AT USTA, VENDORS SEARCH FOR COMPELLING VIDEO SOLUTIONS

PVR, high-definition TV add to technology's allure

If there was any doubt that video is not the most compelling application in broadband, the U.S. Telecom Association show earlier this month should have dispelled that notion.

Vendors at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas unveiled telco video solutions of every variety with many emphasizing technologies that won't be ready for months or even years. Despite the recent re-emergence of video into the telco environment, vendors appeared to be desperately search for a solution that gives carriers a service to not only compete with cable's emerging triple-play offerings, but also help stem the flow of access lines to competitors. Indicative of the early stages of the telco video market, though, the show raised as many questions as it answered. Key among those is what constitutes a compelling video offer.

BellSouth CTO Bill Smith, who was the keynote speaker for the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) portion of the show, said the RBOC wants to do more than just match cable's channel line-up. Among the potential options is a subscription pay-per-view service that takes advantage of its recent deal with MovieLink or its resale agreement with DirecTV. At the same time, the carrier is studying ways to take advantage of the personal/digital video recorder (PVR/DVR) phenomena created by TiVo and ReplayTV.

“I can get everything I'm interested in with a time-shifted environment, but that's probably not the best solution for someone else,” Smith said.

Cable operators have already started testing subscription PVR services, but providing the same services over copper raises the issue of network capacity and where content is stored. In the network-based model, or NPVR, content is located on servers in a central location and is called up on demand by users.

In the model being followed by cable, a digital recorder is integrated with the set-top box, something BellSouth, SBC Communication and Qwest Communications could do given their relationships with satellite providers.

“When you have people with 200 to 300 megabytes of storage, there are a lot of things you can do with that,” Smith said. “I think there's a place for something that goes into the home and something that goes in the network. It's not going to be a simple solution.”

Some vendors also are not encouraged by the thought of network-based PVR, noting that for every stream there must be a virtual private channel, and capacity will run out quickly on legacy equipment designed for voice and data.

“Even taking 100 channels to a remote [location] is tough for legacy DLCs,” said Kevin Walsh, vice president of marketing for Calix, which teamed up with Myrio, Tandberg Television and Westell to demonstrate end-to-end video at the show.

Beyond technical issues, NPVR is raising some sticky legal issues with content providers, said Derek Kuhn, chairman of the Broadband Content Delivery Forum and a director of marketing with Alcatel's Fixed Solutions Division.

"The studios like NPVR because they can license more content," he said. "The whole idea of PVR/DVR changes the way you watch TV, and the content providers don't like the idea of indefinite rights."

Until those issues are worked out, telco-provided PVR could be stuck in neutral.

Ironically, high-definition television (HDTV), the technology once viewed as perpetually on the horizon, may get to carriers first. At USTA, Net to Net and Tandberg said they had successfully demonstrated HDTV over ADSL by using two-pair loop-bonding techniques.

During the test, Tandberg used its E5780 encoder to compress the MPEG-2 HD signal. And while only a lab test, the ability to send HDTV signals down copper wires will become more realistic with MPEG-4 and Windows Media 9 compression, said Matthew Byrd, vice president of marketing for Net to Net.

"Realistically, you can do high-definition at 12 Mb/s with MPEG-2," he said, noting that telcos can use HDTV as a differentiator for video subscribers."