Douglas L Ross: Cable Television Industry

PC to TV Blackboxes

Fri, 22 Aug 2003 15:50:43 GMT

Hauppauge [HAUP; Nasdaq] and others are making these devices that the NYT's Mcmanus describe as "bridging the gap" between the PC and the TV enabling consumers to display "media content" that resides on PCs. Curiously, there is no word on the Hauppague website about the MediaMVP product that Mcmanus references in his article [From PC to TV Screen, a Stream of Multimedia. Your PC is brimming with great photos, MP3's and videos. But your family and friends are glued to the television. By Neil Mcmanus. New York Times: Technology] and no indication of its price or feature set.

Among other things, Hauppaauge makes a 350 Meg PC/DVR card that sells for $200.

Targeted Television Advertising

Fri, 22 Aug 2003 14:28:06 GMT

There is a significant battle going on for control of the intellectual property surrounding the delivery of targeted television and internet advertising.

Ad firm 24/7 pushing for patent power. 24/7 Real Media wins another patent for delivering digital ads, giving it new authority over the online-ad serving market as it pursues patent licenses to improve shareholder value. [CNET News.com]

Carat On ITV Advertising

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 15:01:04 GMT

Carat has an interesting little item on their web site.

Is interactive TV advertising a lost dream?

09-Mar-2003

To many observers, interactive TV is starting to look like an unfulfilled marketing revolution. Potentially, iTV can bring a new dimension to advertising by adding relationship-building and transaction to what is already the most powerful brand-building medium. But operators' financial problems, over-promised and under-delivered technology and poor communication of digital's benefits have stalled mass take-up by consumers. With the current mismatch between potential and reality, is it worth investing time and money in interactive advertising?

Evidence collected by Carat strongly suggests that it is, and that iTV advertising can already deliver marketing ROI.

Although almost no-one switches to digital TV for the interactive services, Carat research with Netpoll has found that once people have access to them, they use them to an increasing degree.

RBOC Broadband Plans

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:24:27 GMT

Some Bet the Broadband Belongs to Regional Bells, Not Cable. Spurred by an onslaught from cable operators and buoyed by a recent regulatory ruling, the regional phone companies are aggressively expanding their broadband services. By Bernard Simon. [New York Times: Technology]

New ReplayTV's

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:21:04 GMT

ReplayTV's New Owners Drop Features That Riled Hollywood. The development of consumer-friendly electronics products may be a hallmark of the digital age, but that engineered friendliness is not always appreciated in Hollywood. By Eric A. Taub. [New York Times: Technology]

Sony Plugs TV Into Notebooks

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 20:03:06 GMT

Sony plugs TV into Vaio notebooks. The Japanese company looks to boost its PC fortunes with a notebook that lets people pause and record live TV for future playback and another that packs Centrino wireless technology. [CNET News.com]

VONAGE

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 19:35:51 GMT

Vonage is claiming the first "direct-to-consumer" deal for VoIP telephony with a cable MSO.

Microsoft Signs OpenCable Agreement

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 19:29:12 GMT

Microsoft announced that they've signed the OCAP agreement with Cable Labs. Here's what they say about it:

"Microsoft has agreed to contribute pertinent intellectual property rights to the OpenCable™ project, including the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP™) software project. In addition, Microsoft and CableLabs have agreed to work together to explore the potential of adding .NET common language infrastructure (CLI) to a future version of OCAP "

Microsoft At NCTA

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 19:10:46 GMT

Yesterday at NCTA, Microsoft introduce Microsoft^® TV Foundation Edition what they descirbe as "a new digital TV software platform designed to help cable operators get more value from on-demand and other digital TV services"

They simultaneously announced support (http://www.microsoft.com/tv/mstvIndustrySupportPR.mspx) for the platform from cable industry vendors Motorola, Inc., SeaChange, Concurrent Computer Corp., MetaTV Inc., Two Way TV Ltd. and Advanced Digital Broadcast Ltd.

