The Plenary session at Cable Congress is always a good place to judge the current ‘group think’ of the European cable sector. For a few years now, the big question has been about the ‘opportunity’ and/or ‘threat’ of OTT services and this year’s Plenary again updated us on the latest take.

In recent years, OTT has been seen as first a threat and then an opportunity to manage delivery and guarantee QoS. Now the big operators are going a step further, seeing the opportunity to manage the TV Everywhere enabled by connected devices and provide the UI to third party services.

Mike Fries, CEO Liberty Global, says, “There is an OTT revolution and we are right on board. While 97 per cent of TV is still consumed from the couch….. an increasing amount of time, particularly by the young, is being spent consuming on other devices. We’ve changed our thinking more in the last 12 to 18 months than ever before. There’s nothing to be frightened of…”. Fries said their new Horizon home gateway, due for roll out over the coming year, will include 3D graphic interface and a four-button controller with smart phone like touch-screen control. It will be based on Flash but also run HTML5. “It is a game changer for us,” he said.

Rosalia Portela, CEO of ONO, agreed that Internet-based services had to be provided, “and the extra bandwidth advantage that DOCSIS 3.0 gives us over competitors makes us all the more ambitious in this area.”

Paul Liao, CEO CableLabs, warned this embracing of alternative services and the continued driving of the Digital Agenda could only be fulfilled if regulators were aware they could or make or break innovation among network providers; “we have to be allowed to make the network pay.”

Source: http://www.advanced-television.tv/index.php/2011/02/15/embracing-ott-and-a-plea-to-regulators/

In a reference to the tectonic plates that created the Alpine peaks towering above Cable Congress’s Lucerne venue, Manuel Kohnstamm, Cable Europe President, told delegates that organisers had coined the phrase ‘Techtonic Forces’ to describe the 2011 event, because “we want the world to know that cable is pushing the communications industry to new peaks of performance.”

In his welcome speech, he pointed out that the cable industry had already shown steady growth through the economic crisis in past years, but was now really jumping ahead in performance, and sending competitive shock-waves through Europe.

What he found most remarkable was the new energy seen in core television markets. “Years of dedicated investments in HD, VOD and interactive television have set the massive European analogue cable subscriber base in motion,” he said, suggesting that the vast majority of European consumers was now rapidly embracing the new intelligent television.

“And once that group starts moving, as you all know, everything moves: Broadcasters are moving as they are more inclined to schedule dedicated HD and interactive programming, our vendors are moving as they scale the technology and make better and cheaper gear, and our customers are moving as they embrace new services and inspiring us to keep on innovating,” he observed.

He said it had taken a little while before the policymakers of Europe were ready to believe the European cable industry’s role in making the Digital Agenda happen, but that it was now actually proving it. “I testified to the European Parliament that already today we deliver over 30 Mbs to about half of Europe’s 220 million households. And by 2020 we should expect more than 55 per cent of European households to have access to at least 100Mb services from cable,” he declared.

He noted that in any market, telecom infrastructure competition is crucially important, as it creates a constant need to innovate. “We could have stopped at 30 Mb , but we did not,” he admitted. “We are going to these incredible speeds beyond 1 Gb, because we can not take a single technology lead for granted. It’s part of our DNA to keep pushing it – and it’s why we are such an inconvenient threat to our competitors.”

“Together, in our tectonic clashes, I am convinced we will reach new peaks of connectivity, creating the best performing and largest IP infrastructure region in the world. Networks made of multiple fixed and mobile network operators carrying voice, video and data – whatever mix it takes to make it work, we’ll be there,” he stated, suggesting that such networks would serve European consumers who were increasingly technology agnostic and more interested in digital lifestyle and experiences than the physical characteristics of the networks.

“Today our customers care about what social network or on-line community they belong to, how portable the digital product is that they are buying on their various devices, what kind of premium content they can see, and where,” he noted.

He assured delegates that was also the way the European cable industry was building its future digital products from the ultra high speed broadband and media gateways to interactive television. “Our customers should feel a maximum freedom in using the networks, services, applications, communities, devices and content sources of their choice,” he said.

He predicted that the new generation of digital consumer would ensure the creation of a new digital value chain that could boost growth in the EU’s digital economy. “We are ready to serve them,” he concluded.

