NEW ORLEANS – After roaming the floor for three days at the NCTA’s Cable Show, we present below some of the nifty new products we saw – and a few other things.
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WE COULDN’T RESIST pointing out a sentence rife with sanctimony and irony that came yesterday during the afternoon general session.
BET president and CEO Debra Lee asked for her panellists’ ultimate hope for the future. To a bit of an ovation, Judy McGrath said: “I’d like to come to an NCTA convention and not see a half-naked woman in a martini glass,” referencing the promotion AMC had on the show floor for the series Mad Men – a half-naked model in a six-foot martini glass.
So there’s the sanctimony. And here’s the irony. McGrath is president and CEO of MTV Networks, home of The Hills and Real World Hollywood, a couple of shows that make a woman in parked in a martini glass seem tame by comparison. Dr. Pot paging Nurse kettle! Pot calling kettle!
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Seachange unveiled its Affinity application at this show, a piece of software which will be released later this year that lets TV subscribers use an MSO’s web site to not only recommend movies to their online friends, but also to add VOD titles to their own favourites, which would then be added to an easy-to-find, personalized folder in their set top box’s electronic program guide.
The company also plans to release a Facebook application into that environment at about the same time the software is available to purchase for MSOs. The social networking application lets online friends pick and recommend titles to each other. Both new services are aimed at driving VOD usage for cable operators.
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With all of the talk about advanced advertising, Toronto’s Sigma Systems released its new advanced advertising solution – which is aligned with Tru2Way and SCTE 130 standards – and captures correlates, analyzes and subsequently leverages subscriber data to drive advanced advertising campaign decisions. Sigma’s software can pull a series of markers in the MSO’s database to identify, for example, whether a certain home houses a family, or a single, young guy – so that targeted ads can be sent to the right screen. So, the young guy gets a World of Warcraft ad and the family sees an SUV commercial.
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Among various other things, Motorola showed off its DCX3400 set-top, complete with high-definition, MPEG-4 video and enhanced Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. Showcasing time-shifting and place-shifting applications, including the whole-home digital video recorder (DVR) experience, consumers can access high-quality video and audio entertainment, whenever and wherever they are. Moto also had on site demonstrations of new Tru2way applications. The Tru2way technology is built into televisions, set-top boxes, and other devices enabling cable companies and other interactive television service and application developers to write interactive applications and see them run successfully on any cable television system that supports the specification. The company also now offers a 1 Terabyte external hard drive for its set tops, capable of storing 200 hours of high definition programming. Motorola is distributed in Canada by Capella and Trispec.
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The trouble is that people are still getting used to the new OpenCable, or OCAP, branding. The letters “OCAP” still flashed from quite a few pieces of equipment running the technology and the word “OCAP” was still heard around every corner. Gotta love re-branding.
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Arris announced its new agreement with Comcast, where the big MSO has agreed to purchase the company’s latest generation of C4 cable modem termination system chassis. The DOCSIS 3.0 C4 CMTS enhances the existing hybrid-fibre coax infrastructure to deliver higher Internet connection speeds of up to 160 Mbps using channel bonding technology. An enhancement process allows the cost-effective introduction of this major technology upgrade to the existing installed base of C4 CMTS, and greatly increases the overall capacity of the platform, says the company. Arris gear is distributed in Canada by TVC Canada.
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Cisco (some still cling to the video division’s Scientific-Atlanta name, which is still painted on some of the company’s equipment in its booth) showcased its growth of its Connected Life thrust. With the Cisco end-to-end network and progressive technologies (so much of its gear powers the telecom universe and the Internet), “service providers can evolve into true experience providers, harnessing the power of the network to deliver next-generation video and data-based services and fulfill the consumer demand for more services on more screens,” says the company. One of the new devices it had in the booth was its 320GB hard drive set top box.
Watch this space for more on Cisco’s switched digital video service.
