BOSTON – For those who remember The Cable Show of old, INTX 2016 pales by comparison. Traffic on the show floor seemed pretty light this year and the show is far smaller than just a few years ago.
At one time, tech vendors and broadcasters had huge booths on the trade show floor and the show itself drew something like 15,000 cable professionals. However, with the global shift to IP delivery of everything and with cable channels and their content being distributed far and wide on all sorts of new platforms, the industry seems to be pondering the question: “what are we”? The NCTA has not yet released the number of attendees, but it’s well below historical attendance levels.
Tech titan Cisco had a limited presence of mainly on-floor offices and big content producers like A+E Networks and Discovery had no show presence at all, despite the fact their key executives were still in attendance. As well, inviting speakers from AT&T and Verizon for INTX 2016 really shows how this industry has changed of late. The differences between traditional telecom and cable are getting harder to discern.
The dominant presence at the show is the biggest cable dog in the world, Comcast, whose own technology now leads the industry, as we discussed in a story earlier this week.
That said, there was still much to be seen and learned at INTX. Despite what some folks say about how LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Facetime and other things keep us all in touch well enough, there is still no substitute for some actual, real, face time. (UPDATE) Also, despite rumours to the contrary, the NCTA does plan a 2017 INTX. It's Snapchat-avatared Twitter account told us it will be April 26-28 next year in Washington.
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We got a good look at the software Alticast is providing to Vidéotron for its 4K ultra high definition, high dynamic range set-top boxes, which are now available across the Quebec cableco’s footprint. Alticast helps Vidéotron serve up multi-room PVR capabilities, interactive applications and integrates with its back-office systems.
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BitTorrent Live was launched at INTX. It's a multichannel, live and linear video streaming platform spanning news, sports, music, tech, and youth culture, said the company. It allows for large audiences to view live video with sub 10-second latency and without the need for a CDN or any pre-provisioning. As one might expect with P2P tech, it also makes every viewer a broadcaster(!), which keeps the video stream strong and can make broadcast as scalable as traditional OTA TV. Read more here.
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At the Discovery party on Monday evening (they had no booth but did host a get together for delegates) we found out that yes, virtual reality sure seems cool, but still makes us queasy…
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PlayStation Vue, the cloud-based video solution delivered through the popular gaming consoles is not coming to Canada anytime soon. There are “no plans” for a rollout beyond the U.S. at this point, one company representative told us.
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LG’s 65 inch OLED 4K HDR smart TV sure was a beauty. Basically, a thin piece of glass, the model we saw had Rogers Anyplace TV running on it along with many other video platforms, too, be they cable or OTT. Smart TVs and devices like Rokus were everywhere running on cable platforms from Comcast, Charter, Cox and others.
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This was the last cable show for one Hawley T. Chester (right), the much-loved vice-president Canadian sales and 
marketing for Speed Channel at Fox Cable Networks. Hawley has been around the business for a long time, representing various U.S. cable channels in Canada over the years. His industry knowledge and contacts run deeper than almost anyone we know. Always ready with a quip and generous to a fault, Hawley (who is an accomplished amateur race car driver, too) has been a key builder in this industry and will be missed by all of us in the business.
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While we didn’t run into “the Teds” (Turner and Rogers) like we once did ages ago, we spotted more than a few Canucks roaming the show floor, including Cogeco CEO Louis Audet, CRTC commissioner Raj Shoan (who was a voracious INTX tweeter, too), and Fight Network chief Leonard Asper.
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We were graciously invited to a cocktail party of Canadians at the show too, as you’ll see in a number of photos below from Sunday.
