STB 2000.......................................
news-real.com
'Digital TV box II' to bring boom in 2000
Electronics Times
Set-top box manufacturers stand to benefit from demand for a new generation of digital TV (DiTV) equipment, only months after the commercial launch of digital services in the UK.
Abe Peled, CEO of [ News Corporation ] subsidiary News Data Systems (NDS), expects the long-predicted personalised box to come to market next year. NDS is the TV technology powerhouse within Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
Peled says the first personalised set-top boxes will store 50hr of programming which a viewer can watch, pause and surf independent of any broadcaster's schedule in effect, multichannel TV marrying the VCR.
Peled is not alone in seeing 2000 as another potential watershed year for broadcasting.
In cable TV, UK operator Telewest Communications has fuelled expectations by confirming that it will finally launch video on demand (VoD) equivalent to having a home video library which can be used at any time the viewer wants by the end of next year.
NDS has already created a demonstrator for its system, which features choice by programme genre and audience. Peled said that memory and processor speeds need no longer impede the development of the technology because of either standards or cost.
The demonstrator runs off a Pentium II 233MHz processor and NDS estimates that the 10Gbyte of memory needed to store 50hr of TV could cost as little as $75. These factors will make it viable to produce personalised set-top boxes at mass market prices.
Peled added that by 2005, 100Gbyte would be feasible, delivering 800 'virtual channels' to each subscriber. If such boxes are to appear in the proposed timetable of next year, broadcasters will need to place launch orders quite soon to avoid the concerns over lack of stock that haunted last year's build-up to digital services.
Telewest is already specifying that set-top boxes for its first DiTV services expected in late 1999 should be easily upgradable for VoD. Cable operators have the extra advantage that they can locate more subscriber and system management at head-ends.
NDS's more radical proposal would require that all current digital satellite receivers are replaced, because of the need to insert signal storage capacity. Technology, page 14
(Copyright 1999)
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