Cable IPTV Piques Interest
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 8/12/2007 8:00:00 PM
Cable’s leading technical lights picked a video-over-cable modem demonstration by Harmonic as the “best new idea that is most likely to succeed” from among a dozen vendor presentations at the CableLabs Summer Conference last week in Keystone, Colo.
The CableLabs Innovation Showcase featured presentations by six startups and six established vendors for an audience of about 500 executives.
The most interesting demo, according to attendees: Harmonic’s universal-edge quadrature amplitude modulation system, delivering MPEG-4 video over a Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification 3.0 modem with three bonded downstream channels.
Harmonic showed standard- and high-definition video streaming to a PC, as well as a personalized multipanel mosaic display, with one HD and two SD videos playing back on one screen.
“What we’re trying to do is leverage that DOCSIS infrastructure and provide that efficient and cost-effective means to deliver this video,” said Harmonic director of cable strategy and business development Tom Kennedy.
Charter Communications chief technology officer Marwan Fawaz, who attended the conference, said all 12 of the presentations were compelling.
Harmonic’s solution in particular “looked like a terrific a way of capitalizing on the architecture of DOCSIS 3.0,” Fawaz said. “We see significant growth of video on the Internet, and this is a way to use our architecture of DOCSIS and HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] to provide the right video streams and speeds to subscribers.”
The CableLabs conference was open only to member companies. Other products presented included:
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4HomeMedia’s home-security monitoring application;
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Adzilla Media’s targeted online advertising;
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Ambit Microsystems’ integrated home gateway;
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Arris Group’s 120-Mbps-plus DOCSIS modems;
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Digeo’s Web-based photo-sharing application;
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Nortel’s Web-services application to locate a cable subscriber over any type of device;
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Oberon Media/PixelPlay’s interactive game across TV, Web and mobile clients;
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Pure Networks’ customer-support system for broadband-connectivity issues;
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Scopus Video Networks’ secure video over IP and stream conditioning for targeted advertising;
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Sereniti’s home-networking setup and management system; and
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Tzero Technologies’ high-speed wireless home-networking system.
CableLabs Showgoers Pick 'Best New Idea'
08/06/2007Cable Prevails In Patent Case Over DOCSIS
11/15/2009Arris Intros 'Wideband' Voice Modems
01/09/2008Study Examines DOCSIS 3.0 Transition
08/23/2006
