Harmonic Plans for Unicast Universe

'HectoQAM' Video Router Would Deliver 100 QAM Channels per Port

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 1/15/2008 11:00:00 AM

LOS ANGELES -- Harmonic outlined a future “video-aware router” that would enhance traditional cable radio-frequency equipment to more efficiently deliver dozens of unicast video and data streams to subscribers.

Harmonic’s concept of a “HectoQAM,” still at least two years away from being a real product, would deliver the equivalent of 100 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) channels over a single port.

In essence, the device would move the infrastructure necessary to combine digital services from the RF network where it exists today to an Internet Protocol network. The company presented the HectoQAM concept here at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ Conference on Emerging Technologies.

The HectoQAM is intended to prepare the way for the rapid growth expected for unicast services, such as video-on-demand and high-speed data, said Gil Katz, Harmonic’s director of cable solutions and strategy.

“Adding more QAMs in the traditional architecture adds more cables, and it’s just impossible to manage,” he said.

HectoQAM “collapses the combining network into one device… so you combine it in the IP domain before it’s sent over RF,” Katz added. In this setup, analog TV channels would continue to be combined in the RF network.

Harmonic is targeting 2010 or 2011 for delivery of a HectoQAM product, Katz said, with pricing aimed at $4,000 per port. Each port would be dedicated to a cable service group.

“It’s not the price per QAM that’s important anymore. It’s the cost per port,” he said.

The HectoQAM would provide built-in redundancy features, so that a port failure wouldn’t cause an entire neighborhood to lose access to services, Katz noted.

The company’s design goal is to ensure the space required by HectoQAM servers is equivalent to the QAM infrastructure needed for video-on-demand and switched digital video today, Katz said. A HectoQAM server could deliver up to eight ports per rack unit, or the equivalent of 800 QAMs, he said.

Also at the SCTE conference, Harmonic is demonstrating “Gator,” a video-on-demand aggregation system that can deliver traditional VOD assets as well as Web video.

The Gator server (the name implies “aggregator” and “navigator”), built with technology from Harmonic’s acquisition of Rhozet, delivers an interactive video guide composited by a headend server for accessing short clips or full-length titles without having to access a back-office VOD system.