(Magazine) CED Magazine 2010 06 June

THE PREMIER MAGAZINE OF BROADBAND TECHNOLOGY | www.CEDmagazine.
com | JUNE 2010
Laaaaaaaaaaadies and gentlemen!

Welcome to The Cable Show! In the center
ring, thrill to television extricated from its planar
confinations into the third dimension! Gasp as
Canoe Ventures puts through its paces a working
national dynamic advertising insertion system!
VOD ad insertion:
Its just business
The technology behind dynamic
ad insertion in VOD is proven
and available from any number
of vendors.
CDN architectures
grease VODs path
>
visit www.jdsu.com/DOCSIS
inperspective
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Brian Santo
brian.santo@advantagemedia.com
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
SENIOR EDITOR Mike Robuck

michael.robuck@advantagemedia.com
MANAGING EDITOR Traci Patterson
traci.patterson@advantagemedia.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Craig Kuhl, craigkuhl@comcast.net
CONSULTING ENGINEERS
CHAIRMAN Dr. Walt Ciciora, Technical Consultant
The Cable Show, once upon a time devoted

almost exclusively to programming concerns, is now equally
about the technology, leading to the occasional grumble that
the show has been overrun by vendors. Well, yes. In fact, The
Cable Show would be a far-diminished spectacle without the
engineers.
That was especially the case in Los Angeles a couple of
weeks ago, where the programmers seemed almost sedate.
Disney even seemed like it was trying to be unobtrusive.
By Brian Santo
Meanwhile, the technology booths were jumping with
EBIF, D3, 3-D and more.
Editor-in-Chief
Odd then Cable Connection in LA marked the secIn
ond iteration of the forced merger of The Cable Show and
the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies (ET).
Los Angeles,
Despite at least half of the excitement at the recent show
being generated by technologists, the venerable ET was
the
entirely subsumed.
Or, to be less diplomatic: dead. A few folks insist that ET
venerable
lives on, in the form of The Cable Shows Spring Technical
Forum. But only a few of those sessions were produced in
ET was
partnership with the SCTE. The NCTA always had some
entirely
technical sessions anyway. So why pretend any longer?
ET was pretty much the only event the cable industry
subsumed
had that was purely technical, had open attendance and
was largely free from the distractions inherent in showfloor commotion. It would be impossible to calculate the ROI on a quiet forum for a free
flow of ideas, but on the other hand, only a fool would dismiss the value. Show consolidation
certainly has much to recommend it, but when it comes to ET, this experiment failed.
Interestingly, because cables Powers That Be forced a show consolidation, the number
of shows in which cable will be compelled to participate is going to increase again. Next
January, CES is going to host a Telecom Pavilion, where it will feature the latest in 3G/4G,
broadband, content, copper- and fiber-based networks, fixed-mobile convergence, IPTV,
IMS, triple play, quad play, security and VoIP.
CES is, of course, a barely controlled circus. But there you go. Literally.
To read past columns, visit www.CE Dmagazine.com
MEMBERS
Chris Bowick, CTO & SVP of Engineering,
Cox Communications (Ret.)
Jim Chiddix, Vice Chairman, Vyyo/OpenTV board member
Wayne Davis, CEO, Vyyo
Marwan Fawaz, CTO, Charter Communications
David Fellows, Executive Fellow, Comcast Corp.
Nick Hamilton-Piercy, Senior Technology Advisor,
Rogers Communications (Ret.)
Dave Large, President, David Large Consultants Inc.
Joe Van Loan, SVP of Technology & COO,
Mediacom LLC (Ret.)
SALES
PUBLISHER/WESTERN ACCOUNT MANAGER Rhonda Rhodes
rhonda.rhodes@advantagemedia.com
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER/
EASTERN ACCOUNT MANAGER Bill Parker
bill.parker@advantagemedia.com
MARKETING DIRECTOR Don Grennan
don.grennan@advantagemedia.com
ART & PRODUCTION
ART DIRECTOR Debbie Jorgensen
debbie.jorgensen@advantagemedia.com
PRODUCTION MANAGER Angela Coleman
angela.coleman@advantagemedia.com
ADDRESS
Mailing address: 6041 South Syracuse Way,
Suite 100, Greenwood Village, CO 80111
Fax: 303-770-1458
WEB SITE: www.CEDmagazine.com
CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIBER SERVICES
DIRECTOR AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
Don Ross; 973/920-7477
CUSTOMER SERVICE
For subscription inquiries and changes of address:
e-mail: abced@omeda.com
Customer Service, Advantage Business Media
P.O. Box 3574, Northbrook, IL 60065-3574
Tel: 847/559-7560; Fax: 847/291-4816
For custom reprints and electronic usage,
contact Diana Sholl of YGS Group
800-290-5460 x100 or via e-mail at
ced@theygsgroup.com
ADVANTAGE BUSINESS MEDIA
RICH REIFF CEO
GEORGE FOX President
THERESA FREEBURG Chief Financial Officer
SUSANNE FOULDS VP Human Resources
CED is an officially recognized publication of the SCTE.
CED (ISSN #1044-2871, USPS #330-510), (GST Reg. #844559765) is a registered trademark of and is published 10 times a year (monthly, except bi-monthly in March/April and November/December) by Advantage Business Media, 100 Enterprise Drive, Suite 600, Box 912,
Rockaway, NJ 07866-0912. All rights reserved under the U.S.A., International, and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, electronic recording
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Advantage Business Media or the Editorial Board. Periodicals Mail postage paid at Rockaway, NJ 07866 and at additional mailing
offices. POSTMASTER: Send return address changes to CED, P.O. Box 3574, Northbrook, IL 60065. Publication Mail Agreement No. 41336030. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Imex/Pitney Bowes, P.O. Box 1632, Windsor Ontario N9A 7C9. Subscription Inquiries/Change
of Address: contact: Omeda Customer Service, P.O. Box 3574, Northbrook, IL 60065-3574, 847-559-7560, Fax: 847-291-4816, email: abced@omeda.com. Change of address notices should include old as well as new address. If possible attach address label from recent issue. Allow
eight to 10 weeks for address change to become effective. Subscriptions are free to qualified individuals. Subscriptions rates per year are $64 for U.S.A., $85 for Canada, $92 for Mexico & foreign air delivery, single copy $7 for U.S.A., $10 for other locations, prepaid in U.S.A. funds drawn
on a U.S.A. branch bank. Notice to Subscribers: We permit reputable companies to send announcements of their products or services to our subscribers. Requests for this privilege are examined with great care to be sure they will be of interest to our readers. If you prefer not to receive
such mailings, and want your name in our files only for receiving the magazine, please write us, enclosing your current address mailing label. Please address your request to Customer Service, P.O. Box 3574, Northbrook, IL 60065-3574. Printed in U.S.A.: Advantage Business Media does
not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in the material contained herein, regardless of whether such errors result from negligence, accident or any other cause whatsoever. The editors make every reasonable effort to
verify the information published, but Advantage Business Media assumes no responsibility for the validity of any manufacturers claims or statements in items reported. Copyright 2010 Advantage Business Media. All rights reserved.
www.CEDmagazine.comjune2010
For detailed specifications, please visit: www.atxnetworks.com/maxnet2
Tx
Tx
Rx
Rx
Optimal transmission
on a miniature scale
Optical Transmission Platform with Integrated RF Management

Functionality Optimizes Rack Space Efficiency
Save up to 300% rack space over competitive gear
1310 and 1550 nm forward path transmitters with integrated 8-way combiner
Return path RXs with integrated 8-way splitter
10 TXs or dual RXs per 3RU chassis
Integrated active combiner technology in TX eliminates narrowcast network RF level

concerns and optimizes isolation
Hot-swappable, redundant power supplies
Eliminates racks worth of legacy 4- or 8-way narrowcast passives
See back for details on new ultra-dense narrowcast amplifier modules.

Products or features contained herein may be covered by one or more U.S. or foreign patents.
NEW
Ultra-dense
Narrowcast
Amplifier Modules
Up to 20 modules with redundant, hot-swappable power supplies in 3RU
Add RF gain to eliminate narrowcast network RF level concerns and optimize isolation
Plug-in pad/EQ on each port
Offerings include:
MPSA8X2: Lossless 8-way combiner add up to 12 dB more level before the TX
MPSA2-12: Dual amplifier package (40 amplifiers/3RU) add up to 12 dB more level before the TX
Also included in this offering:
MPSABCNC: Passive broadcast port with active lossless 8-way combiner in one module
MPSRX-8: Return path RX with integrated 8-way splitter
ATX offers a full suite of products

to meet your optical and RF signal
management needs.
T: 800-565-7488 E: support@atxnetworks.com
W: www.atxnetworks.com/maxnet2
Products or features contained herein may be covered by one or more U.S. or foreign patents.
june 10
CED MAGAZINE
Features
Volume 36, number 5
Departments
UPFRONT
6 Time Warner Cable demos 290 Mbps broadband
6 Comcast joins launch of Canoe iTV, aka SelecTV
6 The rise of the coax-cutters
8 First-quarter earnings wrap-up
10 Cox debuts new user interface
10 Comcast retools guide for SA boxes
FEATURES
28 VOD: MEETING VOD GROWTH PROJECTIONS
WITH A CDN ARCHITECTURE
COLUMNS
3 IN PERSPECTIVE
12 MEMORY LANE
13 CICIORAS CORNER
14 OPEN MIC
15 ENGINEERING-WISE
34 CAPITAL CURRENTS
16
Laaaaaaaaaaadies and gentlemen! Welcome to The Cable Show! In the center ring,
thrill to television extricated from its planar confinations into the third dimension!
Gaze in awe and wonderment as eight count em! eight DOCSIS 3.0 channels
confraternate for an unheraldedly expeditious 290 megabits per second! Gasp as
Canoe Ventures puts through its paces a genus and species of beast never before
oculated by mortal eyes: a working national dynamic advertising insertion system!
By Brian Santo, Editor-in-Chief; Mike Robuck, Senior Editor; and Craig

Kuhl, Contributing Editor
24 Giving VOD advertising the business
The technology behind dynamic ad insertion in VOD is proven and available

from any number of vendors. These systems have been successfully implemented by operators all up and down the size spectrum.
By Brian Santo, Editor-in-Chief
CEDjune2010
ALWAYSON
32 New products
33 Web extras
33 Ad index
33 Company list
UPfront
Latest industry news and insights
DOCSIS 3.0
Time Warner Cable demos 290 Mbps broadband

Time Warner Cable quietly demonstrated
DOCSIS 3.0 broadband connectivity of 290
Mbps downstream and 90 Mbps upstream
in its booth at The Cable Show.
This is the first time these speeds have been
shown outside of labs, said a TWC insider.
The demonstration used an Arris CMTS
and cable modems from both Arris and
Motorola. The demo was live, connected to
TWCs Los Angeles headend.
The company achieved the speeds using
8 x 4 channel bonding. With TWCs top

tier rated at 50/5, the demo showed speed
increases of greater than fivefold on the
downstream and 18-fold on the upstream.
The TWC engineer compared the MSOs
achievement with the 300 Mbps that Bell
Labs demonstrated on DSL recently.
What theyve got is something in the lab
that goes 10 feet, and what were showing is
live from our headend 22 miles away. We can
compete with DOCSIS, he observed.
Comcast joins launch of

Canoe iTV, aka SelecTV
Comcast Networks, Discovery
Communications, NBC Universal and
Rainbow Media are the initial launch partners for Canoe Ventures national interactive TV service.
The network partners can offer Canoes
suite of standards-based iTV marketing
solutions, beginning with a request for information (RFI) application, which allows
viewers to request commercial material beyond an initial 30-second spot. RFI is scheduled to begin deploying later this quarter.
The cable industry also banded together
to give interactive TV applications a consumer-facing brand name: SelecTV.
The new brand name, SelecTV, was
designed to help drive consumer awareness of interactive television. The SelecTV
icon will appear onscreen when a viewer is
watching programming that has interactive
TV content. The hoped-for end result is
that viewers will interact more with cable
companies, programmers, advertisers and
content sponsors across all of the major
6
CEDjune2010
cable systems in the nation.