Source: http://www.advanced-television.tv/index.php/2011/02/15/%E2%80%98techtonic-forces-drive-european-cable/

The Multiplatform Vendor Bender
Multi-device delivery represents a major shift for manufacturers

By George Winslow — Broadcasting & Cable, 2/14/2011 12:00:00 AM

If the push to offer more content on more devices promises to fundamentally change the networks used by multichannel providers to deliver TV programming into the home, it is an even bigger deal for equipment and software vendors.

The deployment of TV Everywhere services opens up a huge new sales opportunity. But it could also significantly change the mix of products and equipment those vendors will be supplying, making software and cloud-based services more important and potentially reducing the central place that set-top boxes have long had in cable operations.

Over the last year, there has been a major rush by vendors to launch products and service that would allow operators to more easily deliver TV Everywhere services.

“We joke because it seems like every vendor is now a multiplatform, personalized TV, advanced advertising company,” notes Marty Roberts, vice president of sales and marketing at thePlatform, which is providing TV Everywhere services to a number of major operators and programmers. “We see a lot of similar power point presentations and are hearing a lot of noise that is making things difficult for the operators, who are trying to vet the technology and see who has something more than ‘slideware.'”

Last year, Motorola and SeaChange bowed software and products for multiplatform delivery and this year during CES, Cisco launched its Videoscape offering and Technicolor brought out the MediaNavi system.

Others like thePlatform are moving into the space from the online video world. After years of working with operators and programmers to provide content management services for online and mobile offerings, the Comcast-owned subsidiary brought out its mpx platform last year. This fundamental reengineering of its offering added the ability to manage traditional video on-demand platforms to its upgraded online and mobile capabilities.

Currently, thePlatform has built Authentication Adapters for Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Bright House Networks and Cablevision and publicly announced TV Everywhere deployments with Comcast’s Xfinity TV, Rogers On Demand Online in Canada, and iSKY for SKY Television in New Zealand.

While operators continue to restrict what vendors can say about deployments-and a number of other deployments are ongoing-Cisco has announced deployment of its Videoscape product with Telstra in Australia, and Motorola says it has deployed its services with at least one large operator.

HELPING OPERATORS EXPAND

All of these major vendors are touting their experience in working with operators as a major selling point.

“We’re well positioned to help operators expand what they have and to help them monetize it through advertising and their offerings,” argues Steve Davi, senior vice president of advanced technology at SeaChange International, who points to the company’s extensive current work with operators in the U.S., where it is a powerhouse in the VOD space, and internationally, where they have deployed a multiplatform system with Virgin Media, the U.K.’s largest cable operator.

“You don’t want to put in a separate system to expand your content delivery into three screens because that will double or triple your operating costs,” he adds.

All of these products illustrate the central role that software and cloud-based solutions will play in the future of multichannel TV and the declining, though still important, place occupied by traditional set-top boxes.

“In the past, we’ve always used set-tops as the center of the world from a design point of view because they were the end point for the delivery of video,” notes Ken Morse, chief technical officer in service provider video technology, at Cisco. “Now we have a range of other devices-connected TV, game consoles, connected Blu-ray players, PCs, Macs, smart phones, tablets-that can be used to access content and we should really view the set-top box as just another device in the home, which is not to relegate its importance.”

Closer integration of these other devices into cable, satellite and telco networks is already occurring, in some cases replacing the need for a set-top box.

At CES, for example, Time Warner Cable announced alliances with Sony and Samsung that would allow its subscribers to access its cable offering on their connected TVs without a set-top box.

Similarly, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, DirecTV and Dish have released apps that allow subscribers to access content on a variety of smart phones and other devices. Later this year, Comcast will allow subscribers to access content over their connected Samsung TV.

To connect more of those devices, operators are rushing to transform their traditional MPEG-2, QAM based networks to an IP architecture that can deliver a plethora of on-demand content to them.

BANDWITH ADDED

While cable operators lag behind telcos in this transition, the major MSOs seem to have done a fairly good job in freeing up more bandwidth, in part to make room for more HD channels or to boost the speeds of their broadband Internet offerings.

To increase their bandwidth and prepare their networks to handle more IP delivery, operators have also been able to rely on a number of well-established technologies.

