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NCTA 2005 Cable Show Recap
by Ken Pyle ([email protected]),
Viodi, LLC
The NCTA show is always known
for its fancy and entertaining booths. The following is a brief recap of my
fast tour through the showfloor. One thing I couldn't capture in photos were
the number of content people talking about SBC. Clearly, SBC is being heard,
which, in general is probably good for the industry. Several people commented
that SBC is not hiring people with the same level of experience as the senior
level executives of the MSOs.
Please click on the above pictures
to see a larger view.
bestbuy.jpg
Cable's relationship with retailers
is significant, as indicated by Best Buy's huge truck booth at
the cable show. Retail is a channel that cannot be overlooked
as a way to bring a telco's offering to market. |
casinotv.jpg
Just what the world needs, a network
about casinos and gaming. This was one of several new niche networks. |
comcast.jpg
I don't know when they started to
brand their networks as Comcast, but this picture definitely shows
the influence of Comcast in the cable programming world. Comcast
long ago realized that they would have to own programming if they
were going to avoid being a dumb pipe. |
ocap.jpg
OCAP, Open Cable Applications Platform
is a Cable Labs led effort to allow developers to create interactive
applications for set-top boxes, independent of the set-top operating
systems. These efforts are just starting to see fruition as their
were quite a few OCAP offerings at the NCTA. If this works as
promised, it could have the effect of being like DOS was for the
PC. It also points to a dearth of this sort of effort in the telco
industry.
|
offices.jpg
Serious meetings with programmers
were held in these off-show floor offices. These offices remind
me of the closed nature of the programmer's show, NATPE. |
siemans.jpg
Example of a video phone shown in
the Siemans booth. This could be interesting, as middleware from
Myrio could potentially drive interactive applications to this
phone as well. |
starz.jpg
The above image is the Internet
download screen for Starz On Demand, using the Real Media Player.
For $12.95 per month, a viewer has access to something like 150
movies per month. Won't be much of a stretch that this will soon
be available to a PVR-like device. |
vibe.jpg
Vibe Solutions Group allows ISPs
to enable their customers to easily create and send video email.
Hot item at this show. In fact, this company was used by NCTA
to send out information to its email list. |
viseon.jpg
As can be seen from above, Viseon
has a variety of video phones. This company, which has been around
since 1993, OEMs its phones to Vonage. They are aggressively courting
content owners to provide existing and original content for display
on their phones. |
|
