CHICAGO – TVN Entertainment CTO Dom Stasi sounded a bit of an alarm when he spoke to delegates at the IPTV World North America conference by noting that sometime after February’s digital transition for American broadcasters, U.S. cable companies will likely drop the bulk of their analog channels in favour of digital – which is going to “open up about 400 channels,” he said.
“That gives them virtually infinite bandwidth for which to compete.” (U.S. over the air broadcasters must stop broadcasting in analog on February 19th, 2009.)
With the development of compression technologies – i.e. MPEG4 – that amount of reopened bandwidth will present cable companies with quite an advantage, especially as cable channels go high def, too, just behind the premium channels like HBO and the broadcast stations.
IPTV providers, “seem to me to be at an extraordinary disadvantage,” he said, except for Verizon, which has built its fibre architecture to the home. Others will have local loop issues and other copper-related problems trying to match cable, he said, especially when it comes to high definition and video on demand.
TVN is a content aggregator that deals with providing content to secure carriers like cable companies and IPTV providers.
The HD transition figures he presented were very interesting.
By 2010, virtually all content coming from movie studios will be in HD (“That’s a year and a half from now, noted Stasi.). By 2012, everything HBO shows or does will be in HD (not HD-only, mind you, it’ll all be available in SD, too).
“This is a five-times normal bandwidth requirement that we’ll all have to face,” he added.
In terms of the number of hours of VOD content coming from studios, that will jump from 8,000 hours available now to 18,000 hours in 2012. Premium VOD, such as HBO and Showtime series’ will be about 25,000 hours a year available for VOD, added Stasi. All of it in HD.
Noting that the normal compression rate for cable and IPTV services is about 15 Mbps, service providers will also probably face complaints from their customers since high definition Blu-Ray DVD discs display at 40 Mbps, providing a far superior picture.
“40 MB is going to look a lot better than 15,” added Stasi.
– Greg O’Brien
