What's New in Tech

BY ANTHONY CRUPI

The pocket-protector crowd held its equivalent of the senior ball at last month's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia, a giddy expanse of dilated time where vendors (figuratively) slow-danced with operators and everybody mooned over the promise of a world without curfews or interoperability constraints. And because we're speaking metaphorically here, SCTE was even all the more magical because nobody got pregnant or threw up in the punch bowl.

Anyway, it's party time again, only this month's wingding is going to be geared equally toward the swells over in programming. While the National Cable and Telecommunications Association Cable 2003 Exhibition will showcase an even split of propellerheads and programmers, don't expect the jock (ESPN) and the really popular girl (Playboy) to walk away as the king and queen of the prom just like that. Microsoft's Bill Gates will be on hand in Chicago to inject a little geek chic into the proceedings, and even if the presence of a kabillionaire doesn't shake things up a little, the confluence of sound and picture, of tech and content, should make this year's NCTA show about as memorable as the one in Carrie, minus the pig blood.

Lest we drag out the conceit past the breaking point, it is of particular interest that the most sought-after marriage of form and function will serve as the focal point of this year's show. High-definition television has become the ultimate expression of cable's lofty goals ? NCTA president and CEO Robert Sachs says HDTV is the ?key to facilitating the transition from analog to digital television? ? and as such, an entire pavilion is being dedicated to HD inside Chicago's McCormick Place. There, a baker's dozen programmers will show their wares in crisp, realer-than-real hi-def, while a host of technology partners make it all happen. And if that's not enough, the NCTA will be transmitting all of the National Show general sessions in high definition, to a nationwide audience.

But don't settle for watching the big show on TV. It's time to strap on those dancing shoes, load your hair up with pomade and break into your dad's stash of Old Crow. What follows is a list of some of the exhibitors who will serve as cable's prom dates, and some of the new moves they plan to demonstrate on the show floor.

Voice-over-IP vendor Arris will be showing off the nuts and bolts behind its Cornerstone cable telephony platform, which includes the carrier-grade Cadant C4 Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) and G2 IMS software for advanced IP voice and tiered data applications. It will also unveil a new product, the Cadant C3, which, as you may have guessed by the naming convention, is a CMTS meant for use in smaller systems. Plus, there will be a whole mess of customer premises equipment to boot: data gateways, DOCSIS 2.0-certified CM 450 cable modems, DOCSIS 1.1-certified E-MTAs and Touchstone telephony modems. The icing on the cake will be a demo of Arris's Telephony-over-IP (ToIP) integration with Net2Phone.

Artel throws the curtain back on two new products, the VSGx and VSGm, a pair of VOD transport devices. The VSGx is a gigabit Ethernet VOD transport system designed to support all VOD architectures at a low cost, while keeping the door open for future applications. The VSGm is a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) platform that allows the transport device to adapt to any network topology.

A BigBand mouthpiece tells us that the company hasn't decided exactly what it's planning to show at NCTA, although HD RateShaping will figure prominently in the presentation. As an aside, we'd like to note that BigBand had better start thinking about the show, given the logistics that will be involved in transporting the 100 or so engineers it had in the booth at SCTE. We don't have an exact figure for how many staffers will be on hand for this show, but we can say with a certain degree of confidence that the population of Philadelphia more or less tripled when BigBand rolled into town last month. At any rate, besides the compulsory BMR demo, BigBand bigwigs will be presenting a pair of white papers, including ?Network Design for a Multiplicity of Services? and the more snappily titled ?Cable and Consumer Electronics?A Vegas Wedding??

Broadbus will demonstrate its B-1 video server, the first high-density, highly scalable DRAM-based server built to support VOD and SVOD, as well as the future demands of Television-on-Demand (TOD). A Broadbus rep will walk visitors through some key innovations in the B-1 architecture, such as its asymmetric multiprocessor, decoupled storage and streaming and a huge RAM cache. The company will also present a technical paper on TOD, and will formally introduce Robert G. Scheffler as its new chief architect.

Cedar Point will showcase its Safari C3 Cable Media Switching System, a new category of voice switching equipment that offers all of the functions necessary for carrier class cable telephony, including support of CALEA, E911 and Operator Interrupt. Representatives also will host informational sessions explaining the challenges cable system operators and vendors must overcome to comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) of 1994.