SelecTV is the result of an industry-wide
brand initiative led by Canoe Ventures, in
concert with the Cabletelevision Advertising
Bureau (CAB), CTAM, Cable Television
CableLabs and the six largest cable operators in the nation Bright House Networks,
Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox and
Time Warner Cable, which are also investors in Canoe Ventures as well as national
advertising and cable television programming partners.
Canoe spearheading SelecTV on behalf
of the industry has resulted in cable taking
an important step toward delivering national
iTV capabilities with one common face for the
viewer, said Steve Burke, COO of Comcast.
Canoe Ventures is working with cable
companies, programmers and industry
organizations on implementation guidelines, processes and solutions to establish
ubiquity and standardization, while at the
same time maintaining flexibility for how
viewers experience iTV.
The rise of the

coax-cutters
The first cord-cutters were those who
cut their traditional phone cords in favor
of mobile phone services. But now theres
a new category: the coax-cutter.
According to the Yankee Group, these
consumers who cut their pay-TV services
and use their PCs, game consoles and
other connected devices to access video
programming are growing rapidly.
The number of coax-cutters is increasing due to three main factors: a new wave
of connected TVs, ever-escalating payTV prices and the advent of connected
consumer devices that can act like set-top
boxes, most notably the Sony PlayStation 3,
Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360.
At the most basic level, the decision
to cut off pay-TV services is an economic
one, said Vince Vittore, principal analyst
with the Yankee Group and co-author of
the report. As programmers continue to
demand ever-higher fees, which inevitably
get passed on to consumers, we believe
more consumers will be forced to consider coax-cutting.
The Yankee Group

report found that:
The pay-TV market is flat-lining.
Subscribers in Western Europe
will increase just 3.9 percent from
2010 to 2013; U.S. subscribers are
on a similar path, growing just 6.9
percent in the same timeframe.
Age and connected device usage
play a role. Consumers who do cut
off pay-TV services are most likely
between the ages of 18 and 34 and
heavy mobile users or gamers.
Consumers will turn to other
devices to skirt pay-TV services.
Fifty-six percent of households
have at least one HDTV, and 43
percent have at least one game
console.
above and beyond

the competition
Sencore is the leader in high quality video delivery

solutions, featuring reliable products designed to be
interoperable in even the most complex environments.
Sencore is positioned to be your engineering partner of choice.
Solutions for:
low latency when delivering live content
delayed play of video
simultaneous monitoring and video measur
urement
and much more...
To prove it, give us a call at 605.339.0100, or email us at sales@sencore.com today to discuss your application
or problem. Our highly trained video engineers will help provide solutions right over the phone, or make
arrangements to bring the solution to you and test it in your facility.
605.339.0100
www.sencore.com
UPfront
First-quarter earnings wrap-up
Cable operator index
RGU adds outpace basic sub losses ~10:1.
Operator
Total
revenue
Net
income
Basic video
subs added
Digital video
subs added
Broadband
subs added
Voice subs
added
Net RGUs
added
Total
RGUs
Comcast
$9.2B
$866M
(82,000)
427,000
399,000
273,000
1M
66.5M
TWC
$4.6B
$214M
(42,000)
102,000
221,000
97,000
378,000
35.6M
Cablevision
$1.8B
$74.2M
900
12,000
42,600
42,300
97,900
10.7M
$1.7B
$24M
(23,400)
95,800
103,700
66,900
243,000
12.9M
$368.7M
$8.5M
(4,000)
21,000
26,000
13,000
56,000
3M
Charter
Mediacom
Insight
$261.4M
N/A
6,400
18,500
14,700
1,300
40,800
2.1M
RCN
$190.1M
$4.9M
(3,000)
N/A
3,000
(3,000)
(3,000)
896,000*
Knology
$110.1M
$2.5M
N/A
1,660
5,815
2,317
9,792
703,663
* Excludes digital subs
Source: Company data
Cable competition index

Wireless broadband remains the biggest driver in the biz.
Operator
Total
revenue
AT&T
$30.6B
Verizon
$26.9B
DirecTV
$5.6B
Dish Network
$3.1B
Net
income
Video subs
added
Broadband
subs added
Wireless subs
added
Net RGUs
added
Total RGUs
$2.5B
231,000
255,000
1.9M
N/A
N/A
$400M
168,000
90,000
1.5M
N/A
N/A
$558M
100,000
N/A
N/A
100,000
18.7M
$231M
237,000
N/A
N/A
237,000
14.3M
$3B
$38M
11,000*
40,000
84,000**
N/A
N/A
Windstream
$848M
$74M
12,000
36,000
N/A
25,000
4.7M
SureWest
$60.2M
$527,000
(500)
(600)
N/A
(700)
228,500
Qwest
* DirecTV subs
** Verizon Wireless subs
Equipment supplier index

3-D isnt driving much of anything yet.
Vendor
Total
revenue
Year-over-year
percent change
Net
income
Year-over-year
percent change
Cisco*
$10.4B
27%
$2.2B
63%
$5B
(6%)
$69M
N/A
$912.6M
19%
$163.1M
N/A
JDSU*
$332.9M
19%
($11.9M)
N/A
Arris
$266.7M
5%
$19M
47%
Harmonic
$84.8M
25%
$5.3M
N/A
BigBand
$32.2M
(27%)
($8.8M)
(N/A)
(30%)
Motorola
Juniper
Vecima*
Concurrent*
CEDjune2010
$30M
49%
$900,000
$14.6M
(24%)
($974,000)
N/A
* Financials reported are for Q3 2010
UPfront
Cox debuts new user interface
Coxs new user interface fits it to a T, as
well it should since the cable operator has
spent the last four years designing its new
Trio program guide from the ground up.
Trio is one leg of a tour-de-force package
that Cox announced in May, which also includes a whole-home DVR service and a new
digital tier called Plus Package.
The Trio guide was developed by Cox and
NDS, and its whole method of operation is
based around making content easier to find,
view and personalize for Coxs subscribers.
In response to customers frustration in finding and viewing content
across linear and on-demand guides, which
often means switching back and forth between different guides that have different
functions and displays, Cox started to drill
down on focus groups in 2006. Aside from
coming up with a more customer-friendly
UI, Cox also wanted it to be OCAP-based.
Lisa Pickelsimer, Coxs executive director
of video products, said the company worked
with frog design, a global innovation firm, on
creating a user interface that literally started
as a blank piece of paper that Cox customers filled in.
The Trio guide, which is the user interface
for the Plus Package tier, features three panes
to make content easier to find and view. The
left window lists the channels vertically in
numerical order, while the middle pane shows
programs on the selected channel. The third
pane gives a detailed description of the program selected in the middle pane.
The on-demand listings include titles, poster

art and program description information, all in the
three panes of a single Trio
screen, making navigation
and selection of on-demand
content easier. Pickelsimer
said the richer guide information was from Tribune
Media Services.
Trio also gives customTrio features three panes to make content easier to find and view.
ers the ability to sort available program information
in a grid guide view, a theme
view, a high-definition programming view, a Zone
channels view for genrerelated programming such
as sports and a favorite
channels view.
And to really drill down
through the clutter of
content, Trio lets users
search and browse reThe guide allows customers to search through linear and on-delated content across three
mand titles based on title, actor and keyword.
platforms: linear airings, ondemand titles and DVR recordings.
the Internet is on the radar screen.
Up to eight users in a home can personalize
While Cox developed Trio with NDS,
their viewing experience by selecting favorite
Steve Tranter, NDS vice president of broadchannels and customizing iTV applications.
band and interactive, said NDS is licensed to
Future iterations of the guide will include
sell the modular, open guide system to other
social networking, which would allow a friend
MSOs, which would include the use of NDS
to suggest a program, while a Cox spokesintegration team in order to customize the
woman said searching for related content on
guide to each MSOs requirements.
Comcast retools guide for SA boxes

Comcast is gearing up to deploy a new interactive program
guide for its Cisco/Scientific Atlanta markets. According to a
blog by Ted Hodgins, Comcasts senior director of video product development, the new guide, which is internally known as
S25, is currently being tested on SA set-top boxes by Comcast
employees in Connecticut.
Comcast spokeswoman Ellen Mellody said the guide will
be launched in parts of Connecticut in June and then rolled out
market by market to the rest of the Cisco/SA markets this year.
The guide will launch via a software download that pushes
out the new codes. Roughly 80 percent of Comcasts markets
are Motorola, with the rest Cisco/SA.
10 CEDjune2010
GuideWorks, which is a joint venture between Comcast

and Rovi, developed the Cisco i-Guide. The new guide will
give Comcast customers in the affected markets a new colorcoded grid, a new on-demand menu that loads faster and more
detailed program information. It will also have an improved
search menu and a menu of shortcuts called Quick Menu.
Other features include expanded parental control options, multiple favorites lists and additional channel grids.
Functions such as MyDVR, which lets customers schedule their
DVR recordings remotely, whole-home DVR, EBIF-based Caller
ID on TV and other interactive TV features, such as HSNs Shop
by Remote, will be available in later versions of the guide.
We bi nar S e r i e s
Join CED Magazine for its engaging webinar series on current topics that unite thought leaders and industry
professionals as they discuss key issues impacting todays
broadband marketplace.
Support your marketing and advertising efforts with

a CED-moderated webinar. CEDs educational
webinars let you and a panel of experts provide
in-depth information to your key customers by
addressing current topics and future solutions by
providing a focused discussion on the issues most
relevant to the broadband community.
Dont miss these upcoming CED
webinars:
The Migration to IPv6 June 24th
The latest technologies and
techniques available to operators to make the migration from
IPv4 to IPv6.
QoE - Dening Quality of
Experience July 22nd
A discussion of issues associated
with improving QoE.
Future topics:
Tru2Way - EBIF
Going Green
Video over DOCSIS
Cable PON
Three-Screen Technology
Check out CEDs Webinar Library to view these topics on demand at www.CEDmagazine.com:
Turn up your transport network.
Turn up your revenue.
Multi-screen service management in

the Internet Era of TV
For turnkey CED webinar sponsorship opportunities contact:

Rhonda Rhodes, Publisher, 303-770-0751, rhonda.rhodes@advantagemedia.com;
Bill Parker, Business Development Manager, 303-770-0767, bill.parker@advantagemedia.com.
memorylane
Sour note
From a critical viewpoint, 1999 wasnt exactly the best year ever for popular music. The top-selling album
was the forgettable Millennium by the Backstreet Boys, followed at No. 2 by Britney Spears pop candy toss-away Baby
One More Time. Worse yet, The Verve broke up that year.
Even so, 1999 was one terrific year for the music industry.
Sales of recorded music in the U.S. hit an all-time high of
$14.5 billion as fans bought millions of CDs, snapped open
their jewel cases and popped the gleaming discs into CD
players, PCs and boom boxes. Hey now, youre a rock star,
By Stewart Schley
sang the band Smash Mouth in a 1999 hit that mocked the
industrys buoyant spirit. Get the show on, get paid.
Media & technology
Nobody knew it then, but 1999 would turn out to be the
writer, Denver, Colo.
music industrys own swan song a last beautiful note before
stewart@stewartschley.com
the deluge began.
Not coincidentally, 1999 was the year a new entrant hit
the music scene: Napster. The oddly named system for conMusic is
necting computers and enabling the easy exchange of digital
music files quickly won the adoration of young music fans
the canary
who, for the first time, could choose between buying multisong CDs for $20 a pop at the record store or downloading
in the coal
the best tracks for free from home. They chose free.
Napster and a new breed of similarly minded file-exchange
mine for TV
networks, of course, ran into immediate legal challenges from
a terrified music industry that had seemingly been dozing
and film
as the building blocks for a new music distribution platform easy-to-use encoding techniques, high-speed Internet
contents
connections and proliferating PC penetration were growing
up all around them.
transition to
Setting aside the legality of what it was up to, theres
no question Napster was a runaway hit. Its adoption rates
the Internet
werent just impressive, they were downright gaudy. At its
height in 2001, Napsters peer-to-peer file-exchange network was used from home by 14 million unique users in the U.S. and more than 26 million globally.
In calmer moments, when they werent apoplectic over the outright thievery Napster had
enabled, music industry executives couldnt help but take notice of a sea change in consumer
behavior that Napster exposed. Labels, scurrying to both deter and embrace new digital delivery models, advanced what seem, in hindsight, to be misguided initiatives to play to the digital
crowd. Universal Music, for one, conceived of a grand Web portal that would arrange content
from its artists under a single URL, apparently overlooking the reality that almost nobody
cared about (or even knew) which label their favorite artists happened to be signed to.
The recording industrys grudging acceptance of digital delivery was too slow, too
corporate and too late. It wasnt until 2001 that a truly inventive solution came to the market, adroitly blending content access, networked delivery, attractive playback devices and
12 CEDjune2010
To read past columns,

visit www.CEDmagazine.com
ground-breaking navigation architecture. Apple Inc. didnt invent digital