These include aggressively reclaiming analog spectrum by going all digital as Comcast has done, deploying switched digital systems (one of Time Warner’s tactics), upgrading systems to 1GHz (a tactic Cox has used), or deploying DOCSIS 3.0, which greatly increases the speeds of broadband connections and allows operators to deliver more content to Internet-connected devices.

Others are deploying gateways in the home that permit consumer electronic devices to access multichannel services over an IP network inside the home.

“In 2011, I think you’ll see a tipping point where cable operators are moving more routers and gateways [into the home] then they are pure data or voice modems,” says Buddy Snow, senior director of product marketing for converged experiences and home devices at Motorola Mobility.

These gateways allow operators to go all IP in the home without having to immediately upgrade their MPEG-2 QAM based cable networks. “The key thing is that the shift to IP can be decoupled from their traditional networks,” notes Snow. “With a gateway, all of these IP enabled consumer electronics devices that consumers love-connected TV, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players, etc.-can then be plugged into a broadband network” without having to revamp the rest of their plant.

These multiplatform delivery systems are also being powered by sophisticated software systems, many of which operate in the cloud.

This is important given the hundreds of smart phones and tablets flooding into the market. Traditionally, operators and programmers had to develop a new app for each device, creating a very expensive, time-consuming process.

By centralizing how the network works with these devices to a cloud-based service, operators will be able to quickly add support for new devices and rapidly launch new services, vendors say.

“One of our launch partners for Videoscape, Telstra in Australia is now, to the point where they are adding a new unmanaged consumer device pretty much every two weeks or so,” notes Morse. “You literally make an overnight adaptation to the network versus doing a three month regression test for a new client.”

These software cloud-based solutions also have the advantages of reducing capital expenditures because they can be designed to work with legacy set-top boxes and existing headends.

“We provide a software application that makes it easy to connect various consumer equipment-tablets, mobiles phone-that have different operating systems,” says Basil Badawiyeh, vice president of product management for MediaNavi solution at Technicolor. “But we have been very conscious to make sure our technology works with legacy environments, whether they have lower end set-top boxes or the higher end set-top boxes we are offering.”

That means, he adds, they don’t have to make major changes to their head ends or other parts of their infrastructure before they can launch multiplatform offerings and start seeing some revenue from those offerings.

Providing more content on more devices and moving their networks to IP may be the biggest change in cable networks since the transition to digital in the 1990s. But fortunately for operators and subscribers, “it is more an evolution than a revolution,” notes Roberts. “Nothing needs to be ripped out of their plant for them to start providing a better subscriber experience.”

Industry efforts to entice consumers to spend upwards of $30 for a digital rental of a new-release movie just weeks after the theatrical launch could involve bundling a DVD of the title, a studio executive said.

In a Feb. 10 analyst call, Steve Beeks, president and co-COO of Lionsgate, said the concept of creating a new window between theatrical and home entertainment windows, dubbed premium VOD, continues to move cautiously forward.

Warner Home Video and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment both have said they would bow premium VOD titles by the second quarter. Beeks believes premium VOD is a “smart” opportunity for studios to generate additional revenue, only if it doesn’t negatively impact theatrical and retail channels.

“We have a couple ideas of films we might go with once we see where the industry is going,” he said.

That said, increasing the price of a movie at the time when theatrical attendance and revenue is declining, and when $1-per-day rental kiosks control 30% of the home entertainment market, would require giving consumers more than just early high-definition access to a blockbuster movie in the home. 

When asked whether studios would include digital locker initiative UltraViolet with premium VOD, Beeks said he didn’t believe that idea was on the table.

“But we have talked [about] how we can get a consumer to accept a $20 to $30 price point for a one-night rental, [and] maybe you then get a copy of the film, whether it’s digital or DVD,” Beeks said. “Some of the cable operators have brought that up as a potential idea. I don’t think we have settled on anything; we are actually anxious to see how the market develops.”

UltraViolet is the brand name given a separate industry initiative that would allow consumers of digital and physical media (notably Blu-ray Disc) to store virtual copies in a cloud-based locker they could access via myriad devices on demand.

Beeks said the initiative could bring consumers back to sellthrough by making ownership more attractive.

