Viodi View - IPTV 2006 – the answer to ‘Where IS IPTV?’?

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Viodi View Newsletter - February 22nd, 2006

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IPTV 2006 – the answer to ‘Where IS IPTV?’?

By Peter Lowten, peter.lowten@viodi.com

For my sins (which are many!) Krazy Ken asked me to generate one of my irregular reviews of exhibitions and conferences I have attended (some prior works include coverage of NAB and the IBC shows). This time it’s IPTV 2006 held last week in sunny (but cold) San Jose, California. The focus was on technologies and strategies driving IPTV forward. So I attended, hoping to get a better understanding of Quality of Service (QoS), Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues, and of WiFi as a ubiquitous home delivery mechanism. Incidentally, during these ramblings I will try to keep the ratio of acronyms to real words at less than 1:100…..

So, where the heck are we….?!

An overall impression is that IPTV is now where we were told it was last year! Actually, I take this as a very positive state of affairs, as many of the presentations contained material and points of view that showed that lessons learned from early adopters are guiding manufacturers and service providers through useful learning curves.

For instance, most speakers have realized that the whole Triple Play/IPTV Ball o’ Wax (BoW….) cannot just be about Telcos providing a ‘me too’ offering matched against a cable or satellite company. They see near term development of features and benefits, derived from IPTV’s inherent characteristics that are innovative and difficult to copy in the more channel oriented world of cable delivery.

As an example, manipulation of IPTV streams supports low cost deployment of multiple picture-in-picture services leading to a wide variety of: personalized offerings. Fast upstream speeds, unmatchable on cable, and easy integration of local content combined with new thinking and good marketing to differentiate an independent telco’s services, might lead to timely news and local content made from uploaded material from subscribers.

And So To DRM…

Additionally, strong points were made that industry infighting must not affect the user experience if a smooth take up of the underlying technology is to be effected. A case in point, I believe it was Peter Barrett of Microsoft who made it clear that, realistically, we are unlikely to have a single homogenous DRM environment. It is not in various companies’ individual best interests to make that happen.

However we will be failing as an industry if the consumer of content - The Poor Schmuck (TPS) who, after all, will pay for all this wonderful progress – has to perform technical and legal handsprings to watch BBC comedies (the best kind!) on his mePod Flea (this product is not yet released…). At some point seamless (at least invisible to TPS) gateways that move DRM through the varied ‘hand-offs’ that happen to content will have to be developed and deployed.

Incidentally last year’s furor around MPEG4 and Microsoft’s VC1 seems to have died down considerably. Harmonic’s David Price made it clear that Codec manufacturers were taking it in their stride by supporting all formats with little trouble as ‘there are a lot of similarities between the two approaches’. In general terms MPEG4 led by a large margin during discussion of actual IPTV implementation – particularly HDTV. A statement was made (by Anonymous) that IP Set Top Boxes that support HDTV will be rolled out this quarter of 2006. We may truly be close to this momentous and long awaited happening…..

What became of QoS and WiFi…?

Actually a presentation by Selina Lo, CEO of Ruckus Wireless during the Home Networking Track explained that careful scheduling and control of multiple queues would allow high QoS over WiFi, conveniently killing two birds with one stone; unfortunately I missed a similarly oriented offering from Roc Lastinger, President of Rotani. Other tidbits from this track gave a less than rosy picture of the costs of installing a Home Network by a service provider. Set Top Boxes (STBs) in three rooms, a modem, plus CAT5 wiring and installation can average $1,020 per install. A very flexible approach to applying any one of a number of potential solutions, data over coax solutions, Home Power Plug, wireless, depending on the dwelling, seems to be the only viable approach for telcos at the moment.

That last sentence brings back memories of other presentations of good information on the way DVRs are modifying everything from habits to network strategies; the real bandwidth needs for the average home in the next few years (a semi-consensus of 35 megabits per second and more); and testing of the delivered IPTV signal (Sencore Inc seems to have a good package of test gear that is priced for the independent telco). Maybe Krazy Ken will let me cover those thoughts soon. (PS: 9 acronyms in 750 words!)

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