinct deployment models for switched broadcast, the future belongs to the technology that can provide all forms of interactive content seamlessly and on a large scale. Consumers will insist on integrated voice, video, gaming and high-speed data, and for the foreseeable future, IPTV provides the most effective answer. IPTV bridges the video and IP network boundary while hiding the system's complexity from the user.

In the meantime, cable operators can reap significant bandwidth and capacity savings through the efficient deployment of either or both the local and central switch models. While nobody can predict the future, we can fairly accurately decode future trends, and in the authors' opinions, it all points in the direction of IPTV.

[dkennedy]

OCAP - Who’s Capping Whom?

June 1, 2006

By Justin Thyme, Zatz Not Funny

Justin Thyme, industry insider and crackpot, provides anonymous analysis and commentary.

There’s been a lot of discussion and curiosity about the relevance of OCAP in being able to watch TV your way. I’ve attempted to put together the picture as I see it. I have no clear idea of a solution to the problem presented — all I’m doing is attempting to describe the situation. Although it has rather vast implications, the essential details are simple. How this struggle plays out affects consumer electronics manufacturers, such as TiVo, in profound ways.

Looking at this historically, when you have a dumb box on the end of a wire, cable company traffic is one way. The CableCARD 1.0 spec supported that set-up. The cableco head-end server is just pumping data down to the box which decrypts and then plays it. Once the box gets some more powerful processors, more interesting things can be done. Software can run on the box and send messages back to the Cable Company servers. This could be something simple like requesting a VOD channel, to something more complex, like running an interactive guide or a channel specific app like a Home Shopping Channel bidding & order entry application. So having some kind of software is essential for these new kinds of services. At present, in the US there is an impasse between the cable companies and the consumer electronics companies. Elsewhere, other software is being used and the impasse has been solved. The essence is that the CE companies do not wish to be the victim of an operating system dominance scheme.

The objective in Operating system wars is to create a situation where all third party vendors are creating software, hardware and services which depends on your operating system software. This was the basis of major battles of recent history- like MSDOS versus DR-DOS (Digital Research DOS), Windows versus OS/2, Internet Explorer versus Netscape, and so on. OS struggles have vast implications.

It is true that both Netscape and OCAP occupy a middle ground between the low level operating system and the application software that the user is interacting with, but they fall into the same operating system dominance strategy because it is not the position in the hierarchy that is crucial, but whether the applications are dependent on their layer, rather than someone else’s.

Being able to define the dominant software API is critical to controlling the fate of the class of consumer electronic device that uses it.

In the mid 90’s, Microsoft assembled the Cable companies in Redmond and proposed that Cable Companies use head-end and set-top box software which would do many wondrous things that are only now appearing today, such as video-on-demand and the capability to copy video locally to an STB.**** By 1997, MS had purchased 1 billion in Comcast stock to grease the deal. But the proposal, to put it mildly, was most unwelcome. After a crucial presentation by Gates in 1997 in New York, cable execs exclaimed “I don’t want to be Bill Gates’ next download,” with full suggestion of the brown shade of download which would be received. Malone stated at the TCI meeting shortly after, “Bill Gates would like to be the only technology supplier for this whole evolution. We would all be very foolish to allow this to happen.” (Source: wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/6.04/mstv_pr.html)

But they liked the strategy. CableLabs was created to essentially reinvent and control the standards in their own way with their own proprietary and patented technologies. They would control their fate by controlling the hardware specs (e.g. CableCARD) as well as the software layer (OCAP). Further, by controlling operating system software embedded in devices like TVs, they could expand their influence by providing the OS for CE devices — the role that Gates coveted. Gates didn’t have the content leverage over the CE companies. Cable did.

The implications for control of the OS in the living room are enormous… You have a horse betting program written in OCAP, and so if the gambler gets hooked on it, the consumer wants to have it on their portable device. Any vendors that want the application must license OCAP from CableLabs. Naturally, the OCAP data feed, in such a product scenario, would come from the cableco… and the consumer must pay for it. It’s a lucrative situation with a high degree of leverage.

If the internet didn’t happen along, we very well could have been interacting on proprietary closed cable networks rather than on an open non-proprietary network, with the attendant social goods in the internet case of the absence of boundaries of a global network where no single entity is in control or can dominate.

