| Broadcast ITV: What It Is, How It Works, Why It Matters |
It's safe to say that, in U.S. cable geography, none are more vexed by churn than the smaller operators - those focused on the wide, green swaths of the nation that aren't particularly urban.
Capitally squeezed, these companies, oftentimes independently owned, are as helpless to the rich lures of DirecTV and EchoStar as small, independently-owned retail stores were when Walmart pulled into town, with its big, easy parking and bulk-based discounts, 12 or so years ago.
Walmart's mantra, "more for less," parallels the battlecries of the two DBS providers. Recent promotions by both DirecTV and EchoStar practically gave away the digital set-tops (which cost upwards of $200 to make), and plunged monthly subscription fees as low as a $9/month for 100+ digital channels.
"More for less" immediately and unpleasantly transforms the public perception of small, local cable providers into "less for more."
It used to be that "more," in terms of competing video offers, meant more channels. Small cable operators kept stride by scraping up enough cash to buy digital set-tops and digital programming - the latter, in most cases, from AT&T's Headend in the Sky (HITS) service.
Today's "more" from the satellite duo means scores of interactive features, on-demand television (albeit without local off-airs, in many cases), and a continued downward shove on equipment prices and monthly subscription fees.
Clearly, it's not easy being a small cable operator right now.
There is, though, a bright spot on the horizon for cable's petite siblings. It goes by two monikers -- "broadcast ITV" or "basic interactive" - and is envisioned to be a cost-free adder to existing digital TV services. Happily, it doesn't require extra equipment, or two-way plant, at the system.
Broadcast ITV is a far cry from personal video recorders and on-demand TV, but, it's far cry from nothing, too.
Broadcast ITV means pushing a button on the remote to play solitaire, or other such games. It means pushing the button to read text-based news articles on a wide range of topics, or to view extra information bound into participating TV networks - what technologists and ITV aficionados call "virtual channels." All of it happens translucently, atop the TV show in progress.
As the name implies, broadcast ITV involves injecting interactive applications from servers into MPEG-2 digital broadcast streams at the satellite uplink. Again, in most cases affecting small operators, this happens at the HITS facility in Littleton, Colo. Specifically, the services are spliced into the transportation portion of the MPEG-2 video compression standard. From there, they move much like any other digital video channel, up to the satellite, and down to recipient cable headends for dispersal to digital set-tops.
To get broadcast ITV, when it is available - HITS is publicly working with Liberate for a possible launch before year-end; OpenTV is wrangling, and Canal+ Technologies is technologically outfitted to participate, too - small operators will need to do one thing: Download the core of the new apps into existing digital boxes.
Recalling the words of former Cox CTO Alex Best - "every time somebody tells me it's just a software download, my knees knock" - a global download is cost-free, but requires vigilant pre-planning and testing to assure it doesn't inadvertently addle existing services.
After the core broadcast ITV apps are safely ensconced in the digital boxes, any "refresher" content just keeps getting sent, like a broadcast, new stuff replacing old stuff in the broadcast queue. Tactically, it means that just the app itself sits in the box. When a subscriber clicks, the box displays what it can of the desired content, and opens the gate on the continuous broadcast stream to accept the associated content.
Say it's a news ticker. What shows first is the headline. Clicking on it invokes a slight delay, as the box locates the packet headers of the desired info - the addressing information, typically sent in the out-of-band broadcast stream - and links it to the visible headline.
To work properly, broadcast ITV requires that its applications be extremely tightly-written: Skeletal, really, more than svelte. While a PC-based operating system, like Microsoft Windows, typically maneuvers in double-digit megabytes of computer memory, the applications of broadcast ITV won't get a roomy welcome. In many cases, ITV applications must be measured in kilobytes. That's because there just isn't enough memory or processing muscle in today's installed digital boxes to do much more: The Motorola DCT-2000, for example, contains about 4 megabytes of total memory.
Getting to broadcast ITV should give smaller operators a few tools to fend off subscriber churn to DBS - to shed its "less for more" wrappings, and get closer to "more for less." It'll take some doing, and it's wise keep Best's observations close at hand during field changes. Of course, getting to an affordable set-top that contains enough processing muscle and memory to compete more vigorously is better.
That's the how of broadcast ITV. Next time, the hows and whys of set-top memory.
This column originally appeared in the Broadband Week section of Multichannel News.