music delivery when it launched the
iTunes platform, but instead wrestled it
to the ground by introducing simplicity and convenience. Now, remarkably,
the very culture of music consumption
has changed, with outright theft giving
way to willful payment. Even Napster
is legit today.
The economics, though, havent
caught up. According to a recent analysis of music industry data produced
by investment firm Needham & Co.,
the nearly $2 billion in revenue from
the sale of digital music in the U.S. last
year wasnt nearly enough to compensate for a $9 billion decline in physical
music sales since 1999. Ten years after
Napsters debut, the music industrys
recorded revenue in the U.S. had been
reduced by half.
Who cares? Video industry participants should.
The biggest market cap reason
that music matters is because it is the
canary in the coal mine for TV and film
contents transition to the Internet,
wrote Needham managing director
Laura Martin in a recent analysis. The
lessons from the music industrys transition provide a cautionary tale for
others trying to monetize their content
over digital platforms.
So far, the video industry appears
to be taking the lesson seriously, as
various players work to protect underlying business models. Authentication
approaches that demand proof of
identity before users can get to their
subscription video content online are
among prominent examples. Yet still,
every day millions of users continue to
appropriate video content from illicit file-sharing networks that deliver
instant access to popular programs.
Devising a commercially viable alternative to these rogue vehicles is the
critical mandate for the video industry.
Otherwise, its going to end up singing
an all-too-familiar tune.
ciciorascorner
Rants
Well, the day has finally come. The cable system I
am on is going all-digital, and so I have to have a cable settop box. To ease the pain, the cable company is offering two
set-tops at no charge for two years. Fine. But I have eight TVs
and a number of VCRs and video monitors. A logical solution is to get the digital equivalent of the plain-Jane analog
converter. This would give me basic access on the other
TVs, and Id have access to channels that are scrambled
(encrypted) in the digital format and on video-on-demand on
the two set-top boxes from the cable company. One of the
By Walt S. Ciciora
boxes is a DVR, similar to my beloved TiVo.
Both set-top boxes supplied by the cable company
Expert on cable and
have a CableCard, a requirement imposed by the Federal
consumer electronics issues
Communications Commission at the behest of the consumer
electronics industry to level the playing field.
wciciora@ieee.org
The consumer electronics industry wanted to sell set-top
boxes directly to consumers, and the encryption of some
I went
of the digital channels was claimed to be an impediment to
sales. The CableCard would be the answer to that problem.
looking for
It would allow decryption of encrypted channels by a pura retail
chased set-top box while retaining the security of the signal.
The CableCard would still be leased by the cable company,
digital cable
but the box itself could be purchased from the retailer. The
same set-top box design would work in any cable system.
set-top with
This combination would allow access to most cable channels, even if it didnt include two-way communications, and
a CableCard
therefore was still lacking some functionality.
The need for a socket and interface electronics for the
slot. Im still
CableCard added expense to the retail set-top box that
the cable operators existing set-top didnt have. This was
looking.
claimed to make the sale of cable set-top boxes by consumer
electronics retailers uncompetitive.
There is a little logical inconsistency here. The consumer electronics industry claimed
that its huge production capabilities would make the set-top boxes less expensive,
and that it would benefit consumers. But still, competing against a box that did not require
the CableCard socket and interface was too big of a burden. Allowing the consumer electronics industry to sell digital set-tops was also claimed to open the market to innovation
and invention.
The solution to this unfairness was to hobble the leased cable set-top box and require it
to also have the additional expense of the CableCard socket and interface. This is an unnecessary expense since the set-tops owned by the cable operator can be upgraded without forcing expense on the consumer. This is a strange method of creating equality. The lower-cost
solution is forced to take on an unnecessary expense to equalize the costs between the two
approaches. Of course, its the consumer who has to pay for this. The consumer subsidizes

the desire of some to be competitive by

paying more for either solution. Strange
idea.
Keeping all of this in mind, I first
checked the lease price for a CableCard.
It was considerably less than the lease
price of a set-top box and quite reasonable. So I went looking for a retail
digital cable set-top with a CableCard
slot. Im still looking. I first tried Radio
Shack, then Best Buy, then Sears. No
luck. There are still digital set-top boxes
on sale for receiving broadcast digital
signals, but without the rebate previously offered. But I could find no digital
set-tops for use on cable.
Television receivers and some TiVo
boxes have sockets for CableCards so
they can access encrypted programming. But these devices are so much
more expensive than a digital cable
set-top that the additional cost of the
CableCard socket and interface is much
less significant. And the cable operator
is not selling or leasing television receivers. So there is no competition there.
It would seem time to end this burdensome rule and additional expense,
which ultimately gets paid by the subscriber. This is especially irksome since
it appears that the major retailers are
not selling digital set-top boxes, with or
without CableCard sockets.
The technician that came to my
home to install the new set-tops was
very impressive. His shirt said that he
was a contractor to the cable company.
I assume that conversion to all-digital is
requiring a lot of additional work.
He knew what he was doing and happily explained it all. He had to go through
three DVR boxes to find one that worked
properly, but he did it patiently. The normal set-top installed without a glitch. In
addition, he was scheduled to be at my
home in a two-hour window. He made
it toward the end of the time slot, but he
called to advise me when he was 10 to 15
minutes from my home. He also called his
next appointment, advising him he might
be delayed.
13
openmic
Broadband providers ramp up speeds
The recent release of the FCC's National
Broadband Plan shined a spotlight on bandwidth, a topic that
continues to be somewhat obscure to many consumers.
According to the FCCs plan, by 2020, 100 million U.S.
households should have access to an affordable high-speed
broadband service providing speeds of 100 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps upstream. In addition to access, the plan
states that the vast majority of these 100 million households
should be using a service that provides these speeds.
As a goal, the FCCs plan seems like a good one. After all,
By Mike Paxton
who doesnt support faster broadband service? At the same
time, however, discussions about broadband service speeds
Principal analyst with the
often lead to the question: What speeds are broadband
Digital Entertainment
subscribers actually receiving?
Group at In-Stat
To better address this question, In-Stat conducts an annual
survey that measures the amount of bandwidth currently availmpaxton@in-stat.com
able to residential broadband subscribers in the United States.
Using an online speed test, we ask a standing panel of more
Whats the
than 500 broadband subscribers to measure and report their
downstream and upstream speeds, in addition to reporting
real bandthe type of access technology they use, the identity of their
service provider and their level of satisfaction with their curwidth story?
rent broadband speeds.
Key findings produced by this survey, which we most recently conducted in December, include:
In the U.S., the majority of residential broadband connections were either cable modem or
DSL connections 86 percent of the survey respondents used one of the two.
U.S. residential broadband subscribers are generally satisfied with the current speed of
their broadband service. More than 79 percent of the survey respondents stated they were
either "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with their current connection.
The average downstream speed for all of the survey respondents was 7.12 Mbps, an
increase of 28 percent over the average download speed in December 2008.
The average upstream speed for all of the survey respondents was 2.42 Mbps, an increase
of 16 percent over the results recorded in December 2008.
Based on the average speeds reported by the survey respondents, broadband service
providers in the U.S. have some work to do before we get anywhere near the FCCs goal of
100 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps upstream. However, it should also be noted that the
annual rate of increase in speeds is certainly trending in the right direction.
In addition, we looked closely at the speeds being offered by different broadband access
technologies. In terms of raw downstream speed, fiber-to-the-home service provided the fastest
downstream connection, followed by cable modem service.
Downstream speeds by access technology were: FTTH: 13.82 Mbps; cable modem: 9.44
Mbps; fixed wireless: 6.73 Mbps; DSL: 3.07 Mbps. Upstream speeds by access technology were:
FTTH: 6.96 Mbps; cable modem: 2.6 Mbps; fixed wireless: 4.58 Mbps; DSL: 0.94 Mbps.
Both the downstream and upstream speeds of FTTH service were clearly superior to
14 CEDjune2010

other access technologies. At the same time,

its interesting to note that cable modem
service subscribers were averaging more
than 9 Mbps downstream, a speed almost
three times as fast as DSL service.
Focusing closer on cable modem services, the survey also revealed that:
Fixed wireless service subscribers (who
were mostly WiMAX-based service subscribers) actually had faster upstream
speeds than cable modem service subscribers. However, the number of fixed wireless
end-users accounted for only 2 percent of
the total respondents.
An increasing number of broadband
service providers now offer ultra-highspeed broadband services with downstream
speeds of up to 100 Mbps. Almost 3 percent of the survey respondents had highspeed broadband connections of more than
25 Mbps downstream. Almost all of these
service providers have either an FTTH
connection or subscribe to a cable modem
service using the DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem
standard.
Forty percent of cable modem subscribers had downstream speeds of more than
10 Mbps.
Cable modem service speeds also stood
out among the broadband access technologies due to their rapid rate of growth. The
average downstream speed recorded in
December 2009 increased at an annual rate
of 33 percent in comparison to the speed
recorded in December 2008.
The results from this survey highlight
that cable modem service continues to
offer some of the fastest-available service
speeds in the U.S. At the same time, it
shows that broadband services relying on
other access technologies are ramping up
their speeds, too.
Given the widening availability of
DOCSIS 3.0-based services, we expect
cable modem service speeds to increase
by another 30 percent in 2010. In-Stat will
report on the actual changes in broadband
speeds sometime in early 2011.
Next month, BigBand Networks CTO
Ran Oz will take on the Open Mic column.
engineering-wise
Fasten your seat belts
When I was a kid, there was never a dull moment
when my father was around. He was an engineer by trade who
believed that you need to be passionate about what you do for
a living. Was he ever!
As a kid, I lived and breathed working in the basement
workshop with him. Whether it was etching our own circuit
boards, building transmitters with war surplus parts or creating rocket engines out of stove pipe in the backyard true
story my father was always up for a project that involved
good ideas, the skill to make them work and the desire to do
By Mark Dzuban
what was necessary to improve them.
Decades later, my fathers training is still paying off. Theres
President and CEO
not as much time for circuit boards these days, and the neighof the Society of Cable
bors frown on V-1 rocket engines mounted to picnic tables, but
Telecommunications
the concept of getting a project to perform well is paramount.
Engineers
Offhand, I cant think of a better example than the expansionary philosophy weve embraced at the SCTE. Over the
past year, Ive grappled with a challenge thats been greater
mdzuban@scte.org
than anything my father ever threw at me: How to take an
organization that has been a strong contributor to the cable We'll be using
industry over the years and make it even better.
this space
Ive been a great admirer of the SCTE throughout my
career. As an equipment manufacturer, a cable operator and an
to discuss
active participant in the deployment of new technologies, Ive
appreciated how the SCTEs standards processes and training critical issues
programs can make our industry better. Also impressive has
been the ability of the SCTE to maintain its grassroots feel and the camaraderie and information sharing among its members.
My challenge really a tremendous opportunity has been to build on the attributes that
have made the SCTE so important to the industry, and to create an organization that is innovative and has a vision of the future needs. This is critical to building a value proposition that can
attract and retain members in a sustainable business.
Im fond of reminding folks to fasten their safety belts, and thats certainly been the case in
recent months. We lit the rocket before Cable-Tec Expo last year, and since then weve been
whizzing past objectives. For the SCTE, the milestones have included: an enhanced relationship with the NCTA, CableLabs, CTAM and The Cable Center; also, energy management
leadership, outreach to programmers, new educational tools and job aids, as well as conducting a CTO search to build notable engineering depth of knowledge at the SCTE.
When youre riding the rocket, sometimes youre just hoping that youre headed in the right
direction, but our guidance system is more reliable than that. Everything weve done has been
part of a high-octane fuel mix thats a combination of board of directors input, the CTO advisory
council and lots of member feedback. So with seat belts snapped in, here is a status report:
Our relationships with the NCTA and CableLabs are stronger and more clearly defined
than ever. Between the innovation of CableLabs, the policy expertise of the NCTA and our
own strengths in applied science, we have

covered many bases. If you attended any
of the Spring Technical Forum sessions in
Los Angeles last month, you know that the
SCTE is driving the discussion of the issues
that are shaping the industrys future.
Our Smart Energy Management Initiative
has become a rocket of its own. Since we
first brought up the issue with the Green
Pavilion at Cable-Tec Expo last year, energy
management has been a hot discussion topic.
This is a new area where education can
provide real, quantifiable results for our
industry. Weve barely scratched the surface,
but already were seeing great value.
For the SCTE to be a leading technical organization, we need a CTO. Were
hiring a well-regarded technologist who
can interact on a peer level with the CTOs
to the front-liners. Its part of what my friends
at TWC call suits to boots meeting the
needs of engineers and operations personnel
from the field level to the corporate office.
We also need to involve content providers
in our processes. Many of the standards that
our committees work hard to create SCTE
130 is a great example have a direct effect
on how content providers do their business
and generate revenue. Were trying to do
a better job of explaining to programmers
why they should be at the table when standards are created. HBO and TBS just came
aboard, so maybe were succeeding.
There are other developments in the
works, but we only have 850 words here. In
the months ahead, well be using this space to
discuss some of the issues that are critical to
our industry and the initiatives the SCTE is
undertaking to address them. Network operations. Educational and mentoring programs.
And running efficient networks through our
leadership in energy management.
Theyre all part of our mission to expand
the SCTEs contributions to the industry. To
carve a leadership position for the organization in applied sciences and the business of
engineering. And to do it while preserving
the core values that historically have been
the backbone of the SCTEs strength.
Im just sorry my father cant be along
for the ride.
15
The Greatest Show on Earth!

