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January 2001 Issue

Western Show Wrap-Up
By and

Sensory-blitzed visitors who saw a hummingbird hovering in the floral display at the Liberate booth at the Western Show wondered: Is it real?

After all, the life-size dolphin swimming in a glass tank at the Sun Microsystems booth was an imposter. As was the Elvis spotted crooning for those visiting conditional access software provider NDS.

On the other hand, the Western Show boasted numerous Real McCoys. Baseball great Steve Garvey was signing balls for Interactive Enterprise’s visitors, and super-model Cindy Crawford, among others, helped draw attention to the to the newly re-launched WE, or Women’s Entertainment, (formerly Romance) channel.

The verdict on Liberate’s nectar-sucker? After zipping off to another booth, the bird was judged real.

Like our hummingbird, CT editors buzzed around L.A.’s two cavernous convention halls, trying to avoid hype and Hollywood distractions and focus instead on authentic technical marvels.

Interactive TV (ITV) and Internet protocol (IP) telephony were two of the biggest draws, but home networking and transmission gear test equipment also captured our attention.

We also tuned in to several discussions that offered high-level, if not bird’s eye, views of the industry.

Fight lethargy

The underlying message of the show’s first general session was clear: cable may present a host of opportunities, but operators are going to have to fight hard to keep customers and adapt to a constantly changing legal environment.

"We have consolidation of market power," said John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media. "We have equal access as a wholesaler. We have to be vertical and (improve) the customer relationship."

Other members of the panel included Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of USA Networks, Michael Willner, president and CEO of Insight Communications and Dan Somers, president and CEO of AT&T Broadband.

High on the list of the issues they discussed was an underlying lethargy about the services operators are providing. Operators need to rid themselves of the mentality that they can get everything for nothing, Somers said.

"In cable’s early day, programming allowed people to see more," he said. "We have to have more juice."

Customer service needs to get better, panelists agreed. Still, they did not seem overly concerned about losing customers to satellite, cable’s closest competitor.

"Satellite and cable in a developed market can coexist," said Malone. "Satellite will never be voice telephony or high speed, in contrast to fiber or HFC." Indeed, Malone said satellite could be "an excellent supplement" to the industry.

Show me the revenue

Panelists, however, were worried about finding new sources of revenues. To that end, interactive TV is an area of explosive growth, they said.

"Once you start functioning with interactive, you will never turn away from it," said Diller. "These are technological revolutions."

Other growth opportunities include telephony. "Cable is a better mousetrap if it can get to the customer first," said Malone.

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter’s Richard Bilotti sketched in the revenue potential—and constraints—of new services during the second day’s opening session.

"When you get the bill up to $45 to $50 a month, take-up drops," he said. "Twenty-five million (subscribers) can do it all."

VOD: real and evolving

Discussions on the floor and in technical sessions confirmed the industry’s keen interest in interactive TV, especially ITV’s flagship applications, video on demand (VOD).

"I see 20 to 30 systems rolling out VOD (in 2001)," Scientific-Atlanta Vice President for Marketing and Business Development, Subscriber Networks, Paul Richards said.

VOD equipment vendors agree. "We see a lot of activity over the next couple of years," nCUBE’s Chief Technical Officer Greg Thompson added.

"We’re already in six or seven systems," said Diva Vice President, Corporate Communications, Patrick Gushman, who suggested that skeptics simply open their eyes.

Seachange International spokesman Jim Sheehan talked about VOD as practically a done deal, with platform extensions being the next item on the agenda.

Extensions to VOD include time-shifting technology. Concurrent Computer, for example, demonstrated its Personal Video Channel (PVC) technology, which brings VCR functionality to consumers via the headend (vs. the set-top).

Concurrent also showcased subscription video on demand (SVOD), and Internet protocol (IP) streaming.

For its part, Seachange is folding its ad insertion product line within its cluster-based ITV platform. "It’s happened very quickly," Sheehan said.

ITV vertigo

VOD vendors admit that the real value-add is less the core server technology—racks of interlinked hard drives—than the software that enables consumer/viewer interactivity.

One new VOD player, demandvideo, host of a party featuring a "vacation on demand" giveaway, is essentially outsourcing its server requirements and compiling a turnkey suite, albeit one aimed at smaller broadband networks.

Then there is the realm of software providers competing for space within the interactive set-top.

Pioneer announced that its ITV Passport application suite, which includes VOD functionality, has hit 1 million deployments. Passport (now in its 3.0 iteration) operates on the Motorola DCT and S-A Explorer series of digital set-tops, as well as Pioneer’s own Voyager series.