They also announced a customer win (http://www.microsoft.com/tv/cablevisionselectsmspr.mspx) for the software platform with Televisa's Cablevision (CVC) subsidiary, one of Mexico City's largest cable MSO with ~450k subscribers announcing that they will adopt it.

Telecom Industry Launches DSLHome Initiative

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 17:15:08 GMT

DSL Forum launched a new initiative at Supercom to challenge the cable industry for dominance of the Home Network. It's called "DSLHome" and is described in there press release as follows:

"DSLHome has two components: technical innovation and support, as well as market awareness and promotion. This two-tiered approach in tandem with DSL Forum's drive toward fully interoperable equipment will create a real broadband DSL mass market with low consumer prices and simple setup of high-speed broadband powered home networks. As part of this program, the DSL Forum has initiated new technical work to address some key areas:

LAN side DSL customer premise equipment (CPE) configuration specifications
Dual port router requirements
WAN-side DSL CPE management specifications
Interface & System configuration for ADSL on customer premises
Privacy and Protection Security

In addition to this technical work, the DSL Forum will be launching programs to improve users’ knowledge of DSL powered home networks, and equip these users to make educated home network decisions and broadband choices. The first outcome of this effort is a pair of home networking user guides, currently under development and scheduled to be released in 4Q03. "

DSL Growth

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 17:08:47 GMT

The DSL Forum announced that broadband DSL experienced its largest quarterly increase ever, adding 5.5 million new DSL subscribers worldwide in Q1- 2003. They estimate that there are now 41.3 million DSL subscribers worldwide [residential and business] and they are projecting this to grow to 200 million by 2005.

Cisco Announces TWC VoIP Win

Wed, 28 May 2003 13:59:27 GMT

Cisco announced today that Time Warner Cable "is now delivering the first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) cable primary-line residential telephone service, Digital Phone, to customers in Portland, Maine. Using the industry-leading Cisco® Internet Protocol (IP) voice solution"

Here's the article in telephony online about this announcement. http://telephonyonline.com/ar/telecom_time_warner_cable/index.htm

Motorola PVR Announcement

Tue, 06 May 2003 19:34:02 GMT

Motorola announced it's long awaited DCT6000 family of digital settops. Not much new in the announcement. The first product [DCT6200] is PVR "capable" which means a side-car hard-drive. Their angle is to combine HD and PVR functionality along "entertainment system" outputs and a really big processor (800 MIPS), but there is no word on availability of the integrated PVR/HD device.

Disney's Moviebeam

Fri, 02 May 2003 15:32:23 GMT

Disney has announced a service called Moviebeam which will deliver "VOD" movies to consumer homes via analog broadcast tv signals using datacasting technologies. The service requires a side-car TV settop box that will apparently have enough [PVR-like] memory to store up to 100 movie titles [~150 to 200 GB]. Disney plans to test the service in Salt Lake City apparently via its ABC affiliate station there.

This brings up the interesting question again about whether or not cable operators are obligated to carry the "datacasting" information embedded in the ABC television signal and thus to enable the use of Cable's network to compete with their own VOD services without any compensation from a broadcaster like Disney?

Bundling

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 15:52:20 GMT

Christian Science Monitor article on bundling suggests that Cox has 53% less churn with customers who take bundled services.

Integrated Digital Ad Delivery System

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 13:31:15 GMT

GTN, essentially an advertising agency which produces advertising [mainly for the Auto Industry] and Starnet [MediaDVX division which delivers digital ads via satellite, owned by the Lenfest people] have created an integrated system which uses an order entry system for adertising [owned by GTN] to enable ad agencies to direct digital ads to the right recipients by aligning the GTN order entry information with delivery information in MediaDVX's satellite distribution system. The integrated system does at least three important things:

It allows ad agencies to maintain control of digital ads from the time the ad leaves the "creative" computers until they reach the local broadcast or cable ad insertion points via MediaDVX's satellite system.
It reduces the time to deliver digital ads from days or hours, to minutes.
It thereby increases the amount of time available to the agency to create and customize the ads for local market conditions, essentially creating something like a "just-in-time" ad delivery system.

