The competition keeps showing up. Was this the article that
hurt us today? Perhaps. It's full of conflicting points
as always. Charter wants cheaper technology with competition
but has only picked one vendor.
EMC sells the most expensive disk systems on the market and
has zero Cable experience including the complex billing integration. How they would be able to lower
costs is beyond me. Whatever happened to Unysis anyway.
Which reminds me. For long time followers of this board.
TNCX declared chapter 11 last week.
telecomclick.com
EMC, Others Catch Charter's Eye on VOD
by BY ANDREA FIGLER
Cable World, Apr 2, 2001 Brought to you by:
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EMC will present its VOD storage plan at NAB this month.
Control over services they deliver is a major issue to cable operators, and that's why Charter Communications believes there might be better opportunities — and lower costs — in the video-on-demand arena from such new entrants as storage giant EMC.
Charter insists that it is pleased with its end-to-end VOD vendor, Diva Systems, but the MSO wants to take more control over content delivery in the future, says Mark Mihalevich, Charter's analyst of corporate development and technology.
“The intention is, over time, to bring more and more of the content management aspect of it in house so that we are more directly involved,” he says.
EMC wants to break into the cable VOD market with its systems that can store and transport digital video and stream it from a cable headend to a consumer's home, says Bob Schwartz, EMC's director of global marketing. EMC's systems are called the Celerra Media Server and Symmetrix Enterprise Storage Systems.
“We see ourselves as providing more of the total solution than just the VOD component,” Schwartz says. “We provide the process of encoding, indexing, storing and properly managing those assets so they can distribute them over IP [Internet Protocol] or cable infrastructures.”
EMC plans to pitch its VOD product to broadcasters and cable operators at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas later this month.
It's changes such as these that keep cable operators on their toes.
“EMC is a storage company, and VOD has huge requirements for storage,” Mihalevich says, adding that EMC's entrance may make his latest evaluation of the four top VOD vendors, completed at the end of last year, somewhat moot.
Diva won Charter's business because it was the only vendor that provided both content and technology. That was helpful because many studios have shied away from VOD rights contracts. Charter also liked Diva's user interface.
Other MSOs have avoided Diva because of the extra cost to pay for streaming clips of movies as soon as a consumer signs onto the VOD.
“Some MSOs don't like that because it requires engineering and streaming capacity,” Mihalevich says. “You have to dedicate a stream to each person without them buying it.”
The average price for a video stream, which varies widely, totals about $500-$550 for, he says, adding that prices will likely remain at this level for some time because of weak VOD deployment. But as VOD ramps up, competition should bring prices down.
Some analysts believe streaming prices will come down much more quickly due to intense competition among VOD vendors.
The risk associated in switching VOD vendors remains low since most operators seek vendors with technologically agnostic platforms. In the long run, however, analysts expect a major shakeout among VOD vendors, which could stabilize prices. |
