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Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals
Chasing big business
March 8, 2013 6:17 pm | by Craig Kuhl, Contributing Editor | CommentsThe lucrative small- to mid-size business (SMB) services market is growing organically to include larger enterprises and is now in phase two as cable operators and related service providers accelerate the expansion of their business services model to include the enterprise market.
Bang the DRM slowly
March 7, 2013 6:10 pm | by Brian Santo | CommentsThere isn’t a single legal concept that has inspired more heartburn in more facets of content distribution than digital rights management (DRM). Consumers have a pretty good idea what DRM is, and plenty vociferously despise it with the same loathing they have for banks, airlines and their communications service providers.
Open Mic: Navigating television’s perfect storm
March 7, 2013 5:37 pm | by Jim Tanner, Chief architect at Clearleap | CommentsFor today’s well-equipped TV watcher, pausing a program on the living room TV set and resuming it on the portable tablet is merely a matter of pressing buttons or swiping screens. A click here, a tap there, and in seconds the program hops from one screen to the next, uninterrupted and ready to resume. Or so it appears.
Cache as cache can: cable cozies up to nDVR
March 7, 2013 2:46 pm | by Mike Robuck | CommentsNetwork-based DVR services have been waiting in the wings for years now, but their big debut seems to be only a matter of time now that content rights issues are thawing out and the network architectures are taking shape. nDVR will be, when paired with a content delivery network or cloud, one of the legs that TV Everywhere services stand on once it’s enabled.
New Products: Pasternack, Multicom, Fujitsu
March 6, 2013 6:21 pm | by CED staff | CommentsPasternack Enterprises has a new line of 50-watt medium- power attenuators; Multicom has introduced a clear QAM SD/HD video distribution solution that eliminates the need for a set-top box; Fujitsu has announced the a Packet Optical Networking Platform (Packet ONP) for optical transport network (OTN) switching.
In perspective: Wait... what?
March 6, 2013 5:54 pm | by Brian Santo | CommentsOnce upon a time, Time Warner was a giant media company with both a programming arm and a distribution arm. Investors demanded Time Warner Cable be spun off. After buying the rest of NBC Universal, Comcast now looks pretty similar to 2008 Time Warner.
Capital Currents: FCC broadcast spectrum incentive auctions
March 6, 2013 5:42 pm | by Jeffrey Krauss, President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy | CommentsThe big picture on FCC incentive auctions of broadcast spectrum, includes two key elements: 1) The transfer of at least 120 MHz of spectrum for mobile broadband use; and 2) The generation of enough revenues to pay broadcaster relocation costs, the funding of a national broadband public safety network, as well as support for deficit reduction.
Ciciora's Corner: Technology needs rich people
March 6, 2013 5:31 pm | by Walt S. Ciciora, Expert on cable and consumer electronics issues | CommentsIn some quarters, wealth has received a bad name. A little thought reveals that our industry and our careers strongly depend on there being “rich people.” Start-up endeavors need investors, people with at least a little excess money they can put at risk in hopes of making a return.
Engineering-Wise: The intelligent cable network
March 6, 2013 5:18 pm | by Daniel Howard Senior vice president of engineering and CTO of the SCTE | CommentsBesides the capacity and robustness improvement, there’s something else about DOCSIS 3.1 and its use of OFDM) that excites me: the network intelligence it enables. We already use DOCSIS devices as network health probes, but OFDM will essentially turn our equipment into multifunction test generators that can be used to measure most of the key RF performance parameters.
Memory Lane: When the sky was the limit
March 5, 2013 9:15 pm | by Stewart Schley Media & technology writer | CommentsOn Dec. 13, 1975, RCA gave the cable industry a pre-Christmas gift to remember when the first of RCA’s Satcom series of geostationary satellites was launched by NASA from a Delta 3000 rocket. That satellite and its progeny have endured for decades as an essential conduit for cable programming.
DOCSIS theft and cloning
March 5, 2013 8:52 pm | by Owen Parsons, cable access ops engineer III at Cox Communications | CommentsAs long as there are services, there will be service thieves. Preventing this theft may take some configuration changes in software, firmware upgrades and the removal of problematic cable modems, as well as adjustments to CMTS settings. Combating service theft has been a series of moves and countermoves, not unlike a game of chess.
Making the second screen work
February 7, 2013 12:52 pm | by Brian Santo | CommentsYears after Netflix, smartphones and tablets all hit the scene, even those service providers capable of multi-screen delivery continue to struggle with the multi-screen phenomenon. That’s because even as service providers respond to viewers’ increasing appetite for video on screens other than the TV, consumers’ multi-screen behavior continues to evolve.
A kaleidoscope of moving parts
February 7, 2013 11:34 am | by Craig Kuhl, Contributing Editor | CommentsThe once heavily tech-driven business model of small Tier 2 and Tier 3 cable and broadband service providers is morphing into a kaleidoscope of moving, interchangeable parts. Smaller operators whose subscriber counts number in the four- and five-figure range are fiddling with and tweaking their business models like never before.
Managing the multi-screen video transformation
February 7, 2013 10:56 am | by Paul Casinelli, product manager at IneoQuest Technologies | CommentsThe multi-screen transformation has taken the video world by storm. Customers now expect the same video services they receive on their set-top box on their video-capable devices. Adoption of multi-screen services is occurring across the spectrum, running the gamut of service providers, content providers and enterprises.
Harnessing the power of interoperability
February 6, 2013 11:59 am | by Robin Mersh, CEO of Broadband Forum | CommentsTechnology development is accelerating, and consumer and enterprise demand for bandwidth-hungry content and applications continues to expand. The need for global standardization has become an industry prerequisite, driven by the needs of service providers to deliver robust new services quickly and cost-effectively.
