Web-to-TV...................................
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Broadband Week for June 21, 1999
Web-to-TV on Early Boxes Moves Closer to Reality
By FRED DAWSON June 21, 1999
Chicago -- Technical advances are pushing the cable industry ever closer to launching Web access via digital set-tops without waiting for next-generation terminals to hit the market.
Comcast Corp. last week became the latest MSO to move in that direction, saying that it would begin deploying the digital set-top version of WorldGate Communications Inc.'s technology in a Philadelphia-area system this fall.
The decision came as Excite@Home's @Home Network unit was offering private screenings of its own Web-to-TV technology, which will require next-generation OpenCable set-tops with high levels of computing power built in.
The National Show floor here offered operators an opportunity to assess the competing views of companies like WorldGate, which say the moment to exploit set-top connectivity to the Web is now, versus those like the @Home group, which say the quality of systems relying on headend-based personal computers to do most processing is too poor to merit serious consideration.
For companies like Comcast, the Webtop opportunity over existing boxes offers a low-cost or even free incentive to draw customers to its digital-TV platform without directly competing against the higher-priced @Home high-speed service.
"We have been pleased with our testing of the WorldGate service, and we believe it can add value for our cable customers," Comcast Cable Communications director of new business development Steve Heeb said in a prepared statement. "This represents one of our first offerings of interactive-TV services, and we will be following the results closely."
Bresnan Communications recently became the first MSO to commit to the WorldGate system on the digital set-top platform, figuring to launch service this summer in St. Cloud, Minn.
Charter Communications, which uses the analog version of WorldGate's system in several systems, is also looking at the digital version, sources at the MSO said.
Unlike WorldGate, @Home uses a set-top TV client with a built-in browser that integrates the TV-access service with the PC-based service so that no special headend hardware is necessary.
"This is technology we've developed from the ground up as the next big step toward all-band, all-device services," @Home director for set-top products Jeff Huber said.
@Home also developed a nonsurfing service component, "Local TV," which enables operators to use a tool kit to select Web content and package it at the headend into MPEG frames that display information in an interactive format on noninteractive cable systems, Huber noted.
This feed can be customized to supply information about events, services and products in conjunction with local advertising. The system also supports an interactive TV guide that allows users to click on items in the guide and go directly to the chosen channel.
But e-mail, Web surfing and other high-speed online applications over the @Home system require set-tops like General Instrument Corp.'s "DCT-5000," which is slated to go into trials toward the end of this year.
Even though market penetration of advanced boxes is expected to move slowly -- earlier-generation digital boxes are now in the range of 4 million units shipped -- @Home does not intend to use its new technology in the more network-centric mode that suits the lower-cost boxes, product manager Michael Bauer said.
"We don't think the network-centric model is compelling enough," Bauer added. "If the quality is so poor that you can only charge $10 [per month] for the service, it doesn't make sense for us to offer it, especially when you consider all that we're spending on backbone and other infrastructure to support the best possible broadband service."
But to the untrained eye, it was hard to see how the quality of the on-screen presentation shown by @Home in its demonstration differed from that of commercial systems being shown by WorldGate, ICTV Inc., Peach Networks Ltd. and MoreCom Inc. -- the four providers offering systems that would allow Web surfing via current-generation digital set-tops.
While these systems have nuances of differences among them -- some require Windows NT servers and others, like WorldGate's, only require PC cards at the headend -- they all offer Web surfing and e-mail. Those with servers support delivery of DVD and CD-ROM on-demand services, as well.
WorldGate CEO Hal Krisbergh took exception to the quality distinction drawn by the @Home group.
"What you're hearing is a Silicon Valley attitude that doesn't recognize that the cable industry is a TV-centered industry with a tremendous opportunity to offer the public access to the Internet without requiring the purchase of PCs or expensive set-top boxes," Krisbergh said.
Along with graphic display quality, issues such as interactive response time and picture-in-picture combinations of Web and TV displays have also been points of contention in the debate.
Interactive response times vary from vendor to vendor. But the ability to embed the browser in the set-top, the way @Home does, reduces latency to the levels that people are accustomed to in using a computer mouse.
The headend-based browser systems, however, have improved significantly over the past six months or so. Now, latency might not be a problem for people who otherwise might not be used to accessing the Web.
Vendor demos showed response times ranging from speeds that appeared to be as fast as @Home's to rates that were significantly slower but still within one second of the remote click.
Along with offering easy-to-read graphics and improved response times, the current-generation Webtop vendors also showed advanced capabilities such as simultaneous display of Web pages and TV channels, which were once thought to require next-generation set-top processing power.
MoreCom, for example, using a Scientific-Atlanta Inc. "Explorer 2000," demonstrated a variety of combinations of simultaneous Web and TV displays, including full-screen TV with transparent-overlay Web-page graphics.
Network-centric vendors also face an uphill battle on the business front. For example, both Bresnan and Comcast will only offer the WorldGate set-top service at an access speed of 128 kilobits per second, mainly because their contracts make @Home the exclusive provider of Internet access at speeds above that rate.
These MSOs also see the 128-kbps rate as a differentiator that allows them to offer the Webtop service as an incentive to subscribe to the digital set-top TV services.
But MSO officials signaled that they want to see solutions to the business issues that will allow them the flexibility to offer the services in whatever configurations they please.
Adding to the business complications, WorldGate has had to come up with its own electronic programming guide to supplant TV Guide Channel, which its customers normally use.
That's because WorldGate, like other providers of Webtop services, requires a small amount of central-processing-unit power at the set-top to operate, encroaching on the CPU power that has been committed under contract to TV Guide.
So far, TV Guide has not been willing to negotiate agreements that would lessen MSOs' CPU commitment by the slight amount necessary to accommodate the Webtop vendors, sources said.
"It's definitely a war with the EPG people," acknowledged Terri Swartz, director of marketing for MoreCom. "But we're offering an alternative to get around the problem."
Such issues notwithstanding, the Webtop opportunity has MSOs thinking about how best to move ahead as quickly as possible, Krisbergh noted.
"There will be a lot of options for high-speed access to the PC, but the cable industry is television, and that's where the industry's strength lies," he said.
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