|
BRIAN SANTO
Cable operators have had the ability to select individual channels out of an encoded, multiple-stream satellite feed using Terayon's CherryPicker systems. What they haven't been able to do is actually view what they're pulling out.
Satellite feeds are encoded using Digicipher II, and those data streams typically can't be decoded until they reach a viewer's set-top box.
Now Terayon has complemented its CherryPicker systems with its new DTE 7220, which allows cable operators to decode up to six separate channels from an incoming satellite feed, view each of the channels they are selecting, then re-encode them for transmission through their own installations.
Until recently, Digicipher was controlled solely by Motorola, which purchased Digicipher's developer, General Instrument. Bowing to pressure for a second source, Motorola licensed the Digicipher technology to Digitrans. Digitrans was recently purchased by Terayon.
The ability to decrypt and re-encrypt satellite signals is an issue of local control of content. With everything encrypted, explains Clayton Dore, Terayon's director-sales and marketing for digital video products, "You eliminate the opportunity for inserting a local program guide. You eliminate the opportunity for local ad insertion."
With the DTE 7220 Integrated Receiver Descrambler, "We're taking the scramble off," Dore continues. "You're back down to baseband bits - MPEG video. You can now do those things. It levels the playing field."
By using the 7220 and the CherryPicker, operators can also monitor the signal integrity, and if it's found lacking, find another source. Using the two systems in combination also opens opportunities for operators to perform their own content aggregation.
One other thing - satellite transponders typically make little or no use of a sliver of their capacity. The DTE 7220 can also be used to pick up those narrowband signals.
"It's found bandwidth," Dore says.
The 7220 can handle two, four or six channels, and individual units can be daisy-chained to accept more. As a single-rack system the 7220 is half the size of the single-channel 7100, the 7220's predecessor. The entire unit generates 40 watts, keeping heat dissipation to a minimum.
It does not have to be used with Terayon's Cherrypicker; it can be used in any application that takes incoming streams of Digicipher-encoded data, working with nearly anyone's equipment, according to the company. The same is true of the CherryPicker.
The CherryPicker system picks out a desired digital video program from a compressed and multiplexed multiple program transport stream (MPTS) to deliver a number of different video programs to the intended re-transmission receiving site. CherryPicker then allows the carrier to specify the appropriate bit rate for re-transmission of the selected program, regardless of whether the re-transmission is through a cable line or a DSL line.
In either case, the transmission parameters allow the telco to conserve additional bandwidth for delivering other services such as Web pages, fax, data, Internet, targeted ads, e-mail and other basic telephony services.
The Stream Machine's USB-TV manufacturing kit allows people to watch TV on their computer screens and record the TV signal in a manner similar to using a VCR.
The potential audience is people who watch TV and surf the Web simultaneously. A study by Showtime/Kagan estimates this number at 18 million people.
The USB-TV kit includes a tuner and the SM2210 MPEG-2 video encoder/ decoder to receive and record near-DVD-quality at 2Mbps. Incoming video can be recorded onto a hard drive. The company says that because its technology is hardware-based, it consumes almost no Pentium CPU cycles during recording or playback, enabling the user to have multiple open windows and tasks running while recording and viewing TV programming.
Stream Machine's VP-marketing, Brian Heuckroth, says, "USB-TV relieves the biggest factors currently limiting MPEG-2 digital VCR and streaming media applications - the performance of the Pentium CPU for software-centric solutions, the reluctance to do plug-in card installation, and the high cost of available alternative hardware-centric solutions.
Back to this issue
|