In Europe and Asia, the possibility of such OS domination by a single entity was prevented by using an open standard. In these countries, OCAP’s function is filled by DVB-MHP (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-MHP) and is used both for cable and satellite interactive digital TV applications. Although based on MHP, OCAP (www.opencable.com/ocap/ocap_dev/index.html) is controlled by CableLabs, a consortium of US cable companies.

Independent CE companies do not want to see themselves subjected to the kind of abuse of dominant market position that a certain software company has lorded over the computer industry. In the US, if a CE company wants a television that provides the full range of entertainment services, then they are being told by CableLabs that they must license and support OCAP. There is a class of CE companies who cater to the needs of Cable companies who buy billions of dollars of set top boxes- these include NDS, Thomson, Motorola, and Scientific Atlanta. These companies are very eager for cableco contracts and openly embrace these competing OS’s. Third party vendors not involved with such contracts, and who like Sony, Panasonic, and Toshiba instead manufacture alternatives to carrier boxes take great umbrage at attempts by the cablecos to cast their participation in the CableCARD/OCAP discussions as signifying endorsement in any way of OCAP.

Example: Snippy little note from Sony to the FCC about OCAP BS here: gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6518193923

There is no technical reason for requiring OCAP in particular or even cable proprietary network technology to switch channels- such as for VOD, switched channel, or PPV. The cablecos are using dominance in content delivery to leverage themselves into the provider of system software for the devices that CE companies build. To do that would be to surrender control.

Others are also avoiding the cow pie. In FIOS, Verizon has used fiber as a transport for a conventional one way cable system. But they have avoided the cable company’s strategy of proprietary lock on technology by entirely avoiding use of the cable protocols for interactivity. They are using Internet Protocol transport (IP) instead for communication back to the video head-end server**. AT&T (nee SBC)’s fiber system is using IP entirely. Since it would have been foolish to rely on protocols controlled by cableco competitors, these two telco’s chose a vendor whose interests did not compete to a high degree with theirs.

Microsoft TV, take 2. Although Verizon has chosen a hybrid scheme of two different MS OS packages, this is for transitional purposes only, and both AT&T and Verizon FIOS have chosen Microsoft TV IPTV Edition www.microsoft.com/tv/IPTVEdition.mspx as their long term software platform. Although Microsoft has its own software dominance scheme, the telcos are more comfortable with MS’s business model does not compete with theirs as the cableco’s do. Theoretically, the telcos could switch horses to an Apple OSX, but Apple so far is no show in the living room. Alternatively, the telcos could go with DVB-MBH or choose to each roll their own proprietary scheme and control their own fates at the expense of interop with other CE devices. Microsoft’s CES2006 demonstration of creating a branded experience on third party portable devices (with DirecTV) was a signal to carriers of the lost benefits if they choose an OS isolationist stance.

Ultimately, the world is moving to devices that can access content from a variety of content vendors, and so the interaction protocol and programs will have to be more generalized than those defined by particular content vendors.

When you look at what the OCAP, IPTV, and DVB-MHB software is doing — guide, navigation to multiple sources of content, player of music, photos, and a high level language for interactive applications, the feature list bears a striking resemblance to one we are all familiar with — looks like a TiVo. This little guy has a lot of chutzpah.

Advocates of the protocols or language of one vendor over another oftentimes are unknowingly acting as proxies for rather large companies whose business interests and practices have a minimal degree of overlap with the best interests of consumers.

** See Verizon filing with FCC gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6518171130, Page 6. They are CableCARD 1.0 compatible with interactivity sharply divergent from CableLabs’ CableCARD 2.0 proposal. Some mention of the motivations on page 8.
**** More information on this little MS debacle can be found here: archive2.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=2775885&&#post2775885

[dkennedy]

hurnik said:

Rumor has it that the Cable Card (even 2.0) won't work with switched video.

Verizon FiOS TV supports cablecard 1.0. So I don't think TWC will just cutoff CC customers. They will find away to work out the technology for your CC to work because they know the competition will support it.

On the other hand...hmmm...if Verizon FiOS CC were available in my area...I wouldn't wait...I would just drop TWC...

[hurnik]

Normally I'd agree, however, I think I saw that TW has a TOTAL of 175,000 CC customers (out of how many millions of regular subs)?

Given that cable's "standard" to utilize CC with SDV is to utilize OCAP, which means you'd still have to rent a STB from them . . .