By Brian Santo, Editor-in-Chief; Mike Robuck, Senior Editor; and Craig Kuhl, Contributing Editor
Laaaaaaaaaaadies and gentlemen! Welcome

to The Cable Show! In the center ring, thrill to
television extricated from its planar confinations into the third dimension! Gaze in awe
and wonderment as eight count em! eight
DOCSIS 3.0 channels confraternate for an
unheraldedly expeditious 290 megabits per
second! Gasp as Canoe Ventures puts through
its paces a genus and species of beast never
before oculated by mortal eyes: a working national dynamic advertising insertion system!
The big general sessions at the NCTA show
featured glitz (Twitter!), parlor tricks (Comcast
Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts showing
an app on an iPad!) and policy palaver (FCC
Chairman Julius Genachowski promising to
keep his hands off cable!), but technology provided many of the biggest highlights of the 2010
Cable Show.
One of the most impressive was a working
demonstration of the kind of dynamic ad insertion system that the cable industry through
Canoe Ventures and CableLabs has been
working toward for years.
Canoes maiden voyage
The Canoe/CableLabs demo brought together equipment and software from Cisco,
Ericsson, OpenTV, This Technology and
Texscan NT, showing how ad space can be
purchased and ads dynamically inserted into
sample VOD content from NBC.
Bruce Dilger, vice president of R&D and
chief architect of advanced advertising at
OpenTV, conducted the demo for CED, in
which he showed how once a national advertiser makes an ad buy, the system automatically
inserts an appropriate ad in the appropriate spot
within the designated program, with information about the decision almost instantly flowing
through the user interfaces used throughout
the ad environment all the way down to the
local MSO.
16 CEDjune2010
The participants have devised a new conceptual approach to such a system, one that
compartmentalizes the elements of the system
by who could be managing them:
The elements touched by content providers,
including advertising authoring,
network campaign
planning, and a system that stores and
delivers ad spots.
The elements that
could be managed
by Canoe, including
the CIS/POIS (content information
service/placement
opportunity information service) and
ADS (ad decision
service) devoted to
national ads.
The elements Comcast CEO Brian
Roberts used an EBIF
that could be un- app to turn an iPad
der direct operator into a remote control
control, including for Xfinity during the
Media Everywhere
ADM (ad manager), session.
and CIS/POIS and
ADS for local ads, along with a video pump.
At a separate demo in the Ericsson booth, vice
president of software strategy Michael Adams
discussed a technique Ericsson calls late binding that the company devised to enhance a
dynamic ad insertion system with targeting.
o
Ordinarily, an EBIF application is built into
the request for information (RFI) that is initiated by a viewer. Ericsson proposes a
system that briefly delays the RFI to
cross-reference with whatever
information might be
available to
profile the viewer zip code, time of day,

etc. and then insert the EBIF application, pointing to an ad appropriate for the
viewer profile.
Interactivity reigns
EBIF was also the basis for the biggest stunt at the show. Comcasts Roberts
did his best Steve Jobs imitation during a general session, demonstrating a
nifty EBIF-based app that turned an iPad
into a remote control for the companys
Xfinity service.
It allows the user to change channels
on the TV the remote communicates on
its own with the headend and features a
channel guide that is cloud-based.
The remote allows subscribers to recommend a program to a friend without
the friend needing to know what channel
the program is on. Comcast Labs is also
working on other social features such as a
chat function.
The search function covers programming on both linear TV and VOD. It also
gives subscribers the ability to program
their DVRs remotely.
The prototype Web-based remote
works with IP-enabled devices, which
include PCs, various tablets and smartphones. While Roberts didnt say when
the remote would be available, Comcast
currently has the remote DVR function
available for download.
Faced with multiple competitors sending content to various devices, Roberts
said the remote was one way to embrace
new technology without throwing away
old business models.
Roberts demo led into the Media
Everywhere: Implications of the
Always-On Network session.
The general consensus was
that viewing content
across differ-
The bustling show floor on opening day.
ent devices represents an opportunity instead of a threat, but that those involved
need to be monetized for their efforts.
CBS President and CEO Les Moonves
said an episode of CSI costs about $3
million to produce, but the monetary return for someone watching an episode
online doesnt support the production
costs, which is why CBS hasnt made its
content available to Hulu.
Moonves also said there needs to be
some consideration in regard to putting
the right content on the right devices. The
example he cited was watching the movie
Avatar on a cell phone.
Time Warner Inc. Chairman and CEO
Jeffrey Bewkes said viewers not only want
to watch content when they want and
where they want, but also want to be able
to interact with it. As long as theres financial support, he said, theres tremendous
opportunity for content owners and cable
programmers to create programming that
customers can interact with.
Interactivity was also on the mind of
ADB CEO Franois Pogodalla, who in an
interview with CED said he wants to take his
The "Media Everywhere" general session featured, from left to right: Michael
Powell, former FCC chairman and a
senior advisor at Providence Equity
Partners; Marc Andreessen, general
partner at Andreessen Horowitz; Jeffrey
Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner Inc.; Leslie
Moonves, CEO of CBS; Brian Roberts,
CEO of Comcast; and Tom Rothman, cochairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment.
17
personal video cloud with him wherever

he goes, and he wants you to be able to do
the same. But the lack of open standards,
particularly in the U.S., is hamstringing technologies such as tru2way, he said.
Tru2way, or OCAP, is not being used
here like it should, he said. In Europe
there are more open standards, and its
kind of surprising that there arent more
here. I should be able to take my personal
video cloud with me wherever I go. The
telcos did it for voice with roaming.
ActiveVideo agrees that the cloud is the
thing, especially when it comes to guides
and other interactive applications. Edgar
Villalpando, the companys senior vice president of marketing, said that everyone else
is building guides and applications so that
they fit on set-top boxes, many of which
continue to be technologically limited.
Were not a guide, were a platform,
and were saying you dont have to have a
set-top-based guide; it can be cloud-based,
he said. There will always be room for
set-top-based applications and cloud-based
applications. Were saying there just has to
be a better division of labor.
If anyone is demonstrating that, its
ActiveVideo customer Cablevision.
Cablevision has developed 30 applications in three months, Villalpando said.
Theyre just going nuts.
Behind closed doors, ADB was showing
its 3-D guide that uses the companys Carbo
interface. The guide is able to switch back
and forth between 2-D and 3-D as needed.
The UI, which runs on a current ADB
set-top box with a software upgrade, lets
viewers create profiles

and browse across the
bottom of the screen
with a flip function that
is similar to an iPods
album cover flow.
The 3-D guide also
features a rectangular
guide that allows users
to slide out boxes that
have additional information on a program
or show.
3-D has been the
ADB CEO Franois Pogodalla wants to take his "personal
biggest buzz trend of video cloud" with him wherever he goes, but the lack of open
the last six months or so, standards, particularly in the U.S., is hamstringing technologies such as tru2way, he told CED at the show.
with Avatar becoming
the biggest money-maker in Hollywood hiscable is likely to opt to cut the resolution
tory, and through 3-D TVs dominating the
of each in half.
news at CES, coverage of the Masters golf
The first option is the interim, but
tournament and DirecTV set to start deliverthe endgame is to deliver full resolution,
ing a package of 3-D channels.
Broberg said.
The Cable Show hosted a 3-D session
Kevin Murray, NDS system architect,
called Depth Perceptions: Technical
outlined some areas of concern, such as
Approaches for 3-D Video Integration
3-D picture-in-picture or 3-D picture-inthat made it clear that theres a discrepguide, as well as closed captioning that
ancy between buzz and the actual delivery
gets divided into two separate boxes on
of 3-D product.
the screen.
David Broberg, CableLabs vice presiYou cant mix 2-D and 3-D on the
dent of consumer video technology, said
same screen viewers wont be able to
signal formatting methods need to evolve
make out one or the other, depending on
from existing compression and equipment
whether theyve got their glasses on or not.
to AVC-based multi-view video coding,
Most set-top makers are already able to
and theres a need for replacing equipment
convert 2-D graphics and overlays into 3such as set-top boxes.
D, among other tricks, to keep the viewing
3-D requires separate video streams for
experience from getting frustrating.
the left and right eyes. In order to fit two
Murray also spoke about graphic destreams in the space of a single channel,
sign elements and cues that make it easier
for the human brain to see the 3-D left
and right images correctly. He said new
set-top box silicon will have a big impact
on enabling stereoscopic 3-D TV.
When asked for a timeframe on the
new silicon by moderator Tony Werner,
Comcasts executive vice president and
CTO, Broberg said CableLabs is in the
process of extending its tru2way set-top
box specifications to include 3-D TV.
The first phase is those additional
functionalities that are needed in the settop box for frame caption delivery in a
The members of the Storytelling 3.0 panel from left to right: Tyler Mathisen, co-anchor
user-friendly way the switching, signalof CNBCs Power Lunch; TWC CEO Glenn Britt; Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman; Cox
ing, graphic overlays, he said. The secPresident Pat Esser; Booyah CEO Keith Lee; Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros.
Home Entertainment Group; and David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications.
ond phase is where do we want to go, and
18 CEDjune2010
how do we migrate to the full resolution

space? How do we integrate more beautiful graphics, more 3-D rendering in the
user interface? I think its about two years
away, and thats the reason the specifications are phased.
Werner also asked Mark Schubin,
technology consultant for SchubinCafe.
com, when the industry could expect
glassless 3-D viewing. Schubin said
watching 3-D TV without the glasses
is doable technology-wise by providing
more than two views, but the additional
number of views also divides the resolution, which defeats the point of watching
3-D content.
In response to a question by Werner
about 3-D audio, Walt Husak, senior
manager of electronic media at Dolby
Laboratories, said the current versions
of surround sound did a good job of putting viewers in the 3-D environment, but
theres a localization feature from games
that can be used in the future.

In a separate session, Discovery
Communications President and CEO
David Zaslav was enthusiastic about 3-D.
He noted that Discovery is working with
Sony and Imax to create a 3-D channel
and said consumer electronics is pushing
it. Sports and gaming is fantastic in 3-D.
Were pushing it very hard.
Philippe Dauman, president and CEO
of Viacom, threw a bit of cold water on
that, though. Its going to be a few years
before 3-D is meaningful in TV. Everyone
just upgraded their TVs to HD.
Time Warner Cable Chairman,
President and CEO Glenn Britt agreed:
Consumer electronics companies want
to push it, but lets make sure consumers
are ready for it first.
Tying it all together

Mapping the migratory route of
IP video, DOCSIS 3.0, interactive TV
and mobile broadband to the wireless

world dominated the plenary session:
Road Trip: Mapping Cables New-Tech
Progression.
The five panelists from leading cable
companies outlined their deployment strategies for 3.0, IP video, and other emerging
technologies and services with an underlying emphasis on the growing consumer
demand for content everywhere.
Were keeping pace with the competition by installing nothing but 3.0.
But theres still work to do like channel
bonding, said Mike LaJoie, CTO of Time
Warner Cable.
Upstream channel bonding is high on
Rogers Cables to-do list, according to
Dermot OCarroll, the companys senior
vice president of access networks. Its our
highest priority and will be deployed in
2011. If you maintain your plant well, you
can get 30 MHz per channel and bridge to
channel bonding.
All-digital. All the time.