What’s slightly disorienting is seeing an application such as the Passport viewer interface at its home with Pioneer and then bumping into it elsewhere, for instance, at the PowerTV booth, as ported onto this S-A affiliate’s ITV platform.

Visitors comparing the latest set-top boxes from Motorola and S-A underwent a similar experience, with both firms displaying on charts or kiosks multiple applications from firms that had their own booths on the show floors.

The ITV space, itself, is highly interactive.

Middle what?

Middleware vendors, such as PowerTV, are attempting to put the set-top house in order, while competing among themselves and integrating with sometimes overlapping tiers of applications. PowerTV has its own VOD interface, for example, but it integrated Passport for a Time Warner deployment.

PowerTV CEO Steve Necessary defines the "nebulous" term middleware more precisely as a combination of hypertext markup language (HTML), personal (P)-Java and JavaScript. While advocating the open-standards process, PowerTV has pushed ahead with a "can’t wait" attitude.

"Is what we have as it exists today fully OCAP [Open Cable Applications Platform]-compliant? I’m sure it’s not," Necessary said. "But are the elements of what we have today OCAP-compliant? Yes, I’m sure they are."

CableLabs has named three primary authors of the OCAP specifications: Sun Microsystems (for the execution engine), and Liberate and Microsoft (for the presentation engine). Other firms, including Canal Plus, OpenTV and PowerTV are providing additional support.

Necessary says that the PowerTV platform, consisting of an operating system (OS) and middleware, is deployed on 5 million boxes, one-tenth of which are VOD activated.

If there was an ITV star of the show, perhaps it was Sun. In its first Western show appearance, this network-computing giant certainly made a splash with its dolphin.

Moreover, by formally offering its Java TV technology (a licensable reference implementation) to the industry, Sun deepened Java’s standing as the interactive set-top’s lingua franca.

In a technical session on set-tops and middleware, for instance, Canal Plus U.S. Technologies Vice President of Engineering Matt Wong underscored the value of Java Tool in system integration.

"I can’t overemphasize this angle—integration is key," he said.

IP telephony

Tech-minded attendees seeking refuge from the Disney-like atmosphere surrounding many floor booths found CableNet a congenial place to mingle. Demos ranged from home networking to silicon chips, but one of the hottest items was the IP phone.

Several companies, including Nortel Networks/Arris and Texas Instruments were on hand promoting their latest voice-over-broadband products. Visitors were even allowed to make long distance calls (although most companies for obvious reasons nixed international calling) to determine the quality was on par with regular phone service.

The IP phone is the wave of the future, partly because it is relatively inexpensive and easy to install.

"Telephones don’t require additional boxes," said Agnes Imregh, vice president of marketing for TollBridge Technologies. "It’s the same as using data."

TollBridge provides cable operators with an IP telephony solution and delivers voice services to residential and small business customers by leveraging cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), T1, wireless and fiber broadband infrastructures and the existing public telephony network.

While many cable operators are still determining if they want to provide their customers with lifeline service, most are eager to have additional lines installed at their customers’ homes.

"That’s something that they can add immediately," said Imregh.

Growth has been so dynamic for the two-year-old TollBridge that the company announced a number of partnerships at the show. Significantly, TollBridge will integrate its technologies and collaborate on sales efforts with telephony migration enabler Syndeo.

Home networking

Home networking figured prominently in this year’s show. Broadcom, Philips, S-A, and Lucent Technologies all showcased their version of what tomorrow’s connected home will look like.

S-A, for instance, highlighted its Explorer family of set-top boxes which, among its many features, allows for movies, television and Internet access at the same time.

"Consumers are driving home networking," said Anthony Wasilewski, chief scientist for S-A’s Subscriber Networks. "Connection to a broadband network into the home is a major advantage."

Receiving video and data over a traditional phone line and feeding it to a computer or television set is already a reality, said Wasilewski. However, the place consumers are most likely to feel the full impact of home networking is in the kitchen. A study by Canada’s York University showed that when people were given free Web access, they migrated their personal computers into the kitchen.

"People wanted the community bulletin board in their kitchen," Wasilewski said. "This allows cable operators to be suppliers of that connection."

Home networking technology is still evolving and with each year its applications will grow, vendors said. One of the current benefits of home networking, however, is that it gives the customer the freedom to work on a laptop computer without being tethered to one place.

To that end, companies like Intel, Lucent and Motorola unveiled products that allow homes and offices with several computers to simultaneously share Internet access, transfer files, and share printers.