Apparently, even if CC 2.0 comes out and it CAN do "2-way" the problem is that TW and others have decided to utilize OCAP for SDV.

I'd consider this a run around the CC requirement by the FCC, but then again, the FCC seems pretty accomodating to the cable industry.

Given that Verizon FIOS won't be here for 2 more years (for TV service, if the avsforums are correct), that'll be plenty of time for TW to SDV their HD content, thus forcing everyone to rent an HD STB from them.

the ONLY competition cable has is from satellite (which doesn't do CC) and SOME FIOS areas that have it (not ALL of Verizon FIOS supports CC).

That, combined with relatively low cc subs, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they leave everyone hanging.

I'd originally hoped that CC 2.0 would address the SDV issues, but apparently ONLY (and that's a big IF) if IPTV is used (but TW and I think Comcast have decided to use OCAP).

[dkennedy]

You may be right. TWC disfranchised San Diego CableCard users when they rolled out switched digital video in August of last year, see post albanyhdtv.proboards18.com/index.cgi?board=Lineup&action=display&thread=1149244609.

However, many of those San Diego CableCard users who refused the free STB for 1 year were able to keep using CC because TWC added equipment to allow it after the customers complained to their local franchising authority, see post forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/2/158132.html

Taking into account that figure of 175,000 users with cablecards, would indicate customers with digital cable at about $42 monthly, which means that TWC is walking away from just over 7 million in monthly revenue or about 84 million a year...

I don't think we have that many CC users in the Capital Region and TWC will roll out switch digital within 2-3 years in this area. I would expect TWC to start a delay tactic when it comes to CC installation requests...

[hurnik]

We can only hope the FCC will actually force them to let a CC 2.0 device function with SDV (or hope that Verizon hurries up and gets their TV service here quicker than 2 years)

[dkennedy]

Cable's Still Sweet on Switched Digital

June 22, 2006

By Alan Breznick, Cable Digital News

DENVER – Cable-Tec Expo – Sure, IPTV may be getting reams of press. But many top cable engineers here insist that switched digital video will trump IPTV's benefits because it's built to take advantage of cable's hybrid fiber coax (HFC) networks, which have lots of bandwidth to spare compared to older copper-fed access lines.

In several panel discussions and interviews here, cable engineers touted switched digital video as the industry's best way to carve out more bandwidth for new digital services. They especially see switched digital as the way for cable operators to pump up their HDTV offerings.

"I think cable operators are very well positioned," said Tom Buttermore, vice president and general manager of global cable solutions for Nortel Networks. "It boils down to physics. The fat pipe wins."

Switched digital video, as the name implies, refers to a networking scheme that allows cable operators to avoid sending every channel to each consumer's set-top box all the time. They only send down the channels requested, then they switch the streams as the consumer changes channels.

The upshot is that cable operators, who already have a fatter pipe to the home than most telcos, will be able to make more efficient use of last-mile bandwidth. This will allow the cable guys to offer HDTV channels to multiple rooms in a house simultaneously, beef up their video-on-demand offerings and serve up much more Internet bandwidth than their RBOC counterparts.

"It's not a matter of if but when," said Jim Chiddix, chairman and CEO of OpenTV. "Switched digital is really the way cable has to go."

Cable engineers also argued that cable operators could use switched digital technology to target programming and advertising to small demographic groups or even individual households or set-top boxes. They envision the day when MSOs could offer ad-supported switched channels with different ads geared at specific subscribers.

Time Warner Cable is leading the switched digital charge most aggressively. So far, the nation's second largest MSO has rolled out the technology fully in two markets (Columbia, Ga. and Austin, Tex.), switching more than 70 programming networks in each system. Plans call for extending switched digital's reach to several more undisclosed cable systems by the end of this year and most of its other markets in 2007.

Despite "a few hiccups," Time Warner Cable CTO Mike LaJoie said the company is pleased with the results so far. He noted that Time Warner is realizing "about 60% (gains in bandwidth) efficiencies" with the deployments.

"It's going quite well," LaJoie said. "As time goes by, we'll add more channels."

LaJoie's counterparts at Comcast, Cox Communications and Charter Communications also expressed support for switched digital video. But, as they have in the past, they remained cagey about when they will launch the technology across their cable systems because of more pressing corporate priorities.

"We're on board with switched digital video," said David Fellows, executive vice president and CTO of Comcast, which is concentrating first on digital simulcasting rollouts. "But we'll do it in conjunction with the Next Generation Network architecture."