“It gives consumers the ability to know that if they buy [a movie] on DVD, or if they buy a digital version from digital stores, they will be able to access that movie at any time on any device,” he said. “I don’t know if this is the total answer, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.”

Source: http://www.homemediamagazine.com/vod/cable-eying-bundling-dvd-with-premium-vod-21955

The European IPTV boom has levelled off, and the continent is set to lose its position to Asia during 2011 with a surge in China and India,Broadcast Engineering has said.

The big European markets for IPTV, notably France, have become saturated, while in the emerging economies of Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic, Poland, the Baltic states, Turkey and Russia, poor infrastructure and lack of investment in fibre has held back IPTV deployment.

Europe was still well ahead of Asia at the end of the third quarter of 2010, with 46.3 percent of the world’s 41,892,171 IPTV subscribers, with France accounting for about half of that, at just under 10 million, according to the  Broadband Forum.

French IPTV subscriber numbers grew from around 7 million to 9 million between Q1 2009 and Q1 2010, but the long-sustained growth seemed to be slowing down by the end of the year as the pay TV market as a whole became more saturated.

As such, Europe will soon be overtaken by Asia, while France will lose its top spot to China sometime during 2011 or 2012, the report said.

Source: http://abu.org.my/abu/index.cfm/elementid/67019/Asian-IPTV-demand-will-soon-overtake-that-of-Europe

Channel multiplication, new formats and the takeoff of digital TV in emerging markets looks set to drive the value of video transmission services over satellite to $27 million by 2020.

According to satellite consulting and analyst firm Euroconsult this figure includes revenues from TV channels and contribution services for permanent and occasional use and would represent an $11.2 billion rise on what was amassed in 2010 when an estimated 25,000 TV signals were transmitted by satellite.

Even though North America and Europe are currently the largest markets, the analyst believes that takeoff of digital TV in emerging regions, such as India, Russia and Brazil, could make those markets the most important growth engines over the next ten years.

This would be just one of a number of significant growth drivers said Pacome Revillon, CEO of Euroconsult: “Anticipated revenue growth for video transmission services in the coming years is based on strong market drivers such as the multiplication of channels, the launch of new formats and the takeoff of digital TV in emerging regions…Furthermore, demand for increasingly complex video transmission solutions will push service providers to create end-to-end solutions with satellite remaining a key part of the delivery network.”

The ‘Video Transmission Services over Satellite, Global Market Analysis & Forecasts to 2020′ report adds that technological improvements are profoundly transforming the market for video transmission, with more complex and diverse requirement offering new revenue opportunities to market players. The migration to HD and 3D transmission formats, the roll-out of fibre and 3G/4G networks, the development of linear and non linear usage and the multiplication of video screens are cited as playing a particularly critical role in this phenomenon.

Euroconsult calculates that video contribution services, with the transmission of raw video material, are also growing with a 24% CAGR in terminals deployed in the last five years. It says the need to broadcast live programming and cover both global and local events is driving demand for occasional video services.

Even though service providers such as Globecast, Arqiva and RRSat currently account for 6% of the total market value of video transmission services, Euroconsult expects new players to emerge alongside the market consolidation and reorganisation of historical market players. It noted that recent transactions, such as the acquisitions of Ascent Media activities and Crawford Communications by Encompass, may be followed by further M&A activities in the next few years.

Such moves may be required to take advantage of growth opportunities and reach the critical size needed to manage more complex content management and transmission requirements.

Read more: Satellite video services to be worth $27 billion by 2020 | News | Rapid TV News http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011021010281/satellite-video-services-to-be-worth-27-billion-by-2020.html#ixzz1Dc7XBnxw

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) went on the AllVid offensive again, warning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that a proposal led by Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) and Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) will essentially break the MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) model by ignoring copyrights, patent, licensing and other rules governing the distribution of subscription video services.

The response followed a letter to the FCC last month from Sony, Google, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and other parties urging the FCC to adopt “technical standards that enable any device to present a unified interface” that can blend content from MVPD services with Web-sourced content and content obtained over home networks. Further, they believe copyright and potential theft issues can be addressed by passing along a “copy once” command to the target device.

