A communications signal transmitter/receiver that does its work from geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles above the earth. Slangily known as “bird.”

Deployable to millions of customers. Scale factors usually include cost, physical space requirements, training/service ease, and the ability to link into existing or planned back office systems — including billing and provisioning.

For example, new services generally don’t get beyond a few market trials if they require cable providers to 1) summarily clean off several 6 MHz channels, 2) find a big chunk of room in the headend, 3) overhaul field training, 4) overburden customer service representatives, or 5) support a new billing system.

Saying that something “doesn’t scale” is a death kiss to the company that makes that something. It means that for any or all of the reasons listed above, a service provider doesn’t trust it enough to roll it out to lots of customers.

Usage: “Yes, dear supplier, your robust platform for the broadband space sounds perfectly magical. But is it scalable?”

Synchronous – Code Division Multiple Access. A modulation technique developed by Terayon Communications in the mid-’90s, and pitched to cable providers as a way to enhance upstream signal performance, particularly for high-speed Internet and telephony services. A specialized form of spread spectrum, the S-CDMA gear was designed to work both in large node sizes (i.e., greater than 1,000 homes/node), connected with long lengths of coaxial cable, and in the particularly noisy spectral area below 20 MHz.

The process of making it difficult, and preferably impossible, for a signal to be intercepted by pirates or other ill-meaning interlopers. In conversational terms, “scrambling” implies analog signals, while “encryption” involves digital signals.

Either way, the intent is to protect premium content, like Cinemax, HBO, Showtime or Starz!, from unauthorized receipt. Only those people who order and pay for those services get a descrambler to decode the encrypted services.

Analog television signals were scrambled by any of several methods, including: Jumbling the audio or baseband carrier; suppressing the TV sync signal; using phase modulation; and inverting the video picture. Sync suppression is generally acknowledged as the most common analog TV scrambling technique, and dates back to the mid-1970s.

As cable providers moved toward “all digital,” or, at least, less analog, a first step was to move all premium channels to the digital shelf space, and start replacing those analog descrambler boxes with digital versions.

Usage: “Interdiction is another example of analog scrambling techniques. People liked it because they could continue using the remote that came with their TV.”

A not-for-profit cable engineering trade association self-described as “dedicated to advancing the careers and serving the industry of telecommunications professionals by providing technical training, certification and standards.” Established in 1969, SCTE in 2005 counted 14,000+ members, consisting of engineers, technical professionals, installers, and managers. SCTE is also the cable industry’s official standards-setting vehicle, as an accredited entity of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). www.scte.org

The methods for transmitting digitized, compressed television such that it produces NTSC (analog) TV picture quality. The “standard definition” part deliberately differentiates the term from “high definition” television, which carries much more information and thus produces a much higher-quality picture.

Using MPEG-2 compression to squeeze a digitized TV signal conserves a quarter to a third of the bandwidth it needed when it was analog. Put another way, where analog TV takes up a 6 MHz slot of bandwidth (including “guard band”), SDTV takes up but 1.5 MHz. This is why multiple SDTV signals can be crammed into the space of one analog TV signal.

In the early days of cable digital TV, estimates went as high as a 24:1, using statistical multiplexing. Currently (2005), the rule of thumb is ten to 12 digital TV signals per 6 MHz, denoted as 10:1 or 12:1 compression.

The transmission of a television channel to a consumer upon request — as opposed to broadcasting all channels to all homes, all the time. In other words: Don’t broadcast what isn’t being watched. Put the lesser-viewed channels into a switching pool, to send out on demand.

Also called “switched digital broadcast (SDB)” and just plain “switched video.”

The idea of switching video isn’t new. The first forays of telephone companies into video distribution, in the mid-’90s, included switching. (After all, it is called the public switched telephone network.) The effort attracted professional skepticism from cable engineers, who thought switching was too expensive for prime time. “Gold plated,” they called it.

That tune changed in 2004-2005. Switched video techniques regained the attention of cable technologists, because it looked like a useful way to “manufacture” additional digital bandwidth. How much bandwidth? Efficiency gains for switched video are measured as a ratio: The number of available switched broadcast channels to the number of channels being viewed. A 2:1 ratio, for instance, says that of 160 digital channels, 80 aren’t being watched. Or, put another way, 160 channels can fit into the space of 80 channels.

