Cablevision promotes Schueler
By Brian Santo

Cablevision Systems has promoted Charles Schueler to executive vice president of communications and community relations.

Schueler will continue to serve as Cablevision’s chief communications officer and strategist, as well as the primary spokesperson with oversight for all communications, media relations, community affairs and philanthropic activities company-wide, the company said.

BigBand to showcase converged network solutions
By Mike Robuck

BigBand Networks will demonstrate its offerings that help service providers migrate to a converged network at the CableLabs Winter Conference next week in Denver.

Demonstrations will include:

• Efficient delivery of IP video to multiple screens and devices leveraging existing network infrastructure through BigBand’s CVEx Converged Video Exchange and vIP PASS
• The company’s BEQ6200 8:1 QAM and BEQ6000 QAM products
• Comprehensive management tools that optimize today's networks and enhance SDV resources, including BigBand's Switched Video Analysis (SVA) tool.

DirecTV app hits 1M mark
By CED staff

More than 1 million users have downloaded the DirecTV DVR Scheduler application, which launched March 30, 2009. The app is now available on Android devices and the Palm Pre and Pixi.

DirecTV said that more than 12 million recordings were scheduled remotely to DirecTV DVRs in 2009. Future versions of the application will offer the ability to order DirecTV Cinema movies for mobile phone-only households, content recommendations and ratings, and streaming of show and movie trailers.

The application enables users to search for any television show up to 14 days in advance; browse programs by channel or date and time; get program information instantly, including description, length and rating; and record a single episode or an entire series.

Vecima ventures into IP video encoding
By Brian Santo

Vecima’s Spectrum Signal Processing unit said it has available a new high-definition video encoder designed specifically for IP networks, for applications including IPTV, remote security monitoring, digital program distribution and networked video.

Spectrum's DM-1320 Video Encoder features real-time encoding of up to two HD analog video inputs to MPEG-2 HD with stereo audio encoding. Advanced encoding techniques are used to generate an MPEG transport stream for transmission over IP.

The DM-1320 is software-upgradeable for advanced encoding standards. The next planned software upgrade will be offered upon the release of Spectrum's DM-1321 Video Encoder, which features real-time encoding of 1080i to H.264 with stereo audio encoding and closed captioning, the company said. Other possible upgrades include SDI video input, ASI output, QAM RF output and DVB-parallel output.