Concurrent will offer a number of real-time product demos, including a joint effort with Gotuit Media that underscores the development of personalizing Everything-on-Demand content. Gotuit's indexing solution and intelligent navigation of on-demand video content, called Gotuit TV, has been integrated with Concurrent's MediaHawk VOD platform, a marriage which will enable floor walkers (and customers) to view selections and segments of on-demand content so they can watch just the specific content of interest to them. Concurrent will also show off an interactive TV application based on MVmax's MetaScript program, and will highlight partner Everstream's Operational Intelligence, a diagnostic tool that allows operators to offer uninterrupted VOD service.

Convergys will offer multiple live demonstrations at NCTA, including a run-through of its call avoidance/call deflection technologies, billing/support activation and contact center. A spokesperson notes that Convergys's IP suite addresses the major pain points and business challenges for residential IP-based offerings in the areas of technical support, customer support, sales and customer retention.

Ellacoya will be taking the wraps off a systems architecture that addresses the limitations of certain online gaming services. The challenge that faces any company looking to get into the multiplayer gaming space is not so much a bandwidth consideration, but latency. Latency problems can delay action by a gamer's character, or in some cases, cause a character to actually disappear. Under its new gENIOS architecture, Ellacoya can make gamers visible to bandwidth-providing MSOs, so that the latency playing field can be leveled and the gamers on the slower end of the pipe may be courted with pitches for faster service.

Gallery IP Telephony, a provider of cable telephony softswitching platforms, will tout its Cassiopeia softswitch 3.0. The new release further enhances the Gallery IP's platform, offering Dynamic Quality of Service (DQoS), SS7 over IP, and security over a networked telephony system. The Cassiopeia architecture will enable MSOs to virtually manage their networks, and to provide efficient and reliable telephony services over broadband networks. Look for Gallery to demonstrate how the new softswitch can seamlessly handle peak traffic loads and facilitate greater quantities of on-net calls.

Harmonic, Hewlett-Packard, Kasenna and N2 Broadband are presenting an open-architecture VOD demonstration. The demo will include widely deployed technologies from each of the partner companies. HP lends its industry-leading ProLiant server platform, which leverages the performance and cost advantages of Intel Xeon processors. HP's high-performance servers are in turn powered by Kasenna's MediaBase XMP Cable Edition streaming software. N2 Broadband's OpenStream VOD back-office platform provides real-time billing, resource management, reporting and content management functions for the demo. Harmonic provides its Narrowcast Services Gateway (NSG) to efficiently transport VOD streams from the server located in the remote head-end to the network's edge using IP/Gigabit Ethernet and then distributed over the existing HFC infrastructure to the subscriber. These technologies are pre-integrated to provide a scalable, future-proof system for on-demand cable services.

The highest traffic area at NCTA will undoubtedly be the HD Pavilion, an 8,000-square-foot display encompassing HD content, technology, gaming and business. The HD Pavilion will comprise five areas, including the world's largest HDTV plasma-screen TV, multiple ?living rooms? offering HD VOD, HD PVR, Microsoft's Xbox gaming console system in high-definition and a tutorial center to demonstrate the differences between standard-definition TV and HDTV. A retail store stocked with the latest HD displays rounds out the exhibit, and will feature CableLabs's Go2Broadband HD service locator. ?Having HD Pavilion as the centerpiece of the exhibit floor will showcase the rapidly expanding amount of HDTV programming that is available on cable,? says the NCTA's Sachs. Companies participating in the HD Pavilion include Sony, Scientific-Atlanta, Motorola, Philips, nCube, Pace, Panasonic, Pioneer and SeaChange.

Near term, most cable-ready digital TVs sold under the NCTA/CEA plug-and-play agreement likely will lack the return path and the horsepower necessary for interactive subscriber services and VOD. To combat this seemingly unavoidable bottleneck, ICTV has extended its HeadendWare product to utilize the DOCSIS return path, which will enable ops to deliver interactive services to every cable-ready DTV without having to resort to a digital set-top box.

