San Jose, Calif. -- Marthin De Beer is the top video-technology exec at Cisco Systems, one of the world's largest suppliers of set-top boxes.

And he realizes the days of the standalone set-top are numbered.

De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco’s Video & Collaboration Group, predicts that Internet TVs and other consumer IP devices will be powerful and ubiquitous enough within about 10 years to receive any pay-TV service directly -- eliminating the need for service providers to deploy set-top boxes.

Turner Broadcasting System is trying to build a better startup — with an initiative that’s more like a buddy system than a traditional strategic investment.

This summer, the programmer held its first 12-week Media Camp accelerator program with six startups selected from more than 100 applicants. “We wanted to learn from them and potentially influence them,” Turner senior director of emerging technology David Austin said.

Turner put $20,000 into each company (”just a little bit to help them through the 12-week period,” Austin said) and picked its own execs to act as mentors, helping the startups hone their ideas and technologies. The Media Camp agenda also included mixers and workshops on branding and other topics.

Each of the six Media Camp startups incorporate some aspect of social media or content discovery. SocialSamba, for example, lets users “friend” their favorite fictional characters to follow scripted social experiences, while Matcha created a personalized video-tracking service.

Turner’s CNN is already a paying customer of one of the Media Campers: The news network’s website tapped the user-generated content management application from Chute to aggregate photos snapped by its reporters at the Democratic and Republican conventions.

The Media Camp will culminate in a demo day this Thursday (Sept. 13) in San Francisco, featuring presentations by the startups before an audience of venture capitalists, press and other media companies.

Turner’s ultimate goal is to turn interesting concepts into marketable products faster, according to Austin, previously a 17-year Apple veteran: “One of the hardest things for a startup to do is to get traction with a big media company.”

The other three Media Camp startups are: Showbucks, which develops “fun and engaging apps that combine social video with social games”; Socialize, which is creating a social platform that can predict user intent by mapping an interest graph across users and content; and Switchcam, a developer that creates interactive video experiences that let viewers “direct the show” and syncs fan-shot video with professional footage.

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Programming Note: Get a read on the future of multiscreen TV at our two events this month — TV’s Cloud Power, this Thursday (Sept. 13) in New York City; and the Next TV Summit, Sept. 20 in San Francisco.

OK, let’s first point out that the “Nielsen’s Law” we’re talking about is unrelated to the research and TV ratings company.

Arris hosted its annual investor and analyst conference on Wednesday, laying out the company’s strategy and growth prospects.

One chart in its slide deck caught my eye: Arris plotted the evolution of downstream Internet connection speeds for the last 25 years against Nielsen’s Law, including up to the recent 300 and 305 Mbps tiers announced by Verizon FiOS and Comcast, respectively.

The “law,” posited by Web design guru Jakob Nielsen in 1998, predicts that broadband speeds will increase 50% per year.

It’s held true so far but — wow. Will broadband subs be demanding 73 Gigabits per second downstream by 2030? That seems like a redonkulous amount of capacity. On the other hand, do you remember when people thought 1 Megabit per second cable modems were going to be more bandwidth than anyone would ever need?

In the nearer term, Arris says it’s prepping to hit up to 10 Gbps downstream and 2.5 Gbps in the next few years, referencing the “DOCSIS NG” white paper it co-authored with Cisco, Motorola and Intel that outlines technical strategies to get there over HFC (see A Blueprint for Ultra-Fast DOCSIS).

(As an aside: Google Fiber is literally ahead of the Nielsen curve with the 1-Gig symmetrical service — a good thing, of course, if you are lucky enough to live in one of the “fiberhoods” in the Kansas City area that the Internet giant is selectively hooking up.)

As for what’s fueling that bandwidth usage now and in the future, Arris cited “cloud computing,” including huge growth in Internet video consumption and operator-delivered IPTV, and 4K TVs (see TV’s Next Target: 4K Displays).

The wildcard in all this? How quickly broadband providers will upgrade their networks to keep pace with Nielsen’s curve, and whether that 50% annual growth starts flattening out. As Arris notes in its slides: “MSOs will have to make network investment in order to enhance supply capacity.”

And note: HFC at 750 MHz tops out at around 4.4 Gbps downstream, according to Arris’ chart. If (when?) bandwidth demand goes higher, cable will have to start expanding above 1 GHz or deploying fiber-to-the-home.

The vendor did call out the recent news from Comcast — Arris’s No. 1 customer — that it doubled the speeds of its 25 and 50 Mbps tiers, to 50 and 105 Mbps respectively, for no additional charge. According to Comcast, the bump is the seventh time since 2002 it has increased broadband speeds. It’s worth noting that the MSO’s 305 Mbps tier, at $300 per month, is priced not to move — looks more like anti-FiOS marketing ammo (see Comcast Debuts 305-Meg Internet, Doubles Speeds For Two Broadband Tiers).

Here’s the link to download the 6MB PDF of Arris’s presentation. (Which would have taken around one hour over a 14.4 Kbps modem 20 years ago!) There’s a bunch of other interesting stuff in there.

Meanwhile, Wall Street reaction to the Arris presentation seemed fairly positive.

Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold said he left the analyst meeting “feeling constructive. Although we see some risk to margins from unfavorable mix shifts, sales growth and cash generation look promising. We think sales growth and a developing appreciation for the cable industry’s evolution and Arris’s role in it helps stock sentiment.” Arris projected 10% organic sales growth in 2013, vs. Leopold’s 9% estimate, and expense growth of 3% vs. his 4% estimate.