Switched video plays nicely with digital simulcast — once all channels are available in a digital format, they, too, can be switched. Switched video doesn’t play nicely with digital video devices that aren’t configured for two-way communications — such as the uni-directional TVs and HDTVs that grew out of the plug-and-play agreement.

As this dictionary was being written (2005), three fairly extensive tests of switched broadcast technologies were underway at three cable companies: Cablevision, Cox, and Time Warner Cable. Early results showed strongly for bandwidth conservation, but technologists were concerned about complexity and operational impacts.

The techniques, technology and operations that prevent signals from being stolen or otherwise improperly used. In video systems, security is also known as “conditional access and encryption.” The conditional access assures that homes are authorized to receive only the services they pay for — on condition that they pay, they can have access. Encryption is the techniques used to scramble a video image so that it cannot be presented on the screen without some form of descrambler.

The latest prefix for security, as of this writing (2005), is “downloadable” — meaning, protection methods that can be electronically transmitted to a device, and refreshed as needed.

A term that emanates from the world of digital rights management, and overall copy protection. What’s “selectable” in a “selectable output control” is whether a digital connector (the “output”) can be hobbled, when the payload is copy-protected digital video. Thus, a “selectable output control” is a way to disable protected content from flowing over certain digital connectors, such as on a DVD player or digital TV, to safeguard copyrights.

The consumer electronics sector prefers to see the word “no” in front of the term “selectable output controls.” Nobody wants to be the guy who sells something — like an expensive HDTV — that suddenly doesn’t work as anticipated.

This could happen, the CE industry argued in the mid-2000s, if studios or copyright holders injected a “cripple code” into their choice titles. The code would alert a cable or satellite set-top box to disable certain digital outputs. No bits, no picture.

The notion of “selectable outputs” entered the industrial lexicon in December of 2002, when the cable and consumer electronics industries filed a 78-page “memorandum of understanding” to the FCC, which became known as “the plug and play agreement.” In it, cable agreed to not engage in selectable output controls.

It was a conditional agreement: They agreed to leave digital outputs alone, so long as the satellite side agreed to do the same. Why? To avoid this potential scenario: A copyright holder gives a major video competitor an earlier release on a popular title, on the condition that selectable output controls are enabled to protect copying.

Any material that inherently behaves interchangeably as either a conductor and an insulator, depending on specified conditions. Semiconductor materials are minerals and rare earth ions — recall the Periodical Charts memorized in grade school — like silica, or germanium. Semiconductor materials never behave as both conductor and insulator, but at any given time behave as one or the other.

Put to use, semiconductor materials are manipulated into things like diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits. Semiconductor chips, then, are essentially a really huge combination of transistors and diodes, arranged in specific ways to make a signal do specific things.

A collection of industrially fortified hard disk drives and software, used to hold corporate data, Web systems, multimedia content, stored video titles, or any of every imaginable form of business communication. In the digital world, servers are the libraries, particularly for on-demand titles. VOD servers, still attracting new suppliers every few years, compete on the basis of storage size, as well as scalability — for both storage, and streaming.

Usage: “That area over there is our on-demand server farm.”

An active link between an in-home device (think digital cable box) and a remotely-located controller (think on-demand server). Session, and its cousin, “session-based,” tend to crop up in conversations about video-on-demand (VOD), in all of its forms. Any time someone pushes a button on the remote control, to play, pause, rewind, fast forward, or otherwise manipulate a video stream, a “session” is instantiated.

The early chapters of subscription VOD (SVOD) inadvertently landed the “session” squarely on the “uh-oh” list. In one early SVOD trial, consumers were offered free access to a plump list of premium, episodic TV shows. (This was before DVRs.)

One thing became immediately (and dismayingly) clear to the network engineers involved: People watch SVOD much, much differently than they watch “traditional” VOD (movies). They sample, bail out, try a different title, sample again. They rewind more, pause more — in short, people create way more sessions with SVOD, than they do when watching movies on demand.

The session snafu story goes like this: In the summer of 2001, 26,000 HBO customers in Time Warner Cable’s Charlotte, N.C. system were given the ability to watch episodes of “The Sopranos” and “Sex in the City” on demand, with trick modes, for free. (It was, after all, a trial.) Within two hours, some 3,000 people were intrigued enough to check it out — an 11.5% response rate.

