SAN ANTONIO – Buzz continued to centre around digital simulcast on day two – another crowded day on the floor of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Cable-Tec Expo.
But, not all is about scraping bandwidth together with grooming and trans-rating. Some companies had other focuses, other ideas.
Here’s what we saw and heard:
**************
Terayon Communications today announced that Cogeco Cable has deployed the Terayon DM 6400 Network CherryPicker platform to power the deployment of all-digital programming. Cogeco is currently simulcasting its channel lineups in southern Ontario.
Cogeco’s deployment leverages the same digital video networking capabilities that have been deployed in thousands of CherryPicker systems worldwide to seamlessly integrate additional applications and services as their needs and business requirements evolve.
"By making it possible to deliver all-digital programming very efficiently, Terayon helps us to meet and exceed our customers’ diverse television viewing needs and deliver the most exciting recent advances in television programming distribution," said Robin Lavoie, senior director of engineering for Cogeco Cable, in a release.
The DM 6400 is the flagship model in the Terayon Network CherryPicker line of digital video networking platforms, which enable telecom carriers, cable operators and satellite providers to deliver a wide range of digital programming services and applications. The DM 6400 utilizes advanced proprietary ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) chips designed for the unique computational requirements of MPEG compressed digital video, combined with digital video processing software, to deliver picture quality for both SD and HD digital video services.
**************
At the Pace Micro Technology booth, the big deal was its new orders from Videotron. Pace is a leading digital set top box supplier primarily in Europe but has been making some inroads in the North American duopoly of Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola.
Videotron has placed orders for two of Pace’s set-top boxes – the Indiana DC511 and the Laguna DC551HD – to be used in the MSO’s illico Digital TV service. "We selected Pace to be one of our set-top box solution providers because of the company’s innovative and yet cost-effective approach to software and hardware for the cutting-edge, on-demand and interactive television services we offer our customers," said Videotron’s director of new technologies Alain Boissonnault, in a release.
The Indiana DC511 is a standard definition set-top box that comes with an extra 100 MIPs processing power and improved robustness, through an innovative use of plastics in the enclosure designed to fight wear and tear. The Laguna DC551HD is a high definition set-top box that comes with HDMI as standard – the latest in display connectivity – to provide secure, high-performance digital audio and video links.
**************
In an effort to serve its members and the industry better online, the SCTE today debuted its reconstructed web site at www.scte.org.
Among the new features are a design facelift, new navigation, new functionality of the calendar, and a new ROI module. The latter establishes a block of homepage feature advertising space that replaces the use of a thin, horizontal banner ad. Other improvements include enlarging banner ads on the sublevel pages and moving them to the top of the screen. Buttons appearing on those pages also have been enlarged. The ROI-related changes were encouraged and supported by SCTE’s vendor community.
SCTE is pleased to note that the people photographs gracing the website’s homepage on a rotating basis are pictures of actual SCTE members, an approach SCTE takes in all of its marketing and advertising efforts. The web site is organized into the following sections – About Us, Event Calendar, Member Services, Education, Certification, SCTE InfoScope, Standards, and Promotional Opportunities.
**************
RGB Networks’ Simulcast Edge Processor (SEP) was drawing attention from a few Canadian cablecos not just because of its capability to simultaneously receive multiple MPEG-2 digital video streams over Internet Protocol (IP), decode the video streams, modulate and up-convert them, and deliver the streams directly to subscribers as NTSC analog video at the edge of the network, but for its space and power savings, too.
The design of the SEP means it requires 500 Watts in terms of power for the support off 48 NTSC modulated and upconverted channels and a single box occupies just one rack unit of space (redundancy and numbers of channels means most will take two) but the functionality can replace a seven-foot rack of equipment performing similar functions.
**************
In terms of new telecom apps, look for caller ID on the TV to be a possibility for deployment. At the Telcordia booth, it was showing off its multi-faceted caller-ID platform. While caller ID to the TV screen is nothing new, Telcordia’s goes steps further in that it is integrated with the customer’s PC, wireless device and instant messenger.
When a call comes in, not only does the info pop up on the TV screen, it also appears on the PC screen, too, and can be accessed via IM. And, if the caller’s cell phone has a GPS feature, the Telcordia ID system will say on-screen, where the caller is. On the PC, users can actually click through to a map showing where the caller is.
So much for teenagers saying they’re at Jake’s house studying when they’re actually at Christine’s house, er, studying.
Also with an interesting caller ID system was Integra5, which boasted similar functionalities to the Telcordia demo, with an added feature where a photo of the caller pops up on-screen when they call – as long as they’ve uploaded a picture they like.
**************
Xtend Networks president and CEO Bill Keating talked about taking those pokey new 750 and 860 MHz cable systems and moving them to 3 GHz. Don’t worry, though, he’s not talking about more big rebuilds, as its products don’t require any amplifier spacing alterations or anything huge like that.
The XHUB 3006 has been created to simplify installation and maintenance while reducing costs and improving performance when multiple downstream coax connections are fed from a single optical node.
Xtend’s XHUB products perform its unique block frequency multiplexing and upconversion for the “Xtended” (1250-1950 MHz) downstream, and demultiplex and downconvert the four upstream blocks (2250-2750 MHz). Previous XHUB versions required the additional installation of three passive devices to accommodate node splits or other multiple coax configurations; the XUB 3006 is a dual amplifier Block Division Multiplexer with additional ports for a second coax connection.
“The XHUB 3006 is yet another step in making the Xtend solution the simplest, most cost-effective route to the capacity cable needs to provide high bandwidth services today,” said Keating. “The product is designed to minimize network elements and connections, further simplifying the deployment of the 3GHz solution in split node configurations.”
– Greg O’Brien