"The customer doesn’t want more wiring in the home," said Tom Potts, a spokesman for Intel.

As vendors look toward the future in home networking, many said Bluetooth might very well revolutionize the concept.

"Bluetooth is a great, guaranteed winner," said S-A’s Wasilewski.

Bluetooth is a wireless technology that facilitates voice and data transmissions, making it possible to connect any portable and stationary communications device.

Bluetooth pioneer Ericsson demonstrated its PipeRider HM200c cable modem at CableNet. The modem interfaces with the company’s Bluetooth adapter and communicates with a laptop.

One box, please

As for transmission equipment, visitors could inspect gear aimed at more efficient video, voice and data traffic.

Building quickly upon a recently announced collaboration, Motorola demonstrated an optical networking platform based on Geyser Networks’ optical services manager (OSM)-4800.

"It filled in the hole in our digital transport line-up," Motorola General Manager, Transmission Network Systems, Bick Remmey said.

The Motorola/Geyser synchronous optical network (SONET) platform, currently in beta-test mode, combines dense wave division multiplexer (DWDM), SONET cross-connect, SONET add-drop multiplexer (ADM), multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) router and integrated access device (IAD) in one chassis.

Other one-box solutions include BigBand Networks’ Broadband Multimedia-Service Router (BMR). BigBand had lain low for two years, accumulating patents that now promise to enable routing and delivery of various media in their native formats.

Other boxes drawing attention were Cadant’s C4 cable modem termination system (CMTS), which joins the crowd of would-be Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 1.1 traffic cops.

On the test equipment side of the tracks, Agilent introduced its CaLan Cable Advisor, which integrates analog and digital services testing, network sweep capabilities, proof-of-performance and IP testing and a spectrum analyzer into one 12-pound package.

"It combines three or four devices into one," Agilent Product Line General Manager, Network Systems Test Division, Steve Bates said.

Another test equipment vendor, Acterna, has combined numerous companies into its one name. The merger of TTC and Wavetek Wandel Goltermann (themselves merged units), Acterna announced the integration of the PathTrak Performance Monitoring System with the Cheetah NetMentor Status Monitoring System.

Last year, WWG acquired Cheetah, lengthening the combined firm’s diagnostic reach along the hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network.

Dueling architectures

S-A and Harmonic each offered erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) that reach closer to the home.

Harmonic’s NODEedfa, part of its MAXLink family of transmitters and optical amplifiers aimed at 1550 nm-based network applications, is designed for mounting in the PWRBlazer node platform.

S-A introduced a Strand Mounted Optical Amplifier (SMOA), using both EDFA and its own cladding pump laser technology in an environmentally hardened outdoor node. The SMOA is part of S-A’s Prisma II family of products.

Harmonic’s PWBLazer platform, which now includes a family of Ethernet switching modules, a deep fiber node and a distributed CMTS, is aimed to provide operators with flexible options.

"One of the most interesting areas is what’s the architecture going to evolve into, from the existing one of 1,500 home nodes to the next generation?" Harmonic’s Product Line Director for Transmitter Systems John Trail said.

Harmonic is proposing a Gigabit Ethernet overlay, over the HFC network, as a way to create two-way Gigabit symmetric bandwidth.

Trail said an alternate approach might be typified by S-A’s investment in Alloptic, a developer of passive optical networks (PONs).

Along with its SMOA, S-A used the Western Show venue to introduce a 2-4 dBm 1310 distributed feedback (DBF) transmitter as another part of its Prisma family.

The Prisma line enables S-A’s Remote Terminal (RT) architecture, which adds a third ring to the traditional two-ring HFC design.

Enhance me

Enhanced lines of already integrated products also appeared in the L.A. convention center.

Terayon gave its CherryPicker a software upgrade that adds high-definition television (HDTV), IP streams, and Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEVF) triggers to the statistical re-multiplexer’s earlier enhancements, local program and ad insertion capabilities.

"The CherryPicker’s moving from being a groomer to being a hub at the headend," said Stephen King, senior vice president and general manager for Terayon’s digital video management systems.

Future-proofing remains a persuasive strategy. "We can argue whether people will use high-def or not, but the fact is, every cable operator needs to be ready for it," King said.

Sharing the fruits of its busy and apparently profitable year (nine acquisitions and a popular product line), Terayon sponsored the Thursday night Western Show party, which featured the female rock group, The Bangles.

Jonathan Tombes is CT’s deployment editor. He may be reached at . Natalia A. Feduschak is CT’s senior editor. She may be reached at .

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