Monthly Archives: December 2010

…While Visions of Gadgetry Danced Through Their Heads!

by Leslie Ellis // December 20 2010

Five days ‘til Christmas, 12 days ‘til a new year, 18 days ‘til the Consumer Electronics Show. No wonder this year’s techie wish lists are so …. long, and informed.

In our sometimes-annual query of the technical community, to see what they seek to give or get, one thing came up over and over: Tablets. Not just any tablet, though. Bob Zitter, CTO of HBO (among several others) wants an iPad that will play Flash video; Pragash Pillai, CTO of Bresnan Communications, looks forward to an Android-based tablet, “since my iPad does not support Flash.”

Both Mike Hayashi, EVP of Advanced Engineering for Time Warner, and Alexander Brock, VP/Emerging Technologies and Innovation for Rogers Communications, are hot on the “GoPro” line of HD cameras. Hayashi, because “it attaches to your helmet, your dog’s collar, or your own head … especially good if you take a major spill and break something;” Brock prefers the “Hero 960” helmet version, because “if you know what it is, you know you want one.”

Also on Brock’s 21-item list: A 320 MB PlayStation3, loaded with Gran Turismo 5 and a Logitech Momo-force steering wheel, “because one, in HD it can make you sick, and two, it’s as close as one can get to Nurburgring without actually being there.”

Interactive TV architect Christy Martin seeks two domestic gadgets: A SousVide Supreme Water Oven: “It vacuum seals meats and cooks them to a perfect pinkness throughout – juicy, and no grey ring on the outside.”

Also on Martin’s list: The FEIN MultiMaster: “A must-have tool for any serious remodeler – it lets you saw, grind, sand, cut off pipes, and handle all those other annoying, real-world situations they never talk about on the do-it-yourself shows.”

Gadget aficionado Bill Sheppard, Chief Digital Media Officer for Oracle, is on the prowl for a network-connected Blu-Ray player. “I’d recommend getting one with DLNA support, to take advantage of forthcoming tru2way DLNA bridging.” (Translation: It’ll hook up to your other DLNA stuff, so you can watch movies on other screens than the one attached to the player.)

As for practicality, this from CableLabs director of business services and Colorado outdoorsman Glenn Russell: “The rule of the backcountry is to treat your feet right, and never get separated from your lunch.” His list ranges from high-end socks and telemark gear, to “a That 70s Show t-shirt.”

If only we could all find this handy elixir under the tree: “A common sense pill for management,” sent in by “Anonymous, in Management.” We’ll take a case, please….

Merry everything to all of you, from all of us!

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

A 2011 Tech Trend Preview

by Leslie Ellis // December 13 2010

In cable, December is typically a tech-heavy month – until 2003, because of the Western Show, sandwiched in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. More recently, because of the gadget bonanza that is the annual Consumer Electronics Show.

A brief walk through Tech Decembers past: Way back when (December 1, 1977), the pioneering interactive TV project known as QUBE launched. Three Decembers later, Zenith took the wraps off of a programmable VCR. (List price: $1,350.)

Microsoft announced its “Insight Architect” program – its first foray into interactive TV – in December of ‘94. Also that month: AT&T, IBM, Northern Telecom and H-P all announced their plans to make set-top boxes for cable. (None ever really materialized.)

The CableLabs specifications that begat the DOCSIS cable modem were unveiled in December of ’96. (Note: This means that cable broadband turns 15 in 2011.)

This week in 2001, technologists at AT&T Broadband and Cox were pulling all-nighters, orchestrating a frenetic, seven-day cutover from the Excite@Home broadband effort – perhaps the industry’s most fiery collapse.

Here’s a short list of what appear to be the most plausible tech trendlines for 2011:

Cable over IP, or whatever we’re going to call the notion of sending a managed video service over those broadband pipes. (“IPTV” sounds too AT&T, we’re told; “Advanced Digital Cable” is making rounds.) Despite the lack of a good descriptor, the body of work is critically important to compete with the growing list of over-the-top video alternatives.

Deals, deals, deals. Call it a widget, soft client, cable button – it’s the thing that pops up on the Internet-connected TV, after you buy it and hang it on the wall. Picture it as the MSO-branded button sitting next to the Netflix button. Getting there means cutting deals with consumer electronics makers. Samsung and Panasonic are safe bets, given their cable partnership histories.

Freight fights. The scuffle between Comcast, Level 3 and, ultimately, the bulge of Netflix bits clogging the industry’s broadband pipes will intensify next year, as the video business shifts toward devices that have video capabilities and an IP connection.

Web services, to outfit, say, the deployed base of OCAP (OpenCable Applications Platform) set-top middleware, to do IP video.

Expressed interfaces, another term in the  “web services” lingo that means opening up key back office components to IP-based techniques. It matters for economically speed the deployment of new services and apps.

All of it will almost certainly provide a heaping plate of jargon and gibberish. We’ll keep the light on it for you.

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

Bandwidth and Over-the-Top Video

by Leslie Ellis // December 06 2010

Three things are clear about video, in this last month of 2010.

One, it’s morphing from a service, into an app.

Two, it’s gigantic, size-wise, when compared to regular web surfing and phone calls.

Three, the “over-the-top” iteration of it represents 15 to 50% of traffic running over cable’s broadband plant — up from about 10 percent, two or three years ago.

The people whose work it is to manage Internet bandwidth used to freak out about peer-to-peer video. P2P isn’t exactly chump change, currently, but streaming video is definitely the bigger ogre.

Over-the-top, under-the-bottom, call it what you will:  Practically and tactically, it’s a bit tsunami, clogging a network someone else built. It rides “over the top” of the broadband infrastructure built not just by cable, but by wireless, telco, anything that moves Internet bits.

From that network-centric point of view, it’s fairly easy to agree on one thing: “Holiday punch” takes on a whole new meaning when you’re the guy handing in a budget request for doubled or quadrupled capital spending next year, just to make sure your CMTS ports don’t buckle under the extra load of over-the-top video traffic. (Oh, and don’t forget the part about the no return on investment!)

Think of it this way. When a highway gets consistently clogged with cars, two options exist: Add a lane, or carpool.

In cable, “add a lane” becomes “plunk another DOCSIS channel into the bond,” which presupposes DOCSIS 3.0.

The carpool equivalent is to lessen the number of cars sharing the road. In cable tech terms, that means splitting the node –  lighting up another strand of fiber, so the available bandwidth is used by half the number of homes.

Here’s why the analogy breaks down, though, when it comes to over-the-top video: Adaptive streaming. It makes over-the-top video behave like a gas, filling all available space. Doesn’t matter how much room there is, it’ll find a way through.

More bandwidth? Great! Higher resolution stream.  Less bandwidth? No problem. Lower resolution stream. And so on, in real time.

Again: Streaming video, as a percentage of over-the-top Internet traffic, grew from 10% to as high as 50%, in three years. And Netflix streaming is just getting started.

This is why the whole hullaballoo between Level3 and Comcast, and related to the surge in streaming Netflix traffic, is so necessary. Ugly, but necessary. It’s a question of who pays what freight.

Sure, I love free shipping. Who doesn’t? The merchants I buy stuff from often offer it as a perk. But I don’t expect it 100% of the time.

Man up, Netflix.

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.