The NCTA, in a nine-page ex parte filed Tuesday, alleges that what they’re really after is a mandate that would allow the disassembling of programming, data and program guide metadata used to create and provide each MVPD’s service so that Google & Company “may remake them into a service of its own design.”

The cable lobbying arm claims such a rule would violate the affiliate agreements and intellectual property licenses cable uses today to obtain and sell programming packages, which include things like channel placement. “Such terms cannot be replaced by merely passing along a ‘copy once’ command, as Sony/Google suggest,” the NCTA said.

Why this matters
The FCC is being inundated as it considers whether to morph AllVid from a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) into a full-fledged rule-making initiative later this year. The FCC has been looking at AllVid as a way to push broadband adoption using network-agnostic video adapters and gateways that can support traditional MVPD content as well as Web-sourced programming.

The cable industry, still smarting from the distraction and expense of the FCC’s CableCARD rules, is trying to stop AllVid in its tracks, holding that the market for retail video devices is developing on its own without further government interference. Its examples include recent deals that will allow Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) and Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) to deliver its programming to new connected TVs and tablets from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC).

As this week’s filing suggests, cable likewise appears quite fearful that an adoption of the Google/Sony idea will not just wreak havoc on the existing business model but turn MSOs into dumb pipes.

Those in favor of an AllVid regime think the rules are necessary in order to spur innovation, open the market for video devices, and break down barriers that, they claim, “now isolate television and computer devices from MVPD services.”

Source: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=204288&site=lr_cable

New data from ABI Research has revealed that Asia-Pacific’s share of the market will approach 50% of all sold worldwide in 2013-2015.

The research firm says that the key driver for the trend will be the completion of digital transitions in North America and Western Europe, coupled with the digitisation of cable systems in China occurring through 2015-2016. Even though subscriber growth in India is also likely to be strong, a lack of a clear timeline for digitisation could hamper digital STB growth in the longer term.

According to the Set-Top Box Market Data report, cable TV services remained the most popular pay-TV platform although they continue to lose market share, primarily to  IPTV, satellite TV (DBS) and DTT platforms are gaining customers through market growth, but maintaining steady market shares.

Yet overall ABI believes that worldwide, video operators’ desire to offer more channels and high definition channels was evident. “2011 reflects the first full year where boxes capable of decoding MPEG-4 (H.264 AVC) will exceed legacy boxes capable of decoding only MPEG-2,” explained senior analyst Sam Rosen. “MPEG-4 is required for high-definition video, and can help fit more digital standard definition channels into the same bandwidth, compared to the MPEG-2 codec.”

Read more: Asia-Pac to drive STB growth for the next five years | News | Rapid TV News http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011021010283/asia-pac-to-drive-stb-growth-for-the-next-five-years.html#ixzz1Dc6C1jfs

In a landmark case, a court in New York authorized a “seizure warrant” permitting the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to seize the domain names of several websites which were facilitating links to pirate P2P streams of broadcast sports events.  The seizure effectively closes down for a time the operations of the pirate websites, though they may attempt to move offshore to avoid US jurisdiction.  (For a look at one of the seized sites, click here:  http://www.atdhe.net)   Legislation is also under consideration in the US Congress which would impose sanctions against offshore sites.    

CASBAA members can download the ICE court affidavit, which conveys many more details about the case here.

To read more about this in the Wall Street Journal, please click here.

 

Global IPTV subscribers will rise to around 109 Million in 2014, expanding at a CAGR of around 25% according to new research from Companiesandmarkets.com.

 

Overall, Companiesandmarkets.com believes that most IPTV markets have not reached saturation and that there are many opportunities for growth.

 

During this time period, says the report, Europe will be the largest and most active IPTV market, however, as predicted in other similar surveys, the Asia-Pacific region will gain market dominance in the crucial categories of subscribers, service revenue and infrastructure.

Fuelling IPTV’s growth in Europe over the next five years will be rapidly growing broadband penetration. The report also adds that IPTV subscribers will climb in markets, where FTTx deployment is powering ahead.

 

Other key drivers in other key markets include high existing pay-TV penetration, stiff prices, and service competition throughout America. The latter is also expected to be the most competitive IPTV market in the world.

 

Source: http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011020710194/iptv-to-break-100-million-barrier-by-2014.html