The Online Reporter

A&E Chairman Abbe Raven told The Online Reporter networks won’t be able to realize monetization opportunities from multi-screen offerings until they have access to ratings data. “We don’t see it [monetization] yet,” she said. “There’s no ratings, we don’t have enough data, so advertisers aren’t putting their advertising out there, because they don’t know how [effective it is].”

“Until we get the real data, it will be tough to monetize,” she said.

Raven said A&E is interested in delivering TV Everywhere experiences to their viewers. “We’ve launched watch apps with other networks that are already out there with several providers,” she said. “As multiple new devices emerge and we see people using them, we’ll make sure programming is available on those screens.”

And as any good pay TV exec would say, Raven emphasized that TV is still king. “We do believe that television is …

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LG raised some eyebrows with its 4K media player at The Cable Show. LG made its first appearance at the show this year to showcase its new line of set top boxes and smart TV adapters and cast itself as a cable TV industry player.

Kurt Hoppe, director of new business and innovation, told The Online Reporter the 4K box can store and deliver 4K content to a 4K TV set. LG is calling it an STB because it will, eventually, deliver live linear 4K content a year down the line. Right now, it’s more like a 4K server and media player. It’s IP connected and has a hard drive.

“Most networks are slow enough now that you will need to plan a bit to get the content loaded,” Hoppe said.

We asked him how long “a bit” would be. “If you have a good Internet connection, it should be a few minutes,” so then we asked what “a good Internet connection” meant. There seemed to be some debate as to whether that meant 45 Mbps or 60 Mbps.

“We’re meeting with cable companies to say ‘When your network is ready, we have this,’” Hoppe said. LG already has 4K TV sets in stores. “We can put Ultra High Def VoD on this today, from different sources. As soon as the networks are ready, we can get live TV on it, and that will be a couple years.”

Hoppe also mentioned two new ….

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Thinking ahead about Internet-delivered Content Services, Broadband and Home Networks, identifying trends and reporting on this week’s events.

 - Headlines and Content for The Online Reporter 834

Live from The Cable Show 2013

Comcast is Bright Star at The Cable Show

The Internet: A History Lesson with Mike Powell

Microsoft Adjusts Prices of Windows for Tablets & Adds Outlook

Home Gateway Initiative to Meet in China

NCTA and FCC Look to Public Private Partnerships for Rural Broadband

Sigma Designs Looking up Financially

Cablecos Follow Comcast’s Lead in Technology

TiVo Brings in $490m from Patent Settlements

AlcaLu CEO Calls for Less Cash Going out & More Innovation

Microsoft Opening 600 ‘Stores-within-Stores’ in Best Buy

4K

Bye-Bye 3D! We Hardly Knew You

LG Announces 4K Set Top Box at Cable Show

APPLE SLICES

Apple to Make Notable Improvements to iOS

BROADBAND BEAT

BT Makes 220 Mbps Available to Wholesalers

BSkyB to Take Dead Aim at BT Sport

Entropic & Intel Team up in Hitron MoCA 2.0/DOCSIS 3.0 Gateway

Comcast CEO: Broadband Is Fastest Growing Part

ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES

ARM Bakes Hollywood-approved DRM into 4K-capable Graphics Chips

HOME NETWORKING

G.hn’s Pluses and Minuses

Reader Questions Whether any G.hn Chips Are Yet Certified

HomeGrid Demonstrates G.hn Interoperability at Computex

D-Link’s New Gateway Does DOCSIS 3.0, MoCA 2.0 and 11ac

ZyXEL Joins 11ac Router Parade

WIRELESS BROADBAND

Comcast to Expand Wi-Fi Reach with “Homespot” Scheme

OTT SERVICES, APPS AND SCREENS

Yahoo! Nabs Sky News for Worldwide Online Distribution

Lucas & Spielberg: Film Industry to Undergo Massive Changes

TV EVERYWHERE

A&E_92s Raven: No Tablet Monetization without Ratings

MUSIC STREAMING SERVICES

Apple Squares Up for Internet Radio Battle

SECOND SCREEN

Mark Cuban Says Axs TV Won’t Bother with Second Screen

SMART TVS AND OTHER OTT DEVICES

Hillcrest Labs Demos Motion Control Navigation for Smart TVs and STBs

DIGI GRAMS

Liberty Global’s Acquisition of Virgin Media Is a Done Deal

Xbox One Coming November 21 for $499

New MacBook Airs Have 11ac Plus Faster SSDs

Intel’s Push into the Living Room

Intel Reportedly Offering 75% Premium for TV Channels

Why Didn’t Telcos Push OTT Services Instead of Traditional Pay TV?