Broadband Cable Access

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 19:49:16 GMT

A lot is being written lately about broadband cable access. This article summarizes a debate at the Computers, Freedom and Piracy conference. Will broadband providers control content?. CFP speakers concerned that major cable operators will control access [InfoWorld: Top News]

Sony's Streaming IP TV Set

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 19:43:37 GMT

Sony TV would grab streams from the Net. The company is developing a plasma screen TV set that's intended to tune in streaming video from home networks and the Internet as easily as regular TV programs, sources say. [CNET News.com]

Charter Restatements

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 14:38:31 GMT

Cable Company to Restate Sales Back to 2000 [New York Times: Technology]

Trusted Computing

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 17:48:21 GMT

Wave Systems announced their earnings for Q4 2002 today. According to their press release [see exerpt below] they are looking for strategic partners.

"Steven Sprague, Wave's president and CEO, said, "In order to raise the additional capital required to fund Wave's operations, we have engaged an investment banking firm and are exploring a number of financing alternatives which include debt or equity financing (or a combination of both) or one or more commercial or strategic transactions."

"The personal computing industry is now committed to a historic transition to trusted computing. The most influential players -companies including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, National Semiconductor, Infineon and others - have publicly committed to a trusted PC environment secured by a hardware chip. Without a doubt, today's inherently insecure PC is morphing to tomorrow's secure and trusted PC which will offer a range of productive services for users. Wave's long commitment to hardware and services-secured trusted computing has made us influential in the evolution of this huge and evolving market opportunity."

AOL Broadband

Tue, 01 Apr 2003 15:46:53 GMT

AOL announced it's new BYOA (bring your own access) service called AOL Broadband on Monday, March 31. Here's their press release: http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/press_view.cfm?release_num=55253107 and an article in USA today about the announcement. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2003-03-31-aol-broadband_x.htm

AOL's Mystro

Mon, 31 Mar 2003 15:03:02 GMT

Reuters is reporting that a key element of AOL Time Warner's Mystro project is thought to be Mystro's ability to preserve the advertising model for broadcasters.

AOL Accounting for Cross-Deals Under Review

Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:38:43 GMT

AOL Says S.E.C. Is Challenging Its Accounting. AOL Time Warner disclosed that securities regulators believe that the company improperly overstated its revenue by $400 million. By David D. Kirkpatrick. [New York Times: Technology]

DirecTV Bidders Now Include Cablevision

Fri, 28 Mar 2003 14:52:42 GMT

According to this article in Forbes, the bidders for DirecTV now include Cablevision, News Corp. Liberty and SBC, http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2003/03/27/rtr922735.html

ADC & Nuera Team on VoIP

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:12:36 GMT

ADC announced a deal with Media Gateway maker Nuera, here's an excerpt from their press release:

"Minneapolis - March 25, 2003 - ADC (NASDAQ: ADCT; www.adc.com) and Nuera Communications today announced the signing of an agreement that provides cable operators a true carrier-class local access IP telephony solution. Under this agreement, ADC will sell and support the Nuera ORCA® RDT-8v gateway along with ADC's carrier-class Cuda^TM 12000 IP Access Switch. ADC and Nuera have set up a joint lab in Farnborough, UK to test and verify V5.2 solutions using the RDT and Cuda and with ADC's FastFlow^TM Broadband Provisioning Manager (BPM), which supports the provisioning of PacketCable^TM-based Multimedia Terminal Adaptors (MTAs). This solution allows cable operators to cost-effectively expand the service footprint of their V5.2 capable switches over their existing EuroDOCSIS cable networks."