Pegasus: Is it Open Cable??????????????????????????????
mediacentral.com
The Next Digital Transition? A Move to Open Cable
CableLabs push making progress, but it won't show up at the Western Show
By Jim Barthold
Despite the cable industry's optimism that there'll be standardized, interoperable digital set-tops on the market early next year, don't look for models on the Western Show's convention floor Dec. 10-12 in Anaheim, Calif., according to the industry's two largest box makers.
CableLabs and its members are pushing hard for an OpenCable standard that would include interoperable digital parameters, as well as a standardized modem compliant with Multimedia Cable Network Systems [MCNS] specifications. That push has inspired Leo Hindery, the president of Tele-Communications Inc. [TCI] to boast that he has bought his last standard digital box.
"My sense is that the last digital converter in the old format was ordered and that the next wave will be pursuant to the OpenCable standard," Hindery said during a conference call announcing TCI's third-quarter results two weeks ago. "I expect [that] the next generation shows up a lot quicker than you've been writing about."
Perhaps, but it won't show up at the Western Show, according to the industry's top two box makers.
"I think OpenCable right now is still in the definition stage," says David Fritch, the senior manager of marketing/strategy in NextLevel Systems Inc.'s Digital Networks Systems group. "One of the tenets of OpenCable is it's backward-compatible. It has to be compatible with the embedded base."
That, according to Fritch, is good news for NextLevel, because the company has already shipped more than 500,000 units.
"We're shipping more every day, so obviously that is going to be a part of the new OpenCable infrastructure," he says.
Hindery said he has 500,000 NextLevel set-tops in stock and "my guess is the half a million handles me through late spring, but not a hell of a lot past that." That means that the cable industry better be motivated to take the next step, he added.
"My sense is that by June of next year, we're starting to deploy the next-generation box, and my further guess is [that] a month or so from now, you'll substantially know who the manufacturers of that box are," Hindery noted.
Among the names Hindery proffered: NextLevel, Scientific-Atlanta Inc., Matsushita Electric Corporation of America Inc., Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Inc.
S-A says it already has begun work on a so-called "next-generation" box for Time Warner Cable's Pegasus advanced digital project. That project also is being influenced by the OpenCable initiative, according to Jim Chiddix, the MSO's CTO.
"We've been pursuing a lot of the same discussions in the OpenCable process as an industry and not just as a company," he says. "It's [Pegasus] still in front of us and still very important to our future."
S-A executives are confident that OpenCable will work to the benefit of their Explorer 2000 digital set-top.
"It's a little early, but I think as OpenCable moves on here, it seems to be becoming truer and truer that the Explorer really had all the feature sets today that are being asked for in OpenCable," says Bob Van Orden, the business unit director for S-A's Digital Video Systems group. "We really believe that the baseline model that's described in OpenCable really is an Explorer 2000 in terms of the feature set." Aside from that standardized effort, the key message that major cable players want to deliver at the Western Show is that digital is real, operating and, in NextLevel's case, shipping.
"We're going to be highlighting our whole product line highlighting a lot of the deployments that we have, the fact that we have real-time interactivity, showing a lot of the applications running over the DCT-1000 using the RF return and the Aloha protocol," Fritch says.
He emphasizes that NextLevel hasn't yet sold a base model, broadcast-only DCT-600 to anyone. "It's really targeted as a second-set application," he says.
At S-A, where no product has yet been shipped, the emphasis is on proving that the product has been developed and that it works, Van Orden says.
"There are really three main themes," he notes. "One [is that] it's here, it's working, you can come see it, kick the tires, grab the remote control. Two, you can see the base suite of broadcast services, including program guides. Three, you can see what the real excitement is in the category right now, and that's the Internet."
Van Orden also emphasizes the S-A's boxes will comply with its Harmony agreement with NextLevel systems and that it will be a key part of demonstrations.
"We'll have live satellite feeds, a live headend, live Explorers," he says. "We have lots of square footage devoted to this, so there will be lots to see, lots of TVs, lots of remotes. You can see the additional applications coming down the road."
(November 24, 1997) |