Marwan Fawaz, outgoing CTO of Adelphia Communications and incoming CTO of Charter, offered a similar response. "I give it a qualified yes," he said. "We're in the efficiencies stage."

Among those not as thrilled about switched digital video are the content makers. Here's why: with cable MSOs providing only what the customer requests through the last mile pipe, they'll be able to track exactly what consumers are really watching throughout their entire network.

Content makers are worried this will give cable operators the ability to negotiate lower affiliate fees for less popular channels or drop them from their lineups entirely.

"It probably scares the heck out of some content providers," Buttermore said. "It gives cable operators enormous bargaining power when talking to content providers… They don't need Nielsens anymore."

During one panel, an audience member pointedly asked the switched digital proponents if cable operators viewed programming suppliers such as HBO and CNN as friend or foes. After an awkward silence, LaJoie offered a brief response.

"I wouldn't call it friend or foe," LaJoie said. "The world's changed around all of us."

[dkennedy]

Meet the MSO—Time Warner Cable: Cable’s Spectrum Preservationist

Time Warner Cable's chief technology officer Mike LaJoie has big plans for his company's hybrid fiber coax plant, but thanks to switched digital, these plans won't take a huge bite out of his bandwidth.

June 26, 2006

By M.C. Antil, CableWorld Magazine

Some 15 years ago, a Time Warner engineer named Louis Williamson developed an engineering concept that would eventually be known as hybrid fiber coax. And while fiber optic technology continues to creep closer to the home, there is industry consensus that, regardless of technological advances, HFC will remain a viable engineering strategy for cable operators for years.

Time Warner Cable continues to serve as a technology bellwether for operators, having been first to market with a branded high-speed data service (Road Runner) and commercially viable DVRs. Its latest development is the rollout of switched digital video, which will help make more efficient use of HFC spectrum and enable the company to keep adding digital services. We asked Time Warner Cable's chief technology officer Mike LaJoie about the benefits of switched digital, among other subjects, on the eve of the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

How has Time Warner Cable's faith in hybrid fiber coax been validated over the years?

Mike LaJoie: When we first rolled out HFC architecture we simply used it to offer a whole lot more television channels--though, obviously, with a lot better quality. The first real switched product we launched was high-speed data, and that was Road Runner in '95 or '96. Back then we had a few tens of thousands of customers, there were a few hundred thousand websites and we were offering speeds of 1 Mbps--which was unheard of at the time. And all that was accomplished with one 6 MHz channel.

Today, we have over 5 million customers, speeds as high as 10 Mbps, and there are hundreds of millions of websites. But we still only use one 6 MHz channel.

And the reason for this is that HFC architecture was designed to be segmentable, and was designed to accommodate a switched infrastructure, so I can add more subscribers, increase the speed of the product and introduce more and more sources of product when I combine switching with HFC.

But that's with data. How does that apply to television?

LaJoie: In a television scenario, if I combine HFC with switching I can offer as much programming as I want--much like websites--to as many customers as I want. And I can offer standard-definition television at 3.5 Mbps, or I can increase the speed of the television and offer hi-def at 12, 13, 15 Mbps--all without using more spectrum.

The first switched video product we had was VOD. When we first set it up we did it to accommodate 100 or so movies. We didn't set it up to simulate an actual broadcast experience, such as allowing instant channel changes, but with switched digital video we can now do that.

Your Start Over product in Columbia, S.C., is a fully switched system that records 70-plus cable channels for playback in the head-end, and allows consumers to access archived content.

What advantage does that hold for you as an operator?

LaJoie: Start Over is actually a skinnied down version of our Mystro product that was developed by Joe Collins and Jim Chiddix. And its advantage is this: When you broadcast a full channel, everyone connected to your plant is receiving that channel, even if they're actually watching it. That's wasteful, in terms of spectrum. And our research told us that of the 200 or so digital networks, only 70 or 80 might be watched in any one neighborhood. That means that there are up to 130 channels worth of bits just spilling out at the end of your system and creating a wasteful mess.

With switching technology, just like with Road Runner and VOD, you can monitor what people in a neighborhood are watching and allow multiple homes watching the same channel to share the same stream. And if a person tunes to a channel that isn't currently being transmitted to that neighborhood you can just take that channel off the fiber ring and switch it on to that particular node, a process that takes a matter of milliseconds.