AMT has you covered from the Headendto-the-Home in the Internet Era of TV!
Cost-effective, easy-to-install set-tops
CherryPicker and Edge QAMs to
reclaim bandwidth
Increase revenue with Multi-Room DVR
Deliver relevant content to consumers, wherever
they are, whenever they want, on whatever
device they choose.
Contact AMT today for a no-obligation

system survey and let us help you join the
digital revolution with our customized
digital headend packages.
888.293.5856
Financing Available
MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent

and Trademark Office. Motorola, Inc. 2010
Advanced Media Technologies | 3150 SW 15th Street | Deerfield Beach, FL 33442

954.427.5711 | www.amt.com | sales@amt.com
19
In a film clip shown before their Cable Show introduction, Time Warner Cable CEO
Glenn Britt (right) and Showtime CEO Matthew Blank (left) squabbled on the set of
Nurse Jackie, with Blank accusing Britt of throwing him off of a roof for doing a
deal with DirecTV. Live on stage, the convention co-chairs continued with the gag,
pretending to make up. Britt asked Blank for a Dexter bobblehead (center), but
Blank shot back: Yeah, right. I gave my last one to Ergen.
Comcast is following that path, as well,

according to Werner. Were more aggressive with upstream channel bonding and
[are] now in two markets.
Panelists also showed a growing enthusiasm for IP video, iTV and advanced
advertising, three emerging technologies
considered to be crucial to the content
everywhere model.
Response has been huge for iTV,
particularly with cruises, vacations and
e-mails sent quickly. Were getting to
a scaled platform across the industry,
Werner said.
The industry is also paying more attention to mobile broadband and wireless.
We firmly believe in the need for
mobility in our products. Were putting
lots of energy in mobile, said panelist
Scott Hatfield, executive vice president
and CTO of Cox Communications.
Advanced advertising is also being
reenergized, according to Terry Cordova,
senior vice president and CTO of
Suddenlink Communications. Its an opportunity for us to put ads out there specific to devices such as Macs, he said.
At the end of the day, however, the
cables technology map leads to mobility
and access. Concluded OCarroll: The
future is about ubiquity and access to the
20 CEDjune2010
network and delivering videos to both

mobile devices and home devices.
Feeding power-starved modems and
taking DOCSIS upstream to a gigabit
per second highlighted the Capacity for
Change: Capacity Expansion in Theory
and Practice session. Finding the right
solution and cost to accomplish both are
a work in progress, panelists agreed, but
there is movement.
The stage is being set to accommodate upstream service growth. And there
is opportunity for 128 and 256 QAM to
grow, said panelist Robert Thompson,
principal staff engineer for Motorola.
With the growing appetite for upstream bandwidth, Cisco CMTS chief
architect John Chapman unveiled a solution that includes a low-split to top-split
approach, with the endgame being above
1 gigabit.
Well be seeing hundreds of megabits
per second in downstream, but theres
a shortage of bandwidth in upstream.
Ultimately, more bandwidth is needed.
But whats the right solution and cost?
he asked.
For panelist Dave Urban, a distinguished engineer for Comcast, the upstream capacity issue is real and high on
the companys radar screen.
Were looking at techniques to get

more capacity upstream and lessen upstream interference to digital video scenarios. Capacity upstream is a real problem, he admitted.
WiMAX could be the beneficiary of
increased upstream capacity, suggested
Ayham Al-Banna, staff systems architect
for Arris.
WiMAX is a good candidate to support future networks because of flexible
channel widths, security and QoS. But
we need new resources for upstream
capacity.
He also detailed a promising solution
to add power to existing cable modems.
Dynamic steering of power-starved
CMs, DSGs, STBs and EMTAs through
DOCSIS 3.0 and channel bonding and
linking WiMAX to HFC networks will
allow more bandwidth.
Home networking
Nearly everyone making and showing equipment at The Cable Show had
a whole-home strategy, starting with
DVRs.
ADBs whole-home DVR solution uses
the companys ADB-6880CDMX, which
includes a digital-only HDTV dual-tuner/
decoder with a DOCSIS 2.0-embedded
cable modem and a DVR.
The whole-home DVR supports up
to three IP tuner-less clients and serves
as a mini gateway in a home. The platform also allows connectivity, content discovery including both broadcast and
Internet content and content sharing.
The secondary box is the ADB3720WM, which is a low-cost hybrid
IP client that doesnt have tuners or
CableCards. ADB is using MoCA to connect the boxes in the homes.
Arris Whole Home Solution included
a new media gateway that supports either
QAM-based or IP-based video delivery.
The gateway box, which features Arris
hardware combined with assets from the
companys purchase of Digeo last year,
has 500 GB of DVR storage, triple-play
support, including an 8 x 4 DOCSIS 3.0
channel configuration, and the ability to
stream up to six devices in a home.
The gateway supports MoCA, Ethernet
and wireless deliveries and has two USB 2.0 ports, as well as
two voice lines. The gateway uses a CableCard, but the rest
of the devices in the home dont need one, which means less
expensive set-top boxes can be used in other rooms.
The gateway enables video to be sent to PCs, TVs and
other devices, while Arris Whole Home Solution gives
smaller Tier 2 cable operators the ability to customize user
interfaces that span linear, VOD and over-the-top video
content. Through a modular architecture, Arris has also
added interfaces for games and services such as music from
Rhapsody and photo sharing through Flickr, although MSOs
are free to pursue their own partnerships, as well.
Arris also mixed in browser and Flash support for RSS
feeds over the Internet and widgets and games. The platform
supports network-attached storage and discovers devices
within a home.
Arris expects the whole-home platform to be in lab trials
with North American cable operators in the second quarter of
this year, with deployments taking place early next year.
Samsung sells set-tops and DVRs, but it was also showing
how easily content can be distributed around the house using
Wi-Fi and DLNA. The company showed a gateway box that
connected a TV, a video recorder, a digital picture frame, a
digital slate and a handheld device, allowing them to share
applications and video.
Plant the Seed for

Professional Growth
with Jones/NCTI
Jones/NCTI announces a new Associate of
Applied Science degree program on its track to a
college degree. Students can build a degree to suit
their specic career goals in the broadband and
telecommunications industries while taking courses
from a choice of three industry-specic tracks:
Broadband Technology
Customer Care
Telecommunications
Classes may be completed through online and
independent study options, and are exible
enough to meet the needs of a busy-professional.
The result is a versatile accredited degree that
demonstrates both job-specic expertise and
general business knowledge. And its the fast
track to professional growth.
Going green
Energy consumption represents a significant cost to cable
operators, and driving those costs down is becoming a topof-mind issue, with new technologies and just plain common
sense two of the most workable solutions, according to panelists at the Getting Energized: Good Ideas (and Profitable
Approaches) for Managing Energy Consumption session.
Some of the quickest ways to cut costs are adding
hybrid vehicles to the fleet of trucks, using more efficient
power management and having regular discussions about
saving energy.
We have a fleet of 30,000 vehicles and the 12th-largest hybrid
fleet in the country. We cant do as many eco-friendly vehicles
as wed like, but there is lots of low-hanging fruit in reducing
consumption, like less road time for trucks, said Sam Chernak,
senior vice president of network architecture at Comcast.
Heating cell towers and managing hot air in headends is
another cost-saving measure. Were saving 90 percent of our
energy through a heat exchange wheel in a new headend. Its
a simple system and lowers operational costs, said DArcy
Brown, director of network planning for Rogers Cable.
At Cox, a 400-kilowatt fuel cell is being built at one of
the companys facilities, according to Jay Rolls, senior vice
president of technology at Cox.
They can go 24 hours a day, whereas solar works about
five to six hours, and the payback is about three years. Were
aggressively pursuing that, Rolls explained.
Cox recently built a 1-megawatt solar facility in New
Associates
Degree
ech
MastericaT
tion
Certif
Bachelors
Degree
Learn more:
ProfessionalGrowthStartsHere.com
866.427.1304
Jersey, but Rolls admitted solar is economically challenging and that only the states
heavy incentives allowed the company to
go solar.
Time Warner Cable, according to panelist and senior director of technical operations Dan Cooper, may be testing solar in
its Texas systems and other markets. For
now, however, the company is tightening
up its own operations.
Its about closing all the holes, using
outside air, keeping the under floor clear.
These are low-cost and straight forward.
Meanwhile, the SCTE is working with
Alpha Technologies to build a green, multikilowatt power system for its headquarters,
SCTE President and CEO Mark Dzuban
told CED.
Programming notes
One of the good things about The Cable
Show is hearing how the other half of the
cable industry lives. Not surprisingly, cable
People
WHERE FIBER MANAGEMENT COMES TOGETHER
Information
Technology
Join the conversation with your network peers at

www.FiberPuzzle.com.
@danceswithfiber
www.ClearfieldConnection.com
22
22
22 CEDjune2010
CEDjune2010
CEDjune2010
800.422.2537
programmers are also infatuated with

some of the same things as cable operators, including 3-D, IP video and TV
Everywhere-type services.
Were really going out and getting
our arms around 3-D in a very exciting
way, said Chuck Pagano, ESPNs executive vice president of technology. Were
starting our World Cup coverage in June
in 3-D, which weve
never done before.
Were passionate
about the fact that
3-D will be following an evolution,
and that it will be
in every TV set over
the next five years
because the technology is changing.
Pagano, speaking at the Changing
Channels: Assessing
New Possibilities
for Content Delivery session, said ESPN was also
focusing on IP video.
My personal feeling is that everything will be in packets before it departs
for deployment, and that [IP] things will
be here sooner than later, he said.
Chris Cookson, president of Sony
Pictures Technologies, said his company was getting behind the Digital
Entertainment Content Ecosystem
(DECE), which is seeking to create a
content rights locker that could be fulfilled by various service providers.
Wed like to highlight that notion
that it should be convenient to get access to the content that you have the
rights to, he said. Weve been active
within DECE to try to set standards
within it so that access rights management, file formats and devices can work
interchangeably across different services.
Part of the general effort is to make our
content more accessible, more available,
more user-friendly.
DECE is really the flip side of TV
Everywhere. TV Everywhere is based
upon your identity that says you have
some subscriptions and certain services you can get because you are you,
while DECE says because you are you,

you have the ability to create a library
and have access to the materials of your
library through most any platform available. Thats one of the key initiatives our
group has been working on.
Cookson also said that Sony was trying
to ensure that consumers get the best 3-D
experience possible, and that poorly rendered 3-D will result
in some consumers
not wanting to embrace the technology.
Scott Teissler,
Turner Broadcasting
Systems executive
vice president, CTO
and chief digital
strategist, said that
while Turner, along
with parent company Time Warner,
has been one of the
chief promoters of
TV Everywhere, the
authentication process needs to be better.
We had a chance back when we
were inventing the Internet to invent authentication, as well, but we didnt do it,
so 20 years later were paying the price,
he said. But its a concept that is popping
up not just in the TV Everywhere context its also popped up in the context of
the digital entertainment ecosystem and
in a variety of different kinds of consumer
services online.
To the consumer, authentication is a
unitary concept, but to us in the involved
industries, its a highly fractured and
fragmented way of doing things. Thats
a problem that we should keep in mind
for TV Everywhere, that there are other
economic stacks that have a vested interest in this, and we dont want to confuse
consumers. We want to make the process
of authentication consistent, transparent,
scalable and simple.
To that end, Teissler said the Open
Authentication Technical Committee,
which formed around the time of the first
TV Everywhere deployments, has been
trying to come up with authentication processes that work across different networks,
devices and applications.
The VOD portal

can be should be
the portal for TV,
because eventually
VOD goes away as a
separate thing;
it will be just TV.
Villalpando
Its a group of distributors and programmers, with an audience of technological enablers, who are trying to remove
the excuses for not doing TV Everywhere
right not just right by the content owners
and the copyright owners, but also right by
consumers, Teissler said. I urge you to
pay attention to what is going on with TV
Everywhere.
Along with improved authentication,
Teissler also said there needs to be a way
to measure the reach, frequency and duration of consumption for TV Everywhere
videos across the different platforms and
content formats. Better measurement
schemes are needed for tuning business
models and for understanding consumer
behavior, he said.
Scripps Networks President John
Lansing noted in another session that authentication needs to make sense for all of
the parties involved, and that there needs
to be fair compensation across the board
in order to truly build out a three-screen
stratagem.
Dealing with D.C.

In the "Conversation 2.0" general
session, Genachowski tried to allay fears
about his third way plan, insisting that
his proposal explicitly would not give the
FCC power to control prices or demand
line sharing.
He defended his plan, but he also said
he was open to self-regulation by the com-
Volunteers, including Jerald Kent, CEO of Suddenlink (left), serve meals during
Hunt.Fish.Feed, part of CableCares 2010.
munications industry, provided there was

an FCC backstop the authority to step
in if self-regulation fails to work.
The bad news, Genachowski said, is that
multiple studies show the U.S. is lagging in
terms of broadband. One study in particular, he said, establishes a link between
broadband and global competitiveness, and
the U.S. is 40th out of 40 on that list.
The good news is that cable infrastructure, and to some extent telco infrastructure, is so well developed it can be considered a competitive advantage.
The key is to drive greater broadband
adoption. So getting people to adopt
broadband is as near win-win for the
government and the industry as Ive ever
seen, Genachowski said.
The problem is that the recent court
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (right) defended his third way of light regulation for broadband but was open to industry self-policing with an FCC backstop. On
the left, NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow at "Conversation 2.0."
case Comcast brought against the FCC,

and that was decided in favor of Comcast,
damaged the legal foundation supporting everything the FCC would like to do
to promote broadband adoption, which
Genachowski said the FCC has been articulating clearly all along.
The Comcast decision, he said, doesnt
change the FCCs aims or policy goals at
all. The question, he said, is how do we
get back to a solid legal foundation to
do what we want to do and not more?
We reject both extremes. One extreme
is to do nothing. The other is to implement all of Title II the provisions in
telecommunications law that gives the
FCC very broad and intrusive control over
telephony, including authority over rates
and line sharing.
He said that the third way approach
is to pare down Title II to only those provisions that allow the FCC to encourage
broadband adoption. Our staff has developed a narrow approach with barriers
against regulatory creep, and regulatory
over-reaching, and gets us to a legal foundation similar to where we were before the
Comcast decision.
So rate regulation and line sharing
are off the table, NCTA President Kyle
McSlarrow pressed him?
Theyre off the table, Genachowski
said.
Pressed by McSlarrow about the possibility of self-regulation, Genachowski
said he is open to processes that involve
engineers and others solving problems as
long as theres an FCC backstop.
23
VOD
Giving VOD advertising the business