The Microsoft TV folks are being pretty hush-hush about what they will bring to Chicago; a spokesperson would only say that the Redmond giant will ?showcase its full range of digital TV products for the cable industry.? That's not much to go on, but the presence of Bill Gates at the opening general session suggests that big news may be coming down the pipe shortly. Certainly, there has been some speculation that Microsoft may be ready to announce further deployments of its IPG; the first came in early May with sales to the smallish Oregon-based Willamette Broadband and Uvision systems. But an IPG deal doesn't seem bold enough to call for a visit from the man himself. Microsoft TV VP Moshe Lichtman is also scheduled to speak on a panel entitled, ?When Will ITV Change From Being a Survivor to an American Idol?? and Alan Yates, GM, marketing, Microsoft TV division, will participate in something called ?Creating the Starbucks Habit With Cable Customers: What's A Latte Effort?? We're not sure who comes up with these delightfully oddball titles, but keep 'em coming.

Motorola is showing its full line of DCT-6200 set-tops, the SBG1000 wireless cable modem gateway and a host of other consumer premises devices. The DCT-6200, a next-generation take on its wildly popular DCT-5100 predecessor, breaks the land-speed record with an 800 MIPS internal processor ? an upgrade of over 150%. Meanwhile, the DCT-6208 is being heralded as the cable industry's first fully integrated solution for HDTV and PVR, and comes complete with an internal 80-GB hard drive. On the modem end, the SBG1000 gateway combines the functionality of a modem, a router and a wireless access point in a single product, saving money, time and the aggravation that comes with trying to integrate these kinds of disparate products. Lastly, Moto gets all John Ashcroft, offering a preview of its new family of Internet home control and monitoring products, designed to enable consumers to remotely monitor their homes. Monitoring gizmos include cameras, sensors and motion detectors, which allow customers to keep an eye on the homestead, even from thousands of miles away.

MyDTV will demonstrate its TV Agent and ContentIQ products on the Pioneer Passport digital navigation and application suite in the Pioneer booth. MyDTV's personalization products offer operators a chance to increase VOD and pay-per-view revenue while offering subscribers a better way to navigate through programming options with ?search and alert? capabilities. The demo running on the Passport suite will allow booth visitors to experience MyDTV's navigation capabilities. The ContentIQ portion of the demo will show ops how personalization can lead to promotional opportunities for PPV and VOD, and improve customer satisfaction.

NCTA marks the first time N2 has ventured onto the floor of a trade show; usually it spends all of its face time tucked away in a nearby hotel suite. But N2 has a few big announcements to make, and it wants to show off its recently launched OpenStream platform; hence the vendor's opting for some space inside McCormick Place. OpenStream will be demoed in conjunction with partners Hewlett-Packard, Kasenna and Harmonic.

The nCube people will demonstrate on-demand media and digital advertising solutions for the deployment of Everything-on-Demand. The company will feature: Gigabit Ethernet transport, which allows operators to serve more customers at a lower cost; a live demonstration of its Network Personal Video Recording (nPVR) capabilities, which enables operators to capture and stream live on-demand programming in real time; and HD VOD. There will also be demonstrations of nCube's Digital Program Insertion (DPI), an ad insertion system that handles both digital-to-analog and digital-to-digital, including standard definition as well as high-definition advertising insertion. The company's products will also be showcased in partner booths at the show, including Mag Rack and Motorola.

Net2Phone will be running its basic cable demo, a spokesperson said, which means that a visitor to its booth can expect to be able to make a lot of free long-distance calls while a staffer does a walk-through of the company's PacketCable-based VoIP capabilities.

OpenTV will unearth live, fully deployed examples of interactive television powered by its ITV platform. The company will also be showcasing examples of interactivity running on a range of set-top box types, from low-end to high-end units. Examples of interactive content will include: enhanced TV, interactive advertising, gaming, commerce services, communication services and PVR. In addition, OpenTV will showcase its games and entertainment channel, PlayJam, now the most widely deployed ITV entertainment and games channel in the world, with distribution to over 12 million households in the U.K., France, Africa and the U.S.

Along with its latest HD set-tops, Pace will introduce visitors to the world's first Digital Cable Adapter (DCA), a device which converts digital video signals for viewing on analog TV sets. Of course, much of the oohing and aahing will be reserved for Pace's DC-550 HD box, a durable and tiny set-top currently deployed by Time Warner Cable. The company will also showcase the DC-755 HD box and the DC-510, a standard-definition unit deployed by Comcast, TWC and Bright House Networks. Keep an eye out for the guy in the vulture suit ? Pace uses the carrion-chewing bird as a symbol of the inherent death of satellite, even though, now that we think about it, the company serves the DBS market as well as cable, the cheeky monkeys.