Beethoven’s 9th App Is Stunning

Sony Shows & Prices PS4

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- Hello 4K

In what sounds like the death knell for 3D in the home, Disney this week said ESPN, the world’s most successful sports TV channels, will stop broadcasting in 3D by year-end. Recent figures indicate that no more than 120,000 people in the States are watching 3D channels at any one time — not just ESPN’s 3D channels but all 3D channels. ESPN had started broadcasting in 3D three years ago.

ESPN’s withdrawal from the 3D space seems to indicate that the 3D era has ended. It was the largest and most important source of 3D for TV. It reportedly produced 380 sporting events in 3D during the last three years.

The departure of 3D from the living room does not necessarily mean that it will disappear from theaters.

One 3D fan said the complaints about ESPN’s 3D broadcasts were that it did not broadcast all sporting events in 3D, 3D glasses had to be available for all viewers and the room had to be set up to near theater-like conditions: darken the room and sit at certain viewing angles. Also, there were wide variations in the quality of 3D broadcasts because quick cuts from one set of cameras to another could be dizzying. Live events were expensive for broadcasters because two sets of camera and crew were required: one for 2D and one for 3D. That made them much more expensive to produce.

There is an axiom that says if you want to make a new TV technology successful such as was done with HD, you must first provide “must see” live sports in that resolution to drive sales of TV sets with the new technology. Evidently, there was not enough “must see” sports in 3D because sales of 3D TV sets had never reached the numbers that set-makers had predicted.

The first question that pops into the mind is whether 4K will come to the same end. No one knows, of course, but there are many indicators that point to 4K’s success.

So far, at least 4K does not appear to be another 3D, which flopped, more or less, because it required viewers to wear silly-looking glasses when watching TV at home. 3D glasses might be OK in a darkened theater but not in a home where TV viewers are using tablets and smartphones, reading books or newspapers (yes, people still read) or talking with another person. 3D also has …

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-Personalized, Netflix-like Interfaces

-TV Everywhere and Tablets

-4K Content and HEVC Chips

The showroom floors this year at The Cable Show were filled with screens — from handheld mobile device screens to larger, 4K resolution home theater TV sets.

Here are the big trends of the show:

-Modern UIs: The EPG is (finally) getting an update. We’ve been hearing about it, now we are really seeing it. Everyone from Intel, Rovi, ActiveVideo and others were showing off their UI solutions. The more consistent the UI can look and feel across older STBs, modern STBs and STB-less smart TVs, the better.

-Headless and headed gateways: Residential gateways have emerged as the solution for TV Everywhere in the home. Content can more easily and securely be delivered to Internet-connected devices using residential media gateways. Instead of re-negotiating rights deals, service operators can deliver a TV Everywhere service — specifically deliver live linear TV — to Internet connected devices without involving the content companies. Cablecos are looking to take more control of the wireless and wired network in the home, too.

-Lots of seminars about putting content on the tablet and other platforms. Multi-screen services were a hot topic this year at The Cable Show sessions. Panels focused on cable pay TV and Internet synergies, and how service providers can work in concert with content owners to offer content to customers when and where they want it.

-HEVC is here, while 4K is coming. Comcast, CableLabs, LG, Samsung, Rovi – everyone have an HEVC chip or 4K TV somewhere in the booth. The cable TV industry seems to be less interested in 4K movies and more interested in using HEVC to stamp down bitrates and really stretch use out of limited bandwidth to the subscriber’s homes.

-Comcast is the darling child of cable: From Brian Robert’s demo of the new X2 platform, to the Reference Design Kit (RDK) that everyone on the show floor seemed plugged into, plus the 15,000 Wi-Fi hotpots it announced, Comcast demonstrated it’s a driver of innovation in the cable industry.

-OTT is still a dirty word: Mention of Netflix, YouTube and other OTT services were consistently met with dismissive headshakes. News broke during the show that Time Warner Cable (TWC) has been negotiating with content owners provisions to impede OTT and other potential disruptors – ie Intel, Google and others – from gaining access to premium content. Bloomberg reports that TWC sources indicate the service provider has negotiated preferential and lucrative deals with content owners in exchange for promising to never give content to OTT disruptors. Discovery Communications is the only member of the cable community that has been vocal about an OTT option in the future …

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The Online Reporter asked Entropic what it planned to do to compete against Broadcom’s new next-generation gateway SoC that has DOCSIS 3.0, MoCA 2.0, 11ac, an HEVC decoder and gateway functions. One of Broadcom’s greatest skills is to develop SoCs that have multiple technologies. It was a timely question.

Entropic this week announced that the Taiwan-based box maker Hitron Technologies uses Entropic’s MoCA 2.0 chips in a gateway that also has Intel’s certified DOCSIS 3.0 chip and dual-band, dual-concurrent 3×3 11n and 3×3 11ac Wi-Fi. The MoCA chips convert MoCA to wireline Ethernet and to Wi-Fi.