Things started to go wrong pretty quickly: Way more people had shown up for the party than anticipated. The first to respond was the equipment that sets up sessions and streams. It had a panic attack. The headend controller, suddenly busier than it had ever been in its life, stressed out, and started speaking in tongues. The server, hearing mostly babble from the controller, fell asleep.

Since then, “sessions” and “session management” have become as much of a focal point as “thick v. thin,” when planning for digital set-tops stacked with two-way applications.

The fifth layer in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) stack, which holds equipment operability as its core purpose. The session layer describes how an application talks to another application, such as a billing interface, in a standard and interoperable way.

The techniques used to scramble the contents of an active link, such as between a digital cable box and a remotely-located video server.

The need for session-based encryption became evident after digital TV manufacturers were required, by law, to include digital tuners in their larger sets. Most opted to also include a CableCARD slot, which, in turn, requires QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) circuitry. Prior to that moment, the only devices containing QAM tuners were issued from the protected domain of the cable provider.

The placement of QAM devices in digital TVs and HDTVs meant that it was theoretically and technically possible for one house, with a digital TV set, to tune the VOD stream of a digital cable neighbor. This was a troubling possibility. What if the VOD stream was, say, an adult title, and the neighbor was, say, just off the school bus?

As a direct result, session-based encryption emerged. Its function is to scramble an on-demand session, sometime after it leaves the server, but before it enters the house. In some cases, the scrambling happens inside the edge QAM; other systems “bulk-encrypt” or “pre-encrypt” stored content, before it reaches the QAMs.

The simultaneous broadcast, in analog and digital, of an analog television tier. Also known as “simultrans,” meaning simultaneous transmission of all signals in a digital format. Simulcast became a relatively sudden, industry-wide priority among cable providers in 2005, with all major operators developing launch plans.

The “why do it” list:

1) Operators didn’t want to be left in the dust of consumer perception for not being “all digital.”

2) By making all channels available in a digital format, customers with digital and HDTVs get a consistent viewing experience, from one channel to the next.

3) New simulcast customers, who perhaps were previously analog-only, no-box-required customers, suddenly get access to on-demand and interactive offers.

4) Once all channels are available digital, work can begin on reclaiming analog spectrum  and moving toward a truly “all digital” network.

Charter Communications started the simulcast trend in Long Beach, Calif., in 2003, when it shifted 96 analog channels into its digital tier. Since then, Comcast, Time Warner, and Adelphia developed fast-track simulcast plans. If those plans play out as described, two thirds of cable customers in the U.S. will be set up to get all channels in a digital format by the end of 2006.

Because the installed base of analog TVs and VCRs can’t interpret an incoming digital signal without a converter, work continues to develop a low-cost adapter, variously called “the $35 box,” “the $50 box,” “the $99 box,” “the box that isnt a box,” and “the dongle.” Until such a device is ubiquitously deployed on all analog TVs and VCRs, a “flash cut” to all digital/no analog is unlikely: Nobody wants to be the guy who kills the TV signal feeding the extra bedroom, kitchen, or any other additional outlets in a house.

A type of distributed signaling that allows computers, handheld gadgets, and telephones to establish active links (sessions) with each other, over broadband, but without requiring much intelligence or help from the broadband network. SIP is the behind-the-scenes underpinnings of voice-over-IP services such as Vonage, AT&T’s CallVantage, and Verizon’s Broadwing. It started being built into the Microsoft operating system starting with Windows XP.

The nuts and bolts of SIP are significantly different than the nuts and bolts of the VoIP technology first fielded by cable providers, known as “NCS,” or “Network-based signaling.” In essence, SIP assumes a “dumb” broadband network. It asks nothing of broadband, really, except for a ride. Instead, SIP anchors its smarts in the end points.

SIP isn’t something consumers see. What they do see, in SIP-based offers, is an adapter box, usually tied to a low-cost voice service. The phone plugs into the box, the box plugs into the cable or DSL modem.

Because broadband doesn’t heed normal geographies, a big selling feature is the ability to call, say, your niece, who is interning abroad, using your local area code.

Another big feature of SIP-based offers is the notion of “presence” (see definition), which is one of those terms that doesn’t work well in spoken conversations. (Network provider: “We have presence.” Consumer: “Give them to me!”) Presence tracks where a person is, using what devices (cell phone, instant messaging client, office phone, home phone). It lets people control how “available” they are for conversations. Maybe you want your spouse to reach you on all possible numbers. Or, maybe you set yourself in “do not disturb” mode on all devices. Sometimes people call this “find me/follow me” (or don’t.)