Jefferies & Co.’s James Kisner said the Arris presentation was “very upbeat,” saying in a research note that the company “reinforced the key points of our positive thesis around Arris. Commentary around Moxi, operating expenses, and CMTS was incrementally positive versus our expectations.”

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Programming Note: Get a read on the future of multiscreen TV at our two events next month — TV’s Cloud Power, Sept. 13 in New York City; as well as the Next TV Summit, Sept. 20 in San Francisco.

In the broadcasters’ suit against Aereo, in which the startup won the first round, there was only one point of fact in dispute: whether its dime-size antennas actually function independently (see What the Judge in the Aereo Case Didn’t Rule On).

U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan agreed with Aereo’s position, rejecting the broadcasters’ assertion that the individual antennas act as a single, big array.

“Based on the evidence at this stage of the proceedings, the Court finds that Aereo’s antennas function independently,” she wrote. “That is to say, each antenna separately receives the incoming broadcast signal, rather than functioning collectively with the other antennas or with the assistance of the shared metal substructure.”

Aereo doesn’t always permanently dedicate physical antennas to individual users; those may be allocated dynamically at different times (click on the diagram at left from one of its patent filings). However, Nathan ruled, “That Aereo users may ’share’ resources like antennas by using them at different times does not affect this analysis, as it remains clear that the copies Aereo’s system makes are unique for each user and are not ’shared.’”

Furthermore, she noted that several resources in Cablevision Systems’ RS-DVR are also “shared,” including the servers and, “most significantly, the unlicensed signal from which the unique copies were made.” (She means Cablevision’s RS-DVR was not licensed for time-shifting use from the networks.)

Last fall, Aereo applied for four patents on its system (see Aereo’s Patent Play). Those appear to bolster its case, according to a patent expert cited by ReadWriteWeb’s Gina Smith, because they describe the Aereo system using individual antennas for signal capture.

“If in fact the four patent applications… accurately describe Aereo’s deployed technology in New York City, then these patent apps could give Aereo a leg up,” intellectual-property expert Tom Ewing told ReadWriteWeb.

The technical side of Aero’s legal defense may or may not be rock-solid. In any event, in their appeal the broadcasters will probably revise their legal arguments around the fact that Aereo isn’t licensed to retransmit their TV signals.

In their original case, the broadcasters argued that the Cablevision RS-DVR decision didn’t apply to Aereo because the former involved time-shifting. Judge Nathan noted that the Second Circuit’s ruling did not cite time-shifting at all in its analysis of whether the RS-DVR was a “public performance.”

So expect a new legal tack from the broadcasters. Note that Judge Nathan specifically said her decision did not address certain points: “First, the Court need not, and does not, accept Aereo’s position that the creation of any fixed copy from which a transmission is made always defeats a claim for a violation of the public performance right. This position would eviscerate the transmit clause given the ease of making reproductions before transmitting digital data, and [the] Cablevision [RS-DVR decision] does not require such a far sweep.”

In addition, she wrote, the court “need not reach the issue of whether Aereo escapes liability because it is ‘the consumer, not Aereo, who makes the transmissions that Plaintiffs complain of.’”

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Programming Note: Hear from Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia at TV’s Cloud Power, Sept. 13 in New York City. Click here for more info: multichannelevents.com/cloud.

What possible earthly reason would Time Warner Cable or any other operator have for teaming up with Apple — the company that cornered the market on digital music, and clearly has been trying its damndest to disrupt the TV and video entertainment ecosystem?

In a nutshell: Apple makes the sexiest tech on a planet.

The Cult of Apple has a massive following, and cable operators would absolutely love to have that sheen of coolness rub off on them (see Apple In Talks With TWC, Other MSOs On Cable Set-Top: Report and Apple Tries to Enter a Market It’s Taken TiVo 10-Plus Years to Crack).

But cable operators have to think with their heads, not their… hearts. The risks ultimately outweigh the rewards, at least for anything other than an arms-length integration that would provide TV programming to an Apple IP device — the same way pay-TV operators have started to do with Apple’s iPads, Microsoft Xbox, Samsung connected-TV devices, Android devices, PCs and others.

A close partnership between an MSO and Apple is unthinkable, according to VideoNuze analyst Will Richmond.

“The idea of cable operators helping escort Apple into the living room would be like letting the proverbial ‘fox into the hen house,’” he wrote in a blog. “Online viewing may be booming and tablets all the rage, but when it comes to the coveted living room, cable operators (and indeed the broader pay-TV industry) still reign.”

Sanford Bernstein analysts, in a research note Thursday, also identified this risk: “By embracing Apple, the MSOs would necessarily relinquish at least some control of the user interface and branding… and in doing so, they would be opening the door to a Trojan Horse strategy where Apple would increasingly usurp the customer relationship,” the analysts wrote. “Apple could later use that customer relationship leverage as a way to upend the economic sharing model of any initial agreement, precisely as they have done in wireless.”

To deliver a compelling, integrated TV experience — whether that’s through the current Apple TV set-top or some future all-in-one HDTV — Apple must provide access to current TV programming the way people are used to watching TV. The Cupertino crew couldn’t license TV shows from the networks (or wasn’t willing to pay enough) to do its own over-the-top service, as Intel is rumored to be doing.

So now Apple’s hoping MSOs will bite on its pitch to facilitate its whole-TV vision. At this point, though, maybe Apple needs cable more than the other way around.

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Programming Note: Get a read on the future of multiscreen TV at our two events next month — TV’s Cloud Power, Sept. 13 in New York City; and the Next TV Summit, Sept. 20 in San Francisco.