By Brian Santo, Editor-in-Chief
he technology behind dynamic

ad insertion in VOD is proven
and available from any number
of vendors. These systems have been successfully implemented by operators all up
and down the size spectrum, including
Comcast, Bresnan Communications and
Sunflower Broadband.
Sunflower Broadband began trialing
dynamic ad insertion in 2006 and is often
credited as the first operator to introduce
it commercially. The company is using
SeaChange Internationals AdPulse ondemand ad insertion system.
Cablevision began dynamically inserting ads one year ago, including some limited targeting based on content.
Virgin Media, another AdPulse customer, began rolling out dynamic ad insertion earlier this year.
Late last year, Comcast began a VOD
ad insertion trial in its Jacksonville, Fla.,
system with BlackArrow, in which it is
an investor (along with Cisco and Intel,
among others). BlackArrow provides ad
management systems.
Cox Communications began a trial
around the same time, inserting ads in a
small number of shows available through
its MyPrimetime service, partnering with
NBC-Universal, and using technology from

SeaChange, Avail-TVN and Texscan NT.
Earlier this year, Bresnan ran a trial
that brought together system components
from Arris, Avail-TVN and BlackArrow.
Bresnan CTO Pragash Pillai told CED in
our "CTO Roundtable" in last months
issue that the equipment worked well.
Bresnan isnt going beyond the trial,
however, for lack of workable business
models. That workable business models
are wanting is a widespread complaint
about dynamic ad insertion in VOD.
Frequently when business models is
invoked to explain the lack of activity in
one endeavor or another, the missing element is a client that will pay for the service.
But with VOD availability expanding and
VOD viewership growing rapidly, theres
no shortage of advertisers that would like to
take advantage of dynamic ad insertion.
In fact, Sunflower says it regularly sells
out its ad inventory well in advance. The
company reported being able to charge
CPMs 10 to 50 times higher for VOD
ads than for ads in linear TV, and the
operator is growing VOD ad revenue.
Sunflower is selling inventory largely to
local advertisers.
The business model problem seems
to kick in when the MSO is much larger
and national ad dollars are on the line. In
OpenTVs EclipsePlus/xG OnDemand manages copy versions and audience

segmentation to provide more relevant, audience-specific advertising to viewers.
24 CEDjune2010
those situations, the problem is that theres

an ongoing argument about who gets the
money for the ad placement.
Theres a relatively fixed number
of ad spots (aka avails) in each program, usually fixed at 30 or 60 seconds.
Programmers keep most of the avails in
their programs, which they typically sell to
national advertisers. The remaining slots
go to the distributor broadcast station or
pay-TV system operator which typically
sells to local advertisers.
But a VOD stream is different.

The question is now that we have addressable dynamic advertising in VOD,
whats it worth? said Nick Troiano, president of BlackArrow. TV is a broad-reach
play; you reach 10, 15, 50 million. The issue
is scarcity there are only so many slots at 9
p.m. on CBS. The challenge of online video
is theres no such thing as scarcity. VOD is
a commingling of the two.
The entertainment industry has come to
an uneasy accommodation when it comes
to measuring audiences, with everyone
agreeing to abide by allowing companies
like Nielsen to aggregate viewing statistics
for the initial showing of a network program, plus on-demand viewing during the
subsequent three days the shorthand for
that measurement window is C3.
The value of advertising in C3 is well
established, Troiano noted. But what
about after that, C4 through C7? We think
thats a unique advertising window for
those who couldnt afford $900,000 at 9
p.m. against Heroes.
Another issue is that there may be any
number of avails; the length of the spots
could be variable, and they have different levels of effectiveness under different
circumstances.
For example, ads placed before the
beginning of the requested program (a
pre-roll) or in the middle (a mid) tend to
be seen by significantly more people than
those placed at the end (a post-roll), which
tend to be skipped more frequently. But if
an ad at the end is watched, it has attracted
the attention of the viewer, and thus might

be considered more effective.
All of which begs a ton of questions.
Who gets to sell the avail, or avails? How
much are they worth? If theres a split on
multiple avails, or a split on revenue generated, whats the split?
In North America, pre-rolls and postrolls and mids may have different ownership, explained Malcolm Stanley, director
of advertising product management at
SeaChange. The valuation of that, thats
what the discussion is all about.
Another factor is that MSOs are understandably taking the position that since they
are investing money to create the ability to
dynamically insert ads in VOD streams,
creating ad avails where none had previously existed, they ought to get paid more
for those spots. Content owners apparently
arent ready to concede that point.
With neither side backing down, the
result is a standoff, meaning few large-
scale rollouts of dynamic ad insertion in

VOD until those issues get resolved.
The exception is Virgin Media in the
U.K., where many of those issues have
already been hashed out.
Enabling technology
A key to dynamic ad insertion is doing
it in real time, said Craig Schwabl, chief
architect at Concurrent, but the problem
is that network architectures are different
(hub-and-spoke, distributed, etc.), and
the VOD ad insertion solution sometimes
needs to be crafted to the architecture.
Our approach is to push decisionmaking to the edge, Schwabl said. We
think its the way the industry is going.
Another element of enabling the insertion of ads in VOD streams in real time is
the ability to manage playlists, according to
Stanley. The ability to manage playlists in real
time allows an operator to assemble a stream
that combines the requested program with
ads that are ideally suited to the viewer.

Arris recently cut a deal with Clearleap
to accelerate the ability to ingest new ad
spots. The two integrated the formers
ConvergeMedia on-demand content management and distribution system with the
latters Web-based content and workflow
management suite for a content management solution for VOD and advertising
services. Arris system can now leverage
Clearleaps ability to quickly ingest, manage and deploy a variety of advertising assets. The assets range from video pre-rolls
and interstitials to graphic overlays that
integrate directly into traditional linear or
dynamic third-party advertising systems.
At The Cable Show last month,
OpenTV announced the beta availability of its newest campaign management
solution designed specifically to handle
advertising in on-demand. The companys EclipsePlus/xG OnDemand manages
copy versions and audience segmentation
25
VOD
to provide more relevant, audience-specific advertising to viewers.
Content management, audience qualification and placement opportunities are linked.
There is a clear shift toward a more
consumer-controlled on-demand viewing
environment. This means that operators
require new ways to manage their ad inventories and to maximize how those ads
are delivered, said Paul Woidke, senior
vice president and general manager of
advanced advertising for OpenTV.
Also at The Cable Show, Ericsson introduced the ability to more accurately target ads
in a VOD stream based on EBIF (see The
2010 Cable Show on page 16).
Part of the goal is to create a playlist
for a VOD session a stream of content
with appropriate ads inserted in the appropriate places.
Once you have a playlist, you now
have to manage your assets and advertisements, and that means you need decision
support, Stanley said. Thats what SCTE
130 is for.
SCTE 130 is the standard that defines
the elements of a national ad insertion system, showing how operators and national
advertisers can interface. The first step is
to get the capability to individual operators; the next is to aggregate operators.
And thats where the SCTE 130 standard and Canoe Ventures come in.
What Canoe brings is a promise of
scale, Stanley said. Canoe gives operators
the confidence to deploy. EBIF is coming
online in truly large numbers. The industry
would not be making progress without the
promise of scale that Canoe provides.
There are many working parts to the
problem, including ingest, the insertion
of metadata, transcoding, verification and
distribution.
Doing anything at scale is challenging, Stanley said. And as you scale, you
want to centralize.
To that end, SeaChange is using its
AssetFlow asset management product as
its means of interfacing with all of the other
vendors of the various other elements of the
system, including encoder vendors, NAS
(network-attached storage) vendors and
others, Stanley said. So the operators get
the benefit of a highly scalable, highly open
system. AssetFlow is in the market now, and
we have more in the pipeline for aspects of
the upper end of the market.

Another step is enabling interactivity
in an ad inserted into a VOD stream. Its
an incremental step, Schwabl said. You
cant support only linear, or only VOD,
or only EBIF. Advertisers want to run ads
that may cross all three media.
Even more important, systems absolutely have to be accountable. If youre
looking at audiences across linear, interac-
tive and VOD, you have to have all the data

for the full measurement of campaigns.
And then what happens if part of the
same campaign extends to a handheld?
How is that measured? The management
platform and the back office systems will
have to be able to handle all of that. This
is why VOD companies are also involved
in the industrys discussions about multiscreen capabilities.
THINK NEW
CONNECTIVITY
SOLUTIONS
ALL SYSTEMS BROADBAND
is a new connectivity
REDUCE
CONNECTOR
FAILURES
provider working with

the nations leading
network and technology
vendors to develop and
CUSTOM
CONNECTIVITY
SOLUTIONS
deliver advanced
network solutions.
Solutions that improve
performance, eciency
REDUCE
TRUCK
ROLLS
and protability from

the head end to the
customer premise.
Founded by specialists
with decades of industry
INCREASE
NETWORK
CAPACITY
insight, were committed

to being the strategic
connectivity partner
SIMPLIFY
INSTALLATION
of choice.
Higher performance connectivity solutions for higher performance networks

877-ASB-4984 (877-272-4984)
www.allsystemsbroadband.com
2010 All Systems Broadband
26 CEDjune2010
RAI Amsterdam
Conference 9-14 September : Exhibition 10-14 September
IBC2010
Experience the
state-of-the-art
IBC is the premier annual event for professionals
engaged in the creation, management and delivery
of entertainment and news content worldwide.
45,000+ attendees from 140+ countries
1300+ key international technology
suppliers across 11+ exhibition halls
world-class demonstrations of
groundbreaking technology such as
stereo 3D
agenda-setting conference with
300+ high-prole international speakers
NEW Connected World for IPTV,

Mobile & Digital Signage (Hall 9)
FREE hands-on training; Production
Village (Hall 11) and Post Production (Hall 7)
FREE Exhibition Business Briengs
FREE movies screenings in the IBC
Big Screen
FREE entry to the prestigious awards
ceremony on Sunday 12 September
www.ibc.org
IBC Fifth Floor International Press Centre 76 Shoe Lane London EC4A 3JB UK
T. +44 (0) 20 7832 4100 F. +44 (0) 20 7832 4130 E. info@ibc.org
t r
a
ow giste
n
ter rg/re
s
i
g
o
Re .ibc.
w
ww
VOD
Meeting VOD growth projections

with a CDN architecture
Clearly, legacy solutions are reaching their limits
By Mike Hluchyj, CTO of Verivue
xpanding libraries, growth in HD

and emerging time-shifting TV
applications are putting significant demands on MSOs infrastructure.
Clearly, we are just getting started. SNL
Kagan estimates that major MSOs will
move from an average of 6,700 titles
in 2009 to 20,000 titles in the next 12
to 24 months. New initiatives, such as
Comcasts Infinity, will only increase
these library offerings.
As titles increase, the shift toward HD
on-demand is following in lockstep. HD
content accounts for less than 10 percent
of VOD viewing today, according to SNL
Kagan, but it will become the primary
choice within five years. The proliferation
of new consumer devices and heightened
viewer expectations promise to keep this
market accelerating.
How do VOD content libraries
maintain this expansion cost-effectively? So far, traditional VOD solutions
have accommodated growth with brute
force. When more streaming capacity
is required, more servers are racked up.
When the content library grows, more
disk drives are added.
This has worked to a point. The market, however, has now reached an inflection point. Legacy approaches are no
longer able to keep up with the accelerating demand for HD content and rapidly
expanding video libraries.
Architectural choices
To meet these new requirements, operators are faced with three choices:
1) Increase storage capacity at each headend: This is a straightforward solution, but
not the most cost-effective. Rack space
and power requirements will increase,
and content management of large librar-
28 CEDjune2010
Figure 1: A content delivery network.
ies at each and every headend becomes an

operational nightmare.
2) Centralize delivery: The flipside of duplicating storage everywhere is to consolidate it at a central location. This saves on
storage costs but dramatically increases
network transport costs across the metro
and national backbones. And, as on-demand services grow in popularity, the
bandwidth costs scale proportionally.
3) Take a CDN approach: Leveraging the
traditional Internet CDN model, this approach, illustrated in Figure 1, replicates
only popular content at the edge of the network. Less popular content resides within
the network core, eliminating unnecessary
storage replication at each headend.
With real-world VOD session data, we
examine the CDN approach to content
delivery. A CDN-based VOD delivery
solution provides deployment flexibility and allows for the scalable growth of
content libraries and streaming capacity
without incurring the significant storage
costs often associated with service expansion. Given VOD growth projections and
its competitive advantages, it is not a ques-
tion of whether operators will employ the

CDN approach, but when.
The prominent long tail

There is perhaps no other principle in
the VOD world that has gotten as much
attention as the long-tail phenomenon.
Popularized by writer Chris Anderson
and applied to video-on-demand, this
theory states that most VOD requests will
be for a small pool of popular titles, while
a broader variety of titles will appeal to
the unique tastes of each individual.
Applied to VOD service, this theory is
useful for operators in planning storage
(selection) and bandwidth (streaming
capacity) requirements. It validates the
benefits of a CDN architecture, which inherently offers the advantages of optimizing storage and streaming independently.
Large, centralized storage systems can be
placed within the network core to provide title selection, while high-bandwidth
E-mail: mhluchyj@verivue.com
streaming servers can be placed at the

edge to provide the streaming capacity
for the most popular titles.
Tradeoffs within the CDN

