|
JIM BARTHOLD
Several years back, the only way you'd have heard a HITS executive talking about a CherryPicker was in a farm field or a courtroom. That was when CherryPicker was Imedia's showcase product, and HITS was part of TCI, which, in turn, was embroiled in a legal dispute with Imedia.
Today, Imedia is part of Terayon Communication Systems, TCI is AT&T Broadband, and HITS affiliates are authorized to use the CherryPicker to create custom channel line-ups culled from a bouquet of HITS programming signals.
"The people who were involved with that, frankly, are not the same people who are responsible for carrying on business with AT&T," says Chris Summey, VP-marketing and business development in Terayon's Digital Video Systems Group. "It's not worth addressing here because it's so much water over that dam."
That water was pretty muddy when the two companies fought over Imedia's channel compression and statistical multiplexing technologies, but the word has now been disseminated to customers that it's OK to use the CherryPicker, along with similar demultiplexing products from Cisco Systems and Harmonic, to break apart HITS packages and customize channel lineups.
"Let's say a customer is taking HITS 2 for pay-per-view, and maybe some of the other material carried in HITS 2 is duplicated in their analog lineup," says Bo Urquhart, account manager director for HITS. "They wouldn't necessarily authorize that programming on digital and analog. You can take a remultiplexer and fill those programming slots from other transponders and maximize your bandwidth that way."
The CherryPicker, like its counterparts, can insert digital advertising into those streams, although it's not likely.
"There's a potential that ad insertion could come into play," says Summey. "CherryPicker obviously has enabled ad insertion as a key application or function."
Back to this issue
|