The existence of SIP-based services gave rise to another new term, which began circulating in early 2005: “Over the top.” As in, SIP services ride “over the top” of ordinary broadband connections. Generally, if one guy is providing the broadband bandwidth for a second guy, who’s offering “over the top” services of a competitive nature, the first guy is the unhappiest.

That said, cable providers are outfitting their technical specifications to accommodate SIP techniques, and especially presence services, into their plans.

A contract, usually between a network owner and a third-party provider of a telecommunications service. The service level agreement lays out all key parameters of a deal, like minimum and maximum bandwidth requirements, customer service procedures, troubleshooting measures, and failure resolution.

The relationship between signal power and anything impeding signal power, measured in decibels. SNR and its cousin, carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR, or C/N), is used throughout broadband communications: To specify plant performance (“the SNR can be no greater than &”) or to compare vendor modulation techniques (“this one is able to withstand a much higher SNR”), for example.

Note that cable television engineers generally reserve signal-to-noise ratio for discussions about baseband signals (digital bits before theyre modulated), and use carrier-to-noise ratio (“CNR” or “C/N”) to describe RF signals. In digital systems, SNR is characterized as energy-per-bit divided by noise-per-Hertz.

A traditional telephone switch that’s deconstructed and re-concocted entirely in software. Soft switches accomplish, in software, what historically took a few million dollars worth of hardware to do: Connect one person’s phone line to another person’s phone line, regardless of distance, so they can talk to each other.

Like so many other things of the digital world, a soft switch is a server. In the language of the PacketCable 1.0 voice specification, for instance, “soft switch” is synonymous with “call management server.” Its role is to replicate, in software, the features noted in the front pages of the phone book: Placing and receiving calls; handling call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID.

A standardized set of high-speed, digital backbone parameters, such as transmission speed (OC-1 through OC-768 and higher), and interfaces among multiple equipment suppliers. In cable systems, SONET techniques usually happen “after” the headend, i.e., not on the headend-to-subscriber side of the network, but on the high-speed fiber backbone side.

Usage: The backbone is an OC-48 SONET ring.

A range of frequencies, grouped by similarities, like radio frequency, microwave, infra-red , gamma, ultra-violet, etc. In the U.S., the spectrum containing radio frequencies used by telecommunications and media companies is governed by the Federal Communications Commission.

A passive device, meaning that it doesn’t require electricity, which accepts one signal input and divides it into two or more identical outputs. In cable, splitters range in size depending on the size of the coaxial cable input that’s being split, and the number of times its being split. Designations go like this: 2-way splitter, 3-way splitter, and so on. The more the splits, the less the signal strength.

A narrowly focused ray of microwave energy, emitted from a satellite, and carrying signals specific to the geographic zone within the boundaries of the ray, on Earth. Both DirecTV and EchoStar use spot beams to broadcast local networks.

A wireless modulation format that works by compartmentalizing a signal or message into a series of packets, which are smeared across of a chunk of spectrum for transmission. Because the intended signal or message is scattered, it looks a lot like noise, and is therefore able to move well in noisy conditions (in a sort of “takes one to know one” way).

Spread spectrum is sometimes called “frequency hopping,” because the packets containing the intended message jump around to various frequencies within the spectral range. The technique was initially used by the Dept. of Defense to transmit coded information so that enemy forces couldn’t intercept it. It is also the main component of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) systems, such as those used by PCS phone providers, like Sprint.

Historically, spread spectrum is credited to the actress Hedy Lamarr, who patented it in 1942. As the story goes, she was romantically involved with a ranking military official in Europe, and endured the tedium of being treated as a bubblehead long enough to collect the facts she needed to develop what she called her “secret communication system.”

Girl power.

An algorithmic method that adds more efficiency into the transmission of multiple, digitally-compressed television channels. If compression squeezes video programs to their smallest state, statistical multiplexing hyper-organizes the compressed bits for the ride to homes.

Maybe you know someone who can magically stuff two more suitcases into the crowded overhead bin on the airplane, or the truck of the car? Statmuxing is like that.

