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Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals
Pace blends in ThinkAnalytics’ recommendation engine
September 5, 2012 2:47 pm | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsPace is taking a deeper dive into personalization by adding ThinkAnalytics’ recommendation engine into its Cobalt Media Head End and software. Recommendation engines are still somewhat of a novelty to cable operators, but ThinkAnalytics deployed its first multi-platform personalized recommendation engine years ago.
Envivio bulks up encoder density
September 5, 2012 2:42 pm | by Brian Santo | Products | CommentsThe Envivio 4Caster G4 encoding appliance for the Envivio Muse software-based encoder family offers six times the density compared to the current platform – up to 72 SD or 12 HD channels per 2RU chassis, with the potential for further future density improvements.
Harmonic upgrades contribution system
September 5, 2012 2:38 pm | by Brian Santo | Products | CommentsBy integrating 4:2:2 decoding for DVB-S/S2, IP and DVB-ASI input interfaces into the ProView 7100, Harmonic said it allows content providers to cost-effectively decode SD and HD content presented as either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC compressed streams with improved picture fidelity.
Amino gets add-on Wi-Fi from Celeno
September 5, 2012 2:33 pm | by Brian Santo | News | CommentsAmino Communications will be offering a USB Wi-Fi dongle, built around Celeno’s Wi-Fi chipsets and including software for HD multimedia home networking applications, with its A140/A540 set-top boxes. These models are designed for the retail market for IP-based services.
T-Mobile goes live with unlimited data plan
September 5, 2012 2:28 pm | by Maisie Ramsay, Wireless Week | News | CommentsT-Mobile USA has gone live with a new unlimited data plan that could help it compete with rival Sprint, the only other top-tier provider in the country to offer all-you-can-eat plans. The plan differs from T-Mobile's other data plans by not "throttling."
XO picks Ciena for 100G metro, regional network upgrades
September 5, 2012 2:25 pm | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsOnce the upgrade is completed, XO Communications’ enterprise and wholesale service provider customers will be able to offer high-speed, high-capacity, next-generation optical transport and business Ethernet services across XO’s metro and regional networks.
Fast and furious: Building a network in 60 days
September 5, 2012 12:55 pm | by Craig Kuhl, Contributing Editor | Articles | CommentsAssembling a network from scratch in 60 days isn’t for the faint of heart. Rarely, if ever, has it been done before on the scale of the Pac-12 Enterprises networks that will begin this month, delivering more than 850 events annually to seven linear channels, and eventually beyond.
FPGAs: The “G” doesn’t stand for “Green” – but it could
September 5, 2012 11:40 am | by Aaron Behman, senior marketing manager, and Joe Palermo, systems architect for the broadcast and consumer segment, of Xilinx | Articles | CommentsIn the last couple of years, service providers have developed a greater awareness of how they can take better control of their energy use and energy costs. For every piece of cable equipment produced, there is an associated, additional cost to cool that equipment.
In Perspective - Money walks
September 4, 2012 10:54 pm | by Brian Santo | Articles | CommentsCable operators really ought to figure out right now how to ally with merchants of all types to become a transaction processor. Buying and selling through remote controls would be a simple evolution in behavior for many viewers. The only differences will be the means of contact, and this is the important part: Cable operators could charge a transaction fee.
Memory Lane - Wi-Fi’s long road
September 4, 2012 10:45 pm | by Stewart Schley, media and technology writer | Articles | CommentsIn the lore of the wireless broadband technology known as Wi-Fi, the recognized “father” of the category is Victor Hayes, a former NCR Corp. engineer from the Netherlands who first chaired the famous 802.11 Working Group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Open Mic - Next-gen campaign management systems
September 4, 2012 10:36 pm | by Jeffrey Sherwin, CEO of This Technology | Articles | CommentsCable has steadily pursued dynamic ad insertion (DAI) to achieve better ad targeting and monetization. There have been learning moments along the way as vendors and operators have worked to make DAI a reality in different ways. One key learning that has come from this initial work is that the next phase of DAI needs to be built on campaign management systems (CMSs).
Engineering-Wise - Putting lessons learned to work
September 4, 2012 10:15 pm | by Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of the SCTE | Articles | CommentsYou have to work pretty hard to make a connection between yard work and SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, but Shawn and I moved into a new – more on that in a minute – home, and the last several months have been spent transitioning from chaos to order.
Capital Currents - The FCC’s ‘annual’ report on video competition
September 4, 2012 10:05 pm | by Jeffrey Krauss, president of Telecommunications and Technology Policy | Articles | CommentsThe FCC recently released its 14th “Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video Programming.” The most interesting part to me was the back story, and the nearly five-year interval between the 13th report and the 14th.
New Products - September 2012
September 4, 2012 9:54 pm | by CED Magazine | Products | CommentsThomson Video Networks' ViBE VS7000 multi-screen video platform has been enhanced with new features, SeaChange demonstrated the latest innovations of its Nucleus soft box gateway, and Volicon’s loudness monitoring and logging solution is now available on its Observer Scout platform.
Time Warner Cable tabs Ruckus for Wi-Fi connectivity at DNC
September 4, 2012 2:28 pm | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsTime Warner Cable is hooking up attendees at the Democratic National Convention with Wi-Fi gear from Ruckus Wireless. TWC has installed Ruckus’ ZoneFlex family of Smart Wireless LAN (WLAN) systems to deliver high-speed Wi-Fi throughout the 19,000-seat Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C.