Hitron said the model CGNM gateway “pairs the fastest broadband speeds with the highest performance MoCA home network” and is aimed at cablecos who are increasing transition to all IP networks and IP-delivered pay TV and OTT services.

Hitron was showing the product this week at The Cable Show in Washington DC.

Entropic said the gateway is capable of DOCSIS speeds of 1 Gbps downstream and Entropic’s MoCA 2.0 silicon and software can deliver 400+ Mbps of MAC throughput.

Hitron said the box has the 11n version of Wi-Fi with 3×3 MIMO. It is hard to believe that at this stage it would not be 11ac with chips from such as Broadcom, Marvell or Qualcomm Atheros. We have not found out whether it has an HEVC decoder chip and, if so, who makes it. Intel recently announced a partnership with Quantenna on a reference design for gateway makers. The design calls for Intel’s DOCSIS chips and Quantenna’s 11ac chips.

Todd Babic, chief sales and marketing officer, at Hitron Americas said, “We sought-out the highest performing and most mature MoCA technology in the market” and “Entropic’s MoCA 2.0 system offers the industry’s highest performing coax home networking product in the smallest form factor.”

He also said the market for MoCA 2.0 is now and called MoCA 2.0 “a backbone solution for whole-home content distribution.”

Entropic says its MoCA 2.0 chips are capable of …

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When you’re the new kid on the block, as G.hn is, you have to take extra steps to prove yourself just as MoCA and HomePlug once did — and as we reported years ago.

HomeGrid Forum president and Marvell employee John Egan said members publicly demonstrated interoperability at the Computex trade show last week in Taiwan, which we reported on in last week’s edition. The HomeGrid Forum built two “apartments” adjacent to each other in a ballroom to showcase products with G.hn chips from different companies operating successfully on the same network. Egan said that two of the four chipsets — from Metanoia and Xingtera — “are still coming up to speed on certification.” The ones from Sigma Designs and Marvell are already certified.

The apartments’ setups were:

- Apartment 1: A multi-vendor PLC network with gear that used chips that consisted of Marvell, Sigma and Metanoia plus Comtrend’s adapters. Multiple HD videos were being streamed concurrently on the same G.hn powerline network. It was a live three-chip interop demo with a box maker also involved.

- Apartment 2: Gear with G.hn chips from Marvell and Xingtera over a powerline network.

Egan says both apartments were …

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For more information about this new VDSL2 Vectoring survey, please click the link here

 - Headlines and Content for The Online Reporter 833

ActiveVideo Delivers Modern UIs to Old STBs

Broadcom Has Single Chip with HomePlug AV2/Wi-Fi 11ac/1905

4K

Broadcom Develops SoC for Next Generation STB/Gateway

Netflix Is Embracing 4K

ENABLING TECHNOLOGY

Samsung to Use Intel Processor in Upcoming Tablet

LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS

Cisco Says Online Video Will Continue to Surge

NPD: TV Shows Are Driving OTT Subscriptions

Streaming Music Will See 40% Jump in Revenue

Most Mobile Viewing Occurs in the Home

VoD Vendors Could Lose 50% of Market by 2018 to OTT

BROADBAND AND HOME NETWORKING

BT Wins Again!

HOME NETWORKING

The G.hn-P1905.1 Matter Boils Up Again

Sigma Designs Gets Its G.hn Chip Certified

Analyzing the HomeGrid Board

HomeGrid Will Conduct First G.hn System Certifications this Month

G.hn at Computex

The G.hn Gang Fights Back

P1905 Is Branded nVoy

HomeGrid Presents G.hn Update at Computex

Trendnet’s New Media Bridge Comes with 11ac

Intel Adds Quantenna’s 4×4 11ac to Its Reference Design

FiberHome Adds Marvell’s G.hn to Its Fiber STBs

Netgear Shows DOCSIS Gateway with 11ac Beamforming

ARRIS Expected to Join MoCA Board

MOBILE TV

Dyle Getting Its Mobile TV Service in 40 Markets This Year

OTT SERVICES, APPS AND SCREENS

OTT

The Living Room’s Newest Box: Fan TV

Net2TV Brings Online Video Portal to Roku

BBC to Live Stream Glastonbury Music Festival

Hulu Receives a Few More Pleasing Bids

Disney’s Unveils its UV Answer: The Disney Locker

Vudu’s In-home Disc-to-digital Now in Public Beta

Amazon Now Streaming SpongeBob, Dora the Explorer

Redbox Instant Coming to Roku

TV EVERYWHERE

Time Warner Cable Continues to Push Ahead in TV EverywherE

MUSIC STREAMING SERVICES

Pandora Redesigns For the TV Set

ORIGINAL ONLINE VIDEO

Heineken Launches Survival Reality