Generally, statistical multiplexing, in cable television systems, works by organizing the data rates of digital TV signals to be transmitted, depending on the amount of change, from frame to frame, of those various digital video channels.

Engineers sometimes shorten the pronunciation of “statistical multiplexing” to “statmux.”

The whole point of digital compression is to remove frame-to-frame redundancy, thereby freeing up more space. But, different channels may have different amounts of redundancy: Consider an airing of “I, Robot,” compared to something with slower action, such as a “talking head” news program.

Plus, the network that;s airing “I, Robot” may subsequently air something more sedate — “My Dinner with Andre,” for example. Meaning, the peak data rate even within a channel can vary greatly. Statistical multiplexing is the stuff that looks at the whole slate of programs to be sent out in a compressed, digital format, finds the blank spots, and uses the bandwidth of the blank spots for those channels that are peaking.

Another analogy: Driving a rush-hour highway. Aggressive drivers seek open spots, amid lanes of cars moving at different speeds, dodging in and out to keep moving toward the destination. A freeway statmux would magically calculate which cars are moving at what rate, and organize everything so that there weren’t any blank spots. Slow moving traffic really would stay to the right, and faster moving cars to the left.

An umbrella category for digital information, including voice, video, graphics, or other data, that moves from its origination point to its destination over an alternative or non-traditional distribution network, such as the Internet.

The term “streaming media” seems to have originated in the Internet community, and particularly from the likes of Real Networks, as a way to categorize and describe the process of listening to or watching audio and video files to a PC, over the Internet.

This in and of itself wasn’t new; what was new was the ability to do it without having to download the entire file to the PC for later play — thus the “streaming” part of the descriptor. The process usually requires a downloaded “player,” which can be used multiple times to decode and present audio or video files encountered on a particular Web site.

The player does all the heavy lifting for A/V files, taking the incoming data flow and translating it into sound and pictures that are played on the PC.

A unique frequency, bound by a specific and known spectral distance to a carrier frequency, that carries more stuff than what the main carrier signal can manage. To visualize this, think about the 6 MHz of bandwidth that holds one analog video channel. That analog TV signal has three main components: The video itself, the associated audio, and the color information.

Spectrally speaking, the visual information sits at one place within the 6 MHz channel (1.25 MHz up from the lower edge of the 6 MHz chunk), the color at another place (3.58 MHz above the visual carrier), and the audio at yet another place (4.5 MHz above the visual carrier). All together, the visual, audio and color make whats called a “composite video” signal — the whole thing.

Individually, those three characteristics have a constant and predictable spectral relationship to each other. The visual carrier calls the shots; it’s the constant. The audio and color information sits on subcarriers, which always reside at the same precise distance from the video carrier.

Subcarriers are sometimes used to convey information, other than color or audio, that goes with the video. In the old days of commercial insertion, for example, the subcarrier audio feed carried cue tones, which, in turn, triggered video tape machines to play out the advertisements.

A nasty little term that describes what happens, at a plant level, when chunks of frequencies traveling along a length of coaxial cable get stricken (i.e., “sucked out,”) usually because something bad has happened to the cable itself: It suddenly got cold, and the center conductor of the cable contracted; water leaked in; it kinked. The frequencies affected depend on what happened to the wire.

The second major outgrowth of the “video on demand” (VOD) category, after movies. SVOD is the offer, for an additional subscription fee, to watch premium television shows — anytime, without having to “make an appointment,” as with digital video recorders. So, instead of seeing the latest episode of “Sex in the City” on Sunday night, see the entire season, whenever, as many times as desired — and without having to instruct a DVR to record it.

Because it connotes an additional monthly subscription fee — ranging from $3.95-$9.94 — content providers for SVOD tend to be the premium channels: HBO, Showtime, Starz!, etc.

Consumers generally “find” SVOD content through a link on the electronic program guide. Stored titles can be retrieved to view “anytime,” with fast forward, rewind, and pause functionality.

Links to a network, like the Internet, where as much data moves to the PC as moves away from it. In contemporary terms, Internet connections over cable are designed asymmetrically, meaning that more data flows to the customer than toward the customer. This is logical, considering what most people do on the Internet: Click, to send a request to fetch a web page, or to send an email.

But as high bandwidth connections become more pervasive, and electronic gadgets like digital camcorders, digital still cameras and Web cams become more mainstream, the whole genre of user-generated digital content will push the need for symmetrical connections.