At the service provider level, a CDN
architecture may provide the greatest
advantages in operational performance
and capital cost. However, at the component/tier level, content delivery systems
should be optimized for either bandwidth
or storage capacity to reduce overall deployment costs.
For example, a low-bandwidth network-attached storage (NAS) device in
the core of the network allows an operator to serve a large VOD library to their
consumers. However, NAS systems are
not bandwidth-optimized and will not
support significant streaming bandwidth.
Alternatively, a streaming server can support a significant amount of bandwidth
but is cost-constrained in its ability to
simultaneously serve a large content library. With this basic understanding,
an operator can make optimal choices
at each tier of their network and reduce
overall deployment costs.
Revealing real-world analysis

Based on discussions with many operators, the CDN capacity planning of
on-demand access is often constrained by
the amount of network bandwidth available between the central store and regional
cache, and between the regional cache and
the edge cache. Service planning often
begins by targeting cache hit ratios of 90
percent for the streamers at the network
edge. This allows operators to plan around
a fixed-transport bandwidth requirement
when calculating the storage requirement
at each network tier.
In a recent study, Verivue analyzed
actual VOD usage data from leading cable providers to determine the real-world
caching requirements in a CDN deployment. This analysis allows operators to
more accurately plan their edge caching
and network resource requirements.
For a library of 8,500 titles, this study
shows that 90 percent of VOD sessions can
be served from an edge streamer caching
just under 30 percent of the most frequently
requested titles. That is, the edge streamer
can achieve a 90 percent cache hit ratio with

just 2,255 titles. The remaining 10 percent
of user requests are served from the regional cache or, for even longer-tail content,
served from the central store. As shown in
Figure 2, higher or lower cache hit ratios
are achieved by increasing or decreasing the
edge streamer cache size, respectively.
Based on this study, an overall VOD
library of 10 TB requires a 3 TB edgestreaming cache to achieve a hit rate of 90
percent. In a headend requiring delivery

of 10,000 simultaneous SD VOD streams
(assuming 3.75 Mbps SD bit rates), 9,000
streams (or 33.75 Gbps) could be served
from an edge-streaming cache of 3 TB,
while the remaining 1,000 streams (or
3.75 Gbps) would be served from caching
elements located in the core network.
With this data, it is clear that an optimized balance between network transport costs and cache sizes could lower
Grow Cell Backhaul and

Business Class Services
now. Or, see you later.
TriNet has all the
resources you need, today.
In the race for todays Cell Backhaul
and Business Class Service opportunities
theres only one resource we cant give you.
Time. But with high bandwidth solutions
in stock from the leading vendors ready to
ship within 3 days, TriNet is the partner you
can rely on to keep your development and
construction on schedule.
What are you waiting for? With 2 major
facilities in the U.S. and over 20 years
experience serving the worlds leading
vendors and networks, TriNet isnt just
delivering Cell Backhaul and Business
Class Service. Were delivering markets.
CALL US RIGHT NOW, TOLL FREE

800.587.4638 | www.TriNetcom.net
2009 TriNet Communications, Inc.
29
VOD
overall infrastructure costs. For example,
less storage on the edge could reduce the
cost of the edge-streaming cache. A 1 TB
cache (10 percent of the VOD library)
may be less expensive but requires the
network to support 12 Gbps of streams

from the core.
This analysis indicates that one can use
a reasonable cache size at the edge of the
network today with great benefit. Yet, it
hardly addresses the two major trends in

the on-demand market: HD and growing
library sizes. Extrapolating from this data,
Figure 3 provides a better illustration of
how these two developments will further
impact edge cache sizes.
In the left column, the number of title
hours increases from 8,500 to 42,500, a
factor of five. In the top row, we see the
HD percentage of the VOD library, where
HD titles require four times the delivery
bandwidth of SD (typically 15 Mbps) and
four times the storage. It is evident from
this analysis that the cache sizes at the edge
will expand considerably.
Content distribution
Figure 2: Title popularity rank (highest to lowest) as percentage of library.
Stop Theft Cold!

Using the RSS Lockbox Management System
4 Proven electronic locking system eliminates theft
4 Controls access to MDU lockboxes, power supplies, and other cabinets
4 Operates over the internet
4 Uses power from cable network; NO EXTERNAL POWER REQUIRED
4 Is a DOCSIS compliant system...no dedicated bandwidth required
4 Eliminates traditional keys and mechanical locking systems
4 Provides each technician with an ID specific i-Button key
4 Technician access can be activated/deactivated instantly
4 Provides instant alert of tamper detection, monitors temperature and power
4 Has an SQL Database that records all lockbox activity
4 Available with the only DOCSIS programmable tap in the industry to eliminate
connect/disconnect trips
You can go from this
to this!
Remote Security Systems, LLC
1240 Johnson Ferry Place; Suite C-5
Marietta, GA 30068
770-971-6900
www.remotesecuritysystemsllc.com
30 CEDjune2010
The careful selection of a caching

algorithm is essential when planning a
CDN deployment. Which titles should
be cached at the edge of the network, and
which content should remain at the core?
Content popularity is fluid. Top 10 lists
may change from week to week, if not day
to day. Ideally, with the right placement
algorithm, an operator should be able
to optimize the network transport and
edge-caching costs to balance the overall
infrastructure investment. The challenge
is the dynamic nature of viewing habits
and content churn.
Verivue studied this issue to determine
how caching algorithms might better optimize cache sizes. By relying on statistical trends in viewing habits, intelligent
algorithms can be employed to improve
caching and network investments.
For this particular study, a comparison was made between the typical leastrecently used (LRU) algorithm used by
most existing implementations versus an
algorithm based on content popularity
thresholds.
To clarify, with an LRU-based algorithm, requested content resulting in a
cache miss is always cached, and to make
space in the cache for this content, LRU
content is deleted from the cache. In contrast, a threshold-based algorithm monitors statistical trends of content usage,
and based on threshold crossings (e.g.,
n views within a time period T) determines which content is stored and which
content is deleted from the cache.
Threshold-based caching algorithms
are more sophisticated and avoid the
pragmatic solution to this evolution. By

balancing storage and streaming requirements, operators gain important advantages in service performance and op-
erational costs. This distributed network

architecture, together with intelligent
caching algorithms, promises to solve the
challenges of growth.
Figure 3: Edge streamer cache

storage requirement (TB) for 90
percent cache hit ratio.
well-known issue of cache pollution associated with simple LRU-based caching algorithms. Cache pollution is caused
by long-tail content that is automatically
placed in the cache by a simple LRU algorithm but is never requested again before
the LRU mechanism deletes it from the
cache. In other words, the long-tail content occupied valuable space in the cache
but was never requested again before being deleted.
Figure 4 takes the studied data just
mentioned and examines the effect the
two different caching algorithms have on
cache storage requirements.
As shown, threshold-based caching offers far better efficiency than the standard
LRU-based content caching algorithms.
By intelligently monitoring content usage
behavior, this algorithm reduces the storage requirements at the edge necessary to
achieve various cache hit ratios. For an 80
percent cache hit ratio, threshold-based
caching reduces the storage required by
more than 30 percent. It also enables a
2,200-title cache to satisfy 10 percent more
user requests. By intelligently ensuring
the proper titles are cached locally, this
optimization allows operators to further
stretch the usefulness of their edge-caching
streamers. This balancing of costs between
edge caches and transport bandwidth is a
significant operational advantage. With
more accurate data and better algorithms,
operators are better positioned to optimize
performance and costs.
Figure 4: Title popularity rank (highest to lowest).
Leading 2 solutions
Portable Leakage Detector.
Fully agile tuning
Channel tag compatible
Easy conguration
Robust casing
Your NEW nd and x tool!
Summary
It is up to the network planners to
build the service infrastructure for the
explosion in VOD demand. Clearly, legacy solutions are reaching their limits.
The Internets CDN model is a proven,
1 888 495.6577
www.cpat-solution.com
Solutions
31
NEWproducts
Alpha smartens up outside plant
Alpha Technologies
has introduced the i2M
Intelligent Inverter Module for the XM2-HP
and XM2 CableUPS.
The i2M offers MSOs
several new features for
the management of their
broadband power networks. According to Jim
Heidenreich, vice president of product management and customer fulfillment at Alpha: The i2M
increases the level of intelligence in the outside plant.
With an optional Smart
DOCSIS Transponder,
technicians can verify
network communications
with the NOC before they
leave an outside plant
location. Further, they can
specify the AlphaCell battery model in the i2M and
then track individual battery voltages onsite.
As a new standard
feature on all new XM2HP and XM2 power supplies, the i2M is a common inverter module for
the majority of an MSOs
existing Alpha outside
plant. Existing XM2

power supplies are easily
field-upgraded as needed
with the backwards-compatible i2M.
The new battery set-up
menu of the i2M allows
the selection of AlphaCell
models to optimize charging and prolong battery
life. Technicians can view
individual battery voltages,
allowing for quick identification and replacement of
bad batteries during preventive maintenance visits.
One of the primary
Extreme
intros cable
tech app
Alpha's XM2 and XM2-HP
goals with the launch of the

i2M is to help make sure a
power supply is installed
and provisioned correctly
on the first pass, said
Heidenreich. We want to
help minimize the need
for second or third truck
rolls to tweak a setting or
troubleshoot a communications problem.
Extreme Broadband
said it has launched the
first mobile training
application for drop cable
components.
The new app for the
iPhone gives field technicians all of the information they need on the job
to browse the Extreme
iTV
SeaChange intros ready-now t-commerce offering

SeaChange International has introduced
Watch & Buy, a t-commerce service that enables
cable operators to use existing video-ondemand infrastructure to sell-through DVDs
and related merchandise to subscribers.
The service is deployable today for operators using the SeaChange VODlink applications
platform.
Boasting a lightweight set-top application, user
interface customization and fully managed backend order fulfillment, Watch & Buy integrates with
any third-party back-end fulfillment solution.
In an operators VOD library, a DVD symbol
will appear next to select titles that are available
for purchase as a DVD. Subscribers will have the
option to order the movie as a VOD session, as
well as receive a copy of the titles DVD in the mail
(and subs might have the option to buy different
formats, such as Blu-ray, or to buy an entire season of a TV show on DVD).
Operators can choose to package their offerings, for example allowing their subscribers to
enjoy a free movie on VOD with the purchase
of the DVD, or offering additional items
Extreme Broadband's
iPhone app
SeaChanges Watch & Buy
for order such as movie-related soundtracks or

video games.
While SeaChange continues our work to support and develop EBIF and tru2way standards
and applications, operators are simultaneously
asking for solutions they can use today that
generate additional revenue streams and differentiate services, which is why Watch & Buy
was developed, said Anthony Landamia, product
manager of in-home strategy and iTV applications
at SeaChange.
For more New Products, visit www.CEDmagazine.com

32 CEDjune2010
product catalog, read

installation guides and
spec sheets, and play
how-to videos on their
smartphone.
The application contains easy-to-follow videos covering a wide range
of Extreme products,
including an installation
guide for the new Infinity
Premise Enclosure and a
MoCA training module.
And it comes with a
Signal Level Calculator
and a Skills Test to allow
technicians to check their
skills and compare their
scores with other technicians online.
The app is being
developed for RIMs
Blackberry, as well.
Webextras
FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE
Facebook: Were now posting daily
news items and blogs and pointing your
attention to interesting stuff we find here
and there. All you need to do is tap the
button that acknowledges you like us.
Comments welcome. Log in to Facebook
and search for CED Magazine.
YouTube: Stewart Schley conducted
a half-dozen short-and-sweet interviews on
the show floor at The Cable Show, talking tech with some great folks from ECI,
Harmonic, Incognito, Jinni, SeaChange
and the NCTA. When you get to YouTube,
search for commengdesignmag. (We
know, we know. We didnt pick that name.)
FEATURES
Make Your Transport Network Pay Off
With WDM
In our February issue, we ran an article
on controlling total cost of ownership
on EMTAs by Bob Eng, senior director

of Touchstone product management at
Arris. The response to that included many
requests for additional information. Eng
has kindly provided us with elaboration on
his original contributed article.
He writes: Product reliability has a
profound and measurable impact on the
ongoing maintenance and operational
cost of delivering broadband services.
High-quality products with low failure
rates translate into significant cost savings
by reducing the number of truck rolls to
replace failed devices. Integrated power
supplies eliminate the costs associated
with an additional point of failure, loss
from churn and overhead of managing
additional inventory for replacements.
WEBINARS
Multi-Screen Service Management
Motorola addresses the challenges
ADindex
COMPANYlist
Advanced Media Technologies

www.amt.com ..........................................................................19
ActiveVideo ........................................................................ 18, 22