What that means is that we can deliver a multichannel broadcast experience without actually broadcasting, which gives us about 60% efficiency on the spectrum. And, just like we were able to go from a few thousand websites to hundreds of millions without adding spectrum, we don't have to add spectrum if we want to go from 200 channels to 500 channels.

In essence, by combining HFC with switching capability we've given ourselves limitless capacity to offer as many channels--be they standard-def, hi-def, MPEG 2, MPEG 4, MPEG whatever--as we want.

Given the fluid nature of technology, how do you manage the development and roll out of new products?

LaJoie: We are constantly trying to look out and imagine the product profile that we're going to have to support in three to five years. And we've said we'll probably have to support up to 75 hi-def channels, we'll have to support continuing increases in speed for data, we'll have to continue to support the analog channels, because they're not going away in five years, and we'll have to continue to support standard def. And to get there, we determined that broadcast will have to diminish and switching will have to grow.

We also try to anticipate product and consumer demand without getting too far ahead of it. Because the danger in getting too far ahead of demand or technology is that you have a bunch of sunk capital that nobody can use and from which you can't make a penny. If money were no object and if we didn't have a financial responsibility to our investors, that would be one thing. But that's not the case, so we have to be financially prudent when we look at technology.

I noticed you didn't mention telephone in your product profile.

LaJoie: Telephone is just another application and, frankly, it's one that doesn't even represent 3% of the traffic on our high-speed data platform.

At the National Show this year we heard about downloadable conditional access. On one panel you called it a "sleeper." Why?

LaJoie: Basically, conditional access is a way to secure video content to ensure only those authorized to receive certain video signals have access to them. And it's a great system. In fact, our conditional access systems have never been cracked.

Now, downloadable conditional access works by taking that concept and downloading the security algorithms directly into the set-top box. This allows the box to decode the encrypted content, regardless of what system it's being used on.

What makes downloadable conditional access such a sleeper is that it overrides what we call the duopoly of conditional access systems--meaning you have to choose one or the other. Today, if you choose one system you basically have to use it on your entire network, and it's very difficult to undo that choice.

Downloadable conditional access will allow MSOs much greater flexibility by allowing them to utilize a number of encryption systems. It will also free us from having to use CableCARDs. And once the consumer electronics people adopt downloadable conditional access they won't have to include CableCARD slots in their devices. That will not only decrease costs, but increase security as well.

We're also hearing a lot about IP multimedia subsystems (IMS). What role will IMS play in the convergence of cable products?

LaJoie: The IP multimedia subsystem is a set of specifications that, frankly, are still moving around a little. The concept was born out of a consortium of telephone companies who wanted to accomplished fixed local convergence, so that a wireline carrier and a wireless carrier could converge their products. In other words, you could receive calls on both your wired or wireless phone, you could share your contact database--all sorts of things.

But the truth is IMS allows you to converge products across any series of diverse platforms, be it twisted pair, fiber, coax or whatever.

The key is IMS separates things into three layers: a physical layer, a services layer and an applications layer. And through such abstracts, it allows services to be developed that most applications will need--services like authorization, accounting, authentication, security, content management and so on. Knowing that such things will be universally available, application developers will no longer have to worry about them. They'll be there and be operable from both a management and a network perspective.

What this means is that we will be able to expand on the concept of bundling. We already know that customers like bundled products; we'll now be able to more easily bundle features of those products across platforms. We know customers like it when they see caller ID on their TV set. We know they want to be able to set their DVRs using their wireless phones or their desktops.

The long and the short of it is, when you have a subsystem that is both network aware and applications aware, it makes it a lot easier to build these apps because you don't have to build all the support services into each one. You simply use the services already being used by your current apps.

We have a lab trial going on right now, and it shows a lot of promise. It's still a little nascent, but when you look at all the companies that have ascribed to IMS technology and have begun building products for it, and all the companies that have stated they want to start utilizing it, I really think it has a good chance of working itself out and finding its way into our production numbers.

Time Warner Cable By the Numbers

Homes passed: 19.7 million
Basic customers: 11 million
Digital customers: 5.6 million
Residential HSD customers: 5.2 million
Commercial HSD customers: 216,000
Digital phone customers: 1.4 million
Employees: 32,000

Source: Time Warner Cable

[dkennedy]

Switched Digital Surges at SCTE Expo

June 28, 2006

By Karen Brown, Multichannel News

If last week's SCTE Cable Tec-Expo is any indication, the cable industry is getting turned on by switched digital broadcast technology.

