DLNA

One year over-the-top

This week marks one year of sampling a large variety of over-the-top video hardware and software in a makeshift office lab. Why: To understand why people cut the cable cord, or hang out on the “connected” side of today’s Internet-connected TVs.

Seems a good time to share some findings.

1. What I use the most, of the over-the-top services: Amazon Prime. Why: Amazon was first to offer Downton Abbey Season 2, which I could watch on a Vizio screen at home, while “getting steps” on the treadmill. (I am OCD about 10,000 steps per day, thanks to the Fitbit, to which I am wonderfully addicted.)
After that, and still on Amazon Prime: Tanked. Tanked is a family viewing activity, marathon-style – but, alas, the main TV in the house isn’t Internet-connected. So I brought home a Sony streamer, which was dissed at the lab for its clunky on-screen remote (it’s as clunky on the Sony PS3.) But, it has Amazon Prime. The Tanked binging continued in the living room.

2. Observation: Be careful what you wish for, in terms of user experience. OTT apps like Netfix and Amazon, as well as cable video apps like xFinity, can use or not use various native features within each streaming device. Which means that the same app behaves differently, one screen to the next. (Maybe we’ll all just get used to this?)

When marathon-viewing Nurse Jackie on the Vizio screen, for instance, the Amazon app keeps track of episodes I’ve seen with a simple check mark. No such feature on the Sony streamer upstairs. Same app, same show, but you need to remember which episode you watched last.

The flip side of that, which comes with DLNA, is that any software-based video app can leverage native device features that are cool or handy.

Example: At the Cable Show in June, on a back wall of the CableNET area, Cox showed how its Trio guide had taken advantage of a native feature inside a Sony connected TV, such that in-show navigation happens on a scroll bar, frame by frame. It looked great.

3. What I use the most at work: Comcast’s “AnyPlay,” fed by Motorola’s “Televation” box. Live streaming cable TV on the iPad. Love it. Make it do trick-play, I’d love it even more.

That’s a short walk through a year’s worth of OTT-ing in the lab. Next time: What all that streaming did to the broadband meter; the puzzle of getting signal to everything; the multiplier on remote control clutter.
This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

Tools, Tools, and More Tools

by Leslie Ellis // July 09 2012

More than a decade ago, an MSO exec halted a staff meeting to make this exasperated observation: “Tools, tools, tools – can we just have one meeting where I’m not being asked for more tools? How many tools do we really need?”

At the time, Comcast was AT&T Broadband, and the tool in question related to the monitoring of an “open access” (remember that?) trial.

But the question – how many tools do we really need? – is decidedly evergreen.

The latest case in point is the home network, itself an extension of the HFC plant, with gadgets and screens that live better with signal. And they’re all cross-linked.

Today’s home networks make mixed use of MoCA (Multimedia Over Coax Alliance), Ethernet, and Wi-Fi to move stuff around. On top of that, there’s DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance),  poised to let us share component resources – tuners, hard drives – amongst screens. And that’s just the IP (Internet Protocol) side of the equation.

Here’s how one engine-room guy put it, over a fish taco last week: “So in the home you have a QAM set-top that’s pulling video into the home network. And an advanced wireless gateway, handling data and voice. And lets throw in an IP set-top.

“The IP set-top gets video from the QAM box, but it gets its user interface through the data side.

“A customer calls: Something’s wrong with my set-top. We say, is it a video problem, or a data problem?” (At which point he made the “d’oh!” face.)

Which brings us back to tools. And silos of people — video people, data people, voice people.

One answer getting a lot of play in tech circles is TR-069, where the “TR” stands for “Technical Report.” It’s an outgrowth of what’s now called the Broadband Forum (formerly the DSL Forum; DSL is a telco thing, which might explain why cable’s coming around to it only now.)

TR-69 is sort of like an IP-based SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), in that it provides ways to move data back and forth, for purposes of troubleshooting, say, a home network. Or, as the Broadband Forum itself puts it: “The TR-069 standard was developed for automatic configuration of modems, routers, gateways, set-top boxes and VoIP phones.”

Great, right? Yes, if you’re ok with devils and details. While TR-69 can fetch data from different networked devices –assuming they’re plumbed with the right client profile – it lacks the job-specific tools to make diagnostic sense of that data.

What tools are needed? One for bridging into workforce management. One for customer care reps. Engineering tools, to see what’s going on. And some kind of blended video/data tool, because how things work for QAM-based video are vastly different than how they work on IP-based video.

So. How many tools? I’d go with “lots.” (And good luck with that.)

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