I think Headend-centric means no encoder in the box of a PVR......................................
multichannel.com
Broadband Week for January 24, 2000
Competition from DBS, AOL TV Helps Ops Bridge Technical Gaps
By FRED DAWSON January 24, 2000
Cable's need to resolve internal differences over interactive-TV-platform strategies, especially between the top two MSOs, has taken on new urgency amid wide recognition that an all-out advanced-services push represents the industry's best line of defense against a red-hot direct-broadcast satellite offensive.
The urgency and its impact on the OpenCable standards-setting process was vividly displayed in a discussion between senior engineers of AT&T Broadband & Internet Services and Time Warner Cable at the recent Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers' 2000 Conference on Emerging Technologies in Anaheim, Calif.
"Every time somebody walks into Best Buy, it seems like they're being sold a DBS box," said Jim Wood, vice president for advanced technology at AT&T Broadband. "We've got to do something to stop the bleeding."
Wood and Time Warner vice president of interactive services John Callahan stressed their commitments to getting past their divisions on the OpenCable framework, which helped to push commercial implementation of the vital software architectural components in retail-distributed set-top terminals into the Christmas 2001 time frame. "We don't want to bifurcate the industry," Callahan said.
Time Warner has been promoting its "Pegasus" digital set-top architecture as a foundation for OpenCable.
AT&T Broadband, meanwhile, is promoting a set of application-program interfaces for client (set-top) software and "middleware" linking clients and server platforms in the headend, which assumes a much higher level of functionality in the set-top.
But Time Warner recognizes that the operating system supplied by PowerTV Inc. for Pegasus "is not the right approach" for OpenCable, and that the OS ultimately chosen "must integrate many of the things Jim has been talking about," Callahan said.
"We as an industry have been extremely successful in deploying millions of digital set-top boxes and in promoting standardization through MPEG [Moving Picture Expert Group] and the DOCSIS [Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification] process," Wood said.
"However, we don't have a clear view on the client-side or the service-side architectures that are essential to delivering more advanced services through those set-tops," he added.
Resolving those differences is crucial, Wood said, adding, "We absolutely need to take the fight into consumer homes, where we can use our interactive platform to capture customers with services they can't get from our competitors."
Cable's problem with the current generation of thin-client boxes -- including the Motorola Inc. (formerly General Instrument Corp.) "DCT-2000" and Pegasus set-tops from various vendors -- is that they are too thin to accommodate software upgrades for new types of services, Wood said.
"We've been striving to design a platform that you can deploy once and continue using as the services evolve," he noted.
Praising the Motorola "DCT-5000" set-top as a "wonderful hardware platform" that meets this requirement, Wood described the "middleware" architecture AT&T Broadband is promoting for OpenCable as a means of providing a uniform industry approach to incorporating new servers into the "client-side" platform.
"I'd appreciate feedback [from engineers] on whether we've got the right approach," he added.
The broad outlines of the middleware architecture have been a part of OpenCable almost from the outset of the Cable Television Laboratories Inc. standards-setting process. But defining the APIs that will link specific service functions with functions in the headend and in the set-top has proved daunting.
In AT&T Broadband's case, the middleware components include:
? The broadcast-service layer, which supports the ability of applications to "get hold" of TV channels or other applications in the box without relying on a click of the remote, whether in the electronic programming guide, the vertical blanking interval or some "out-of-band" location;
? The HTML (HyperText Markup Language) engine, an "absolutely critical" component that provides for navigation across different applications or services and, in AT&T Broadband's case, which involves a specialized version of Microsoft Corp.'s "Internet Explorer" navigator, but which can also involve implementation of navigators in the "Java Virtual Machine" environment;
? The foundation layer, or set of APIs for all services, which provides access to support capabilities, such as the graphics/video-composition engine, the service-policy aggregator and provider, the event/usage logging process and other core functions;
? The common-content interface, which allows multiple Web sites to have access to the different resources in the set-top;
? The EPG support module, which allows new EPGs to be loaded into the set-top; and
? The "navshell" application, or master application, which runs on the set-top to manage such functions as providing user graphical interfaces for various service categories, controlling the combined graphical user experience and displaying enhanced-TV content.
Time Warner, which has been debating the question of "to middleware or not to middleware," is leaning toward a middleware approach where "some kind of virtual-machine environment is the most likely candidate," Callahan said.
Such an environment invites the kind of flexibility and processing power in the set-top box that AT&T Broadband envisions.
But executives acknowledged that even with closer agreement between the two companies on OpenCable, a retail presence for the standardized approach to interactive, Web-capable set-top terminals will come too late to deal with the bleeding state of affairs occasioned by the surge in DBS sales.
As a result, Callahan said, "There will be bilateral agreements between individual cable companies and retail outlets in their markets to support distribution of our set-tops without waiting for OpenCable."
The cable industry is also wrestling with the threat from America Online Inc.'s "AOL TV," in which cable competitors using digital subscriber lines and satellite links can deliver a full range of entertainment-oriented Web content, as well as specialized content, to the TV.
In cable, there are strategic and practical reasons for limiting Web access, which could dilute the appeal of cable's Web-to-the-TV offerings against those of AOL and other competitors.
AOL officials have said that the company will stick with the AOL TV strategy of using noncable facilities even after it completes its merger with Time Warner Inc.
"We want to do deals that give content providers special opportunities to control the resources in the box," Wood said. "With regard to Internet-content providers in general, I don't trust them enough to give them open access to those resources, so I'll put them off in a sandbox."
Such concerns would be mitigated if MSOs deployed headend-centric systems that handle Web access for low-power and high-power set-tops. But the industry has only begun experimenting with such systems.
Callahan said Time Warner is considering a headend-centric model as a way to provide a low-cost personalized digital recording service that would compete with the hard-disk-drive systems being marketed by DBS providers, AOL and others through affiliations with TiVo Inc. and Replay Networks Inc.
"Of course, any of our planning in this area is subject to the strategies we work out with AOL once the merger is completed," Callahan noted.
Wood said AT&T Broadband is exploring set-top-oriented and headend-centric options to supply personalized recording, and it hopes to begin offering set-tops with hard-disk drives to support such services as early as this year.
"We've been communicating with the retail manufacturing sector on this, and we have an RFI [request for information] out on it," he added.
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