ADB .............................................................................. 17, 18, 20
Alcatel-Lucent .......................................................................... 33
Alpha................................................................................... 22, 32
Apple ................................................................12, 16, 17, 18, 32
Arris ..........................................................6, 8, 20, 21, 24, 25, 33
AT&T.......................................................................................... 8
Avail-TVN................................................................................. 24
Bell Labs ..................................................................................... 6
BigBand ................................................................................ 8, 14
BlackArrow ............................................................................... 24
Bresnan ..................................................................................... 24
Bright House .............................................................................. 6
CAB ............................................................................................ 6
The Cable Center ..................................................................... 15
Cable Television CableLabs ....................................................... 6
CableLabs ..................................................................... 15, 16, 18
Cablevision .................................................................6, 8, 18, 24
Canoe Ventures .............................................................. 6, 16, 26
Charter .................................................................................... 6, 8
Cisco ...................................................................8, 10, 16, 20, 24
Clearleap ................................................................................... 25
Comcast ..................... 6, 8, 10, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 28
Concurrent............................................................................ 8, 25
Cox......................................................6, 8, 10, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24
CTAM ................................................................................... 6, 15
DECE........................................................................................ 22
DirecTV .......................................................................... 8, 18, 20
Dish Network ............................................................................. 8
DLNA ....................................................................................... 21
Dolby ........................................................................................ 19
ECI ............................................................................................ 33
Ericsson .............................................................................. 16, 26
Extreme Broadband ................................................................. 32
GuideWorks ............................................................................. 10
Harmonic .............................................................................. 8, 33
Hulu .......................................................................................... 17
IDC ........................................................................................... 33
Incognito................................................................................... 33
All Systems Broadband

www.allsystemsbroadband.com ..............................................26
ATX Networks
www.atxnetworks.com/maxnet2 .......................................insert
Aurora Networks
www.aurora.com......................................................................36
Clearfield Inc.
www.ClearfieldConnection.com .............................................22
IBC2010
www.ibc.org/register ...............................................................27
JDSU
www.jdsu.com/DOCSIS ...........................................................2
Jones/NCTI
www.ProfessionalGrowthStartsHere.com..............................21
NCS Industries
www.ncsind.com........................................................................5
NYSE Euronext
www.nyx.com ..........................................................................35
Remote Security Systems LLC
www.remotesecuritysystemsllc.com ........................................30
Sencore
www.sencore.com ......................................................................7
TriNet
www.TriNetcom.net ................................................................29
Tulsat Corp.
www.tulsat.com .........................................................................9
VGI Solutions
www.cpat-solution.com ...........................................................31
Vecima Networks
www.vecima.com .....................................................................25
www.CEDmagazine.com
service providers face in figuring out how

to manage and merchandise the "infinite"
content necessary for providing video in
IP-based networks. The discussion covers
pain points experienced by service providers, services that will keep current subscribers and attract new ones, and how
all of these issues relate to a multi-screen
service management system. Panelists
include Buddy Snow, senior director of
global product marketing at Motorola, and
Greg Ireland of IDC.
Listen to the archived broadcast online!
Make Your Transport Network Pay Off
With WDM
Service providers need ways to meet
capacity demand in the core that are easy
to operate, fast and flexible. Alcatel-Lucent
discusses its WDM solutions for transforming a transport network.
Listen to the archived broadcast online!
Insight ......................................................................................... 8
In-Stat ....................................................................................... 14
Intel ........................................................................................... 24
JDSU ........................................................................................... 8
Jinni ........................................................................................... 33
Juniper ........................................................................................ 8
Knology....................................................................................... 8
Mediacom ................................................................................... 8
Microsoft .............................................................................. 6, 17
MoCA ................................................................................. 20, 32
Motorola ...............................................................6, 8, 10, 20, 33
NCTA .................................................................3, 15, 16, 23, 33
NDS .................................................................................... 10, 18
Needham & Co. ....................................................................... 12
Nielsen ...................................................................................... 24
OpenTV ..................................................................16, 24, 25, 26
Qwest .......................................................................................... 8
RCN ............................................................................................ 8
Rogers ........................................................................... 19, 20, 21
Rovi ........................................................................................... 10
Samsung .................................................................................... 21
SCTE............................................................................... 3, 15, 22
SeaChange ........................................................24, 25, 26, 32, 33
SNL Kagan ............................................................................... 28
Sony ................................................................................ 6, 19, 22
Suddenlink.......................................................................... 20, 23
Sunflower Broadband .............................................................. 24
SureWest ..................................................................................... 8
TelePacific................................................................................. 33
Texscan NT ........................................................................ 16, 24
This Technology ....................................................................... 16
TiVo .................................................................................... 13, 34
TWC .........................................................6, 8, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22
Vecima ........................................................................................ 8
Verivue ....................................................................28, 29, 30, 31
Verizon ........................................................................................ 8
Virgin Media ....................................................................... 24, 25
Windstream ................................................................................ 8
Yankee Group ............................................................................ 6
33
capitalcurrents
The new FCC video device
inquiry
Circuit City has risen from the grave. The new
FCC inquiry on video device competition calls Congress
prescient in enacting Section 629 in 1996. Nonsense. Tom
Bliley, then chair of the House Commerce Committee, was
merely carrying out the wishes of his Richmond, Va., constituent Circuit City.
Circuit City didnt like the idea that cable set-top boxes
were leased rather than sold to home subscribers, and it
wanted a piece of that market. As the FCCs notice of inquiry
recites, the retail market never developed even after the
By Jeffrey Krauss
cable industry and the consumer electronics industry spent
years developing the standard for the CableCard interface a
President of
device designed to protect the security of premium programTelecommunications and
ming. Thats really all the CableCard does. In a CableCard
Technology Policy
receiver, tuning and control messaging over the out-of-band
channel is done by the TV receiver.
jkrauss@krauss.ws
But now the FCC has embarked on a far more ambitious
and, I would say, nave path to redesign the way cable
TiVo wins
networks and home networks work. This new approach,
outlined in the Docket No. 10-91 notice of inquiry, relies
but
on a set-back device that the FCC calls an AllVid adapter.
While the AllVid device started out conceptually as netconsumers
work agnostic and able to work on cable, satellite and fiber,
the FCC has backed off from that absurdity to recognize
lose
that each adapter would be system-specific to a particular
multichannel video programming distributor. This new regime would apply to all MVPD
technologies, including satellite, fiber and IPTV not only cable.
Instead of only the security being separated from the consumer-owned equipment, the
FCC would put the tuning and control communications in the MSO-supplied AllVid device,
as well. It would turn the TV set into a dumb monitor. It would also require that devices like
digital video recorders and home network routers be in a separate box from the MSO-supplied
device, depriving consumers of the convenience and efficiency of todays cable boxes that have
built-in DVRs and routers. The big winner would be TiVo.
So the FCC envisions a home network with users stationed remotely at devices like TV
displays and DVRs, communicating with a gateway called an AllVid device. The viewer in the
bedroom would tell the gateway device in the basement what program to send to the bedroom. That interface would have to carry enough information so that the gateway knows that
the bedroom display is entitled to render that program, taking into account parental control
requirements, as well as conditional access and copy control.
A standardized remote user interface will certainly be more complex than the CableCard
interface. In fact, various industry standards bodies are working on versions of such an interface. But, meanwhile, another industry standards body is working on an interface for a nextgeneration CableCard-like security module, but based on a tiny microSD card format rather
than the CableCards big PCMCIA format.
34 CEDjune2010

One reason that subscribers dont

want to buy and own cable and satellite set-top boxes is that the technology
keeps evolving. The FCC recognizes that
consumers dont want to get stuck with
obsolete technology that doesnt work
with the latest and greatest service. In the
FCCs plan, the MVPD would replace
the AllVid device to support the new
service. But when new services come
along, consumers would be stuck with
an obsolete remote user interface. How
long would it take to create version 2.0
of the interface with an updated list of
services? Would replacement of AllVid
devices have to wait for version 2.0 of the
interface? What about the standardized
interface that is built into the consumers
home video product could the consumers home video product be updated to
implement version 2.0 of the interface?
While there will be customized
versions of the AllVid device for each
MVPD technology, the FCC seems to
think that all home networks will use
dedicated Ethernet wired technology. This
one-size-fits-all approach would stifle the
consumer choice that is evident today
in the deployment of home networking
technology. Coaxial cable, home phone
lines, powerlines and wireless are all competing for market share in the emerging
home networking market.
The FCC document is merely a notice
of inquiry. It doesnt propose a specific
rule. That would come in the next step:
a notice of proposed rulemaking. The
FCC staff will have to review comments
and reply comments before proposing
any rules to the five commissioners. The
FCC has released an agenda calendar
for documents tied into its National
Broadband Plan. It optimistically calls
for a notice of proposed rulemaking in
this proceeding during the fourth quarter of 2010, a schedule which is unlikely
to be met. In fact, if the comments reflect
the concerns I have, we may never see a
proposed rule. But if we do, it might be
called The TiVo Promotion, Protection
and Preservation Rule.
THEY DELIVER ACCESS INNOVATION.

WE HELP THEM ACCESS
THE CAPITAL MARKETS.
The demand for bandwidth is growing faster than the networks that deliver it, and Calix access
innovation is here to help. A leading supplier of broadband access systems, Calix allows
communications service providers to push ber forward and connect to their customers at
the speeds they need to keep ahead of the pace. As the latest tech company to join the NYSE
network, Calix is now connected to the exchange with nearly $2.5 trillion in market cap of tech,
media and telecom companies. And thats access to a lot of innovation. nyx.com
2010 NYSE Euronext. All rights reserved. All information contained above about Calix and its operations provided by Calix. NYSE Euronext and its affiliates do not recommend or make
any representation as to possible benefits from any securities or investments, or third-party products or services. Investors should undertake their own due diligence regarding their
securities and investment practices. All data as of 12/31/09.
Evolution not Revolution

Reach new customers with RFoG
Generate new revenues
FTTP architecture for:
Rural and low-density network extensions
New high-end housing developments
MDUs
Seamless operation with installed systems:

Delivers the same video, voice and data services as HFC
Leverages the installed base of set-tops, cable modems, and eMTAs
Uses the same back office and provisioning systems as HFC
Auroras VHub innovations overcome limitations:

EDFAs boost downstream reach
Digital return extends upstream reach
Optical switching provides redundancy option
Fiber management is simplified
Node PON module enables transition to RFPON
A whole new light, growing brighter!

www.aurora.com | 408.235.7000

(Magazine) CED Magazine 2010 06 June

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

(Magazine) CED Magazine 2010 06 June

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

THE PREMIER MAGAZINE OF BROADBAND TECHNOLOGY | www.CEDmagazine.

com | JUNE 2010

Laaaaaaaaaaadies and gentlemen!

SENIOR EDITOR Mike Robuck

The Cable Show, once upon a time devoted

To read past columns, visit www.CE Dmagazine.com

CED is an officially recognized publication of the SCTE.

For detailed specifications, please visit: www.atxnetworks.com/maxnet2

Optical Transmission Platform with Integrated RF Management

Save up to 300% rack space over competitive gear

Integrated active combiner technology in TX eliminates narrowcast network RF level

Eliminates racks worth of legacy 4- or 8-way narrowcast passives

See back for details on new ultra-dense narrowcast amplifier modules.

ATX offers a full suite of products

Volume 36, number 5

By Brian Santo, Editor-in-Chief; Mike Robuck, Senior Editor; and Craig

24 Giving VOD advertising the business

The technology behind dynamic ad insertion in VOD is proven and available

By Brian Santo, Editor-in-Chief

Latest industry news and insights

Time Warner Cable demos 290 Mbps broadband

8 x 4 channel bonding. With TWCs top

Comcast joins launch of

cable systems in the nation.

The rise of the

The Yankee Group

above and beyond

Sencore is the leader in high quality video delivery

Source: Company data

Cable competition index

Source: Company data

Equipment supplier index

The on-demand listings include titles, poster

Comcast retools guide for SA boxes

GuideWorks, which is a joint venture between Comcast

Support your marketing and advertising efforts with

Multi-screen service management in

For turnkey CED webinar sponsorship opportunities contact:

To read past columns,

ground-breaking navigation architecture. Apple Inc. didnt invent digital

To read past columns,

the desire of some to be competitive by

To read past columns,

other access technologies. At the same time,

own strengths in applied science, we have

The Greatest Show on Earth!

Laaaaaaaaaaadies and gentlemen! Welcome

profile the viewer zip code, time of day,

The bustling show floor on opening day.

personal video cloud with him wherever

viewers create profiles

how do we migrate to the full resolution

that can be used in the future.

Tying it all together

and mobile broadband to the wireless

All-digital. All the time.

Contact AMT today for a no-obligation

MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent

Advanced Media Technologies | 3150 SW 15th Street | Deerfield Beach, FL 33442

Comcast is following that path, as well,

network and delivering videos to both

Were looking at techniques to get

Plant the Seed for