Pioneer will be the most prominantly featured consumer electronics company at any cable industry event this year, as more than 50 of its HDTV televisions, plasmas and Elite home entertainment products will be on display at NCTA. Pioneer will also showcase its recently deployed 3510HD Voyager HDTV set-top box and its Voyager 4000 dual-tuner DVR/HD-enabled unit. Topping the week's HD events, Paul Dempsey, president, Pioneer's Business Solutions division, will discuss how Pioneer is leading the charge in driving consumer adoption of HD, on a panel entitled, ?The Big Picture on the Big Picture: Hi-Def and Cable.? And if all that's not enough, attendees will also get the chance to win a home theater system, although good luck fitting it into the plane's overhead compartment on your way home.

Scientific-Atlanta is not fooling around. According to a company press packet, S-A is set to introduce the Explorer 8000HD home entertainment server, a set-top which provides all the features of the Explorer 8000 DVR box plus HD functionality. What's more, S-A will roll out the Explorer 3270HD interactive set-top, a retail-only offering. From there, it appears that S-A pretty much grabbed everything it had lying around the office, including its Webstar DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems, the SmartLAN home networking system, the SciCare broadband services customer service tool and a number of products that support applications such as VOD and data networking.

Scopus Network Technologies makes its NCTA debut, introducing both itself and its new IVN (Intelligent Video Network) platform. IVN supports a comprehensive end-to-end-digital compression network system for video distribution over cable and satellite, although they may want to keep that to themselves. (These cable shows can attract a rough element.) A Scopus spokesman said the IVN ?represents the next generation topology for video networking,? adding that the demo should give operators ?a new perspective on video.? IVN's architecture supports total system control from the master head-end through the network backbone down and to each specific node, hub or remote site.

SeaChange is pulling into Chicago at the wheel of an 80-foot, 16-wheeled monstrosity called the Digital Television Truck, and if you're nice to VP/GM of broadband systems James Kelso, he'll let you steer. [Ed's note: No he won't.] Tricked out with a 20-seat multimedia theater and two full digital cable head-ends (one S-A and one Motorola), the DTT will be parked inside what we can only presume to be a very large booth indeed. SeaChange will use the truck as a space in which to demo its Spot Digital Ad Insertion systems and a full-on, live feed of Comcast On Demand's Philly Vision. Key to both ad insertion and VOD is SeaChange Digital Transcoder, software that automatically reformats video content for multiple, disparate delivery points. SeaChange will also feature its HD VOD delivery in the HD Pavilion.

SES Americom will discuss the finer points of its DigitalC cable programming distribution service, which will find a new home aboard the AMC-10 and AMC-11 satellites in early 2004. While they won't be offering field trips to check out all the particulars of the twin satellites, SES will stress the advantages of the AMC-10 and -11 over predecessors Satcom C-3 and C-4.

Texas Instruments will be demonstrating its TurboDOX software, an accelerator upgrade for DOCSIS-based cable modems. TI will also brush off its TNETW1130 chip, a multimode wireless LAN solution that supports the 802.11g draft standard, and includes enhanced security and QoS.

Rather than mix and mingle with the masses on the convention floor, Toshiba will be holed up somewhere inside the Chicago Hilton and Towers. For those hardy enough to make the trek, Toshiba will be showing the PCX4500 wireless cable modem router and the PCX2600 DOCSIS 2.0-certified cable modem. (Beverages will also be provided.) The PCX4500 unit includes a Toshiba cable modem, an 802.11b router for wireless networking and a Stateful Inspection firewall. It is CableHome-based, DOCSIS 2.0-ready and includes TurboDox for additional speed. The PCX2600 introduces a deployable DOCSIS 2.0-certified modem from Toshiba and also comes equipped with TurboDox for additional speed.

Israel-based Xtend will run a demo of its bandwidth-stretching system, which contains the following modules: the Xhub, located at the fiber node, which converts the standard frequency band of the HFC network to the ?Xtended? bands of the coaxial plant; the XTB, which retrieves CPE standard band at the end user's premises; and the Xtendifiers, a number of modules that function as amplifiers along the coax line. According to co-founder and CEO Hillel Weinstein, the Xtend system can expand overall system bandwidth by as much as 3 GHz.