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DTAs Pop Out Of The Woodwork
May 23, 2008
While tru2way was clearly a big topic at The Cable Show, a bigger deal in the near-term is something far less sexy -- and a whole lot cheaper -- than interactive TV set-tops: digital-to-analog converters.
Tru2way (nee OCAP) is important for cable because it meets business and (the industry is hoping, anyway) regulatory objectives. The technology was a big focus in New Orleans: see
Top Execs Tout Tech,
Interactive TV Demos Aplenty At Cable Show,
Comcast Media Center Launches ITV Services, and Leslie Ellis' column on
My Wish List For Tru2way Conference.
Competitively tru2way lets cable look more Internet-like; the idea is to fuel new kinds of advanced advertising and drive up ARPU with cool new interactive services (e.g. multiplayer gaming). Tru2way, fingers crossed, also will meet the FCC's demand to open up two-way cable services to retail CE devices (see
Two-Way Tussle, Dec. 10).
But for the next 12 months, DTAs will be the cooler customer premises equipment story (see
Analog Zappers, May 12).
Why? Because they will let Comcast and others reclaim analog spectrum a lot more cheaply than using regular cable set-top boxes. Each DTA should be less than half the cost, according to Comcast's Steve Burke.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, in the
opening general session on Sunday, said there's a huge near-term opportunity to increase capacity through analog reclamation. To reclaim 250 to 500 MHz from analog channels, Roberts said, will probably cost the industry less than $5 billion. That's compared with $100 billion MSOs shelled out to upgrade from 500 to 750 MHz.
The vendors have responded to the DTA call.
Motorola, Cisco and Thomson were all showing off prototypes of devices this week, and
Thomson's DCI 1011 was a working model. Pace Micro has one too, but it's keeping mum about it, and a smaller vendor, Evolution Digital, has a paying customer for its DTAs,
Massillon Cable TV in Ohio.
Here are first looks at some of the DTAs:
Cisco's DTA 50
Motorola's DTA industrial design
Evolution Digital's DTA
Also: The guys over at
CDN have more pictures of DTAs from the show, including one of the
TV-mountable Thomson unit.
Posted by Todd Spangler on May 23, 2008 | Comments (1)