From myriad booth demonstrations, talk in several key panel sessions and a flood of new product announcements, switched digital video was easily the winner in the "it" new technology contest at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers show staged at the Denver Convention Center.

"It's not a matter of if or when switched digital is the way cable has to go," Jim Chiddix, chairman and CEO of OpenTV Corp., said during a breakfast panel. OpenTV also was among several vendors staging live demos of switched digital video at their booths.

BANDWIDTH SAVINGS

In switched digital broadcast, only the video channels that customers are viewing are funneled to their digital set-top boxes, rather than the full spectrum of channels cable systems now deliver.

The technology promises huge bandwidth savings for operators and opens the door for more niche networks targeted to smaller ethnic and other demographic viewer segments.

Time Warner Cable has field trials up and running in Austin, Texas, and Columbia, S.C., and so far there are indications of a 60% bandwidth efficiency gain, according Time Warner chief technology officer Mike LaJoie.

"There have been a few hiccups," he said. "But generally speaking the switched digital technology we are using has worked pretty well."

As it evolves, switched digital has also developed a split personality in a good way.

Systems have been created to offer unicast streams beaming one video channel to one viewer and multicast, where a group of users in a local node all tune to the same switched channel and tap onto a single stream.

In Time Warner's trial, the first person in a node who requests a particular channel is sent the video in unicast. But when others in the same area also select that channel, the system switches to a multicast format and all are served by that one common stream.

That's far more efficient that limiting switched digital to one stream per user, LaJoie said.

So far, the Time Warner trials don't indicate any problems with scaling the technology, or of the system being overwhelmed by thousands of users channel surfing. LaJoie credited the switching being handled at each node, which is only responsible for a relatively small number of viewers.

"You think of it as large scale, but what you are actually managing is a small group of customers," he said.

VENDORS ON BOARD

The spotlight on switched digital warmed BigBand Networks Inc., a pioneer and longtime booster of the technology. It came to the show with a new partnership deal with Nortel Networks Corp., integrating its switched broadcast delivery system with the Canadian network gear provider's metropolitan optical networking gear.

The resulting metro-market switched broadcast delivery system is now in trials with an unnamed major cable operator.

Other vendors were already proposing new additions to the technology. Motorola Inc. showed off a new switched digital monitoring system it has developed with on-demand management software provider Vertasent. Not only does it keep track of what channels are offered in switched digital, but it also monitors viewer usage.

That includes setting up multicast streams if more than one customer in a given service node is tapping the same channel. When a viewer requests a particular channel, the management system can check to see if other nearby users are also watching that channel and join the new viewer to the stream already in progress. On the flip side, it also maintains a viewer's stream of others tune away from a channel.

RGB Networks Inc., meanwhile, was talking about adding a dynamic bandwidth element, allowing switched digital video systems to dial up or cut back bandwidth assigned to a particular video stream.

A mainstay strategy in standard digital TV broadcast now using statistical multiplexers to funnel more bandwidth to high action pictures such as sports, while cutting back relatively static video such as a news broadcast it can more efficiently use total bandwidth and squeeze more streams into the same channel.

RGB is developing high-capacity statistical multiplexer and ad-insertion processor that would sit near a switched digital broadcast node, feeding streams at variable bitrates to subscribers. That product, which could supply 14 to 16 video streams in the bandwidth now fielding 10 constant-bitrate streams, is now in development and should debut it at the end of the year, vice president of product marketing Ramin Farassat said.

Others argue that variable bitrate could complicate this emerging technology.

HARMONIC CAUTION

At the morning breakfast panel eyeing switched digital broadcast, Nimrod Ben-Natan, vice president of solutions for Harmonic Inc.'s convergent systems division, said there were other options including bandwidth-cutting MPEG-4 (Moving Picture Experts Group) codecs that could supply a more immediate improvement.

"I think it's going to complicate the architecture," he said of switched digital broadcast, "and before that shows up MPEG-4 is going to show up to improve the bandwidth."

RGB's Farassat, though, said video content coming down from satellite feeds is in variable bitrate format, so translating it into fixed-bandwidth video streams is actually more of a complication. Cutting that process out could simplify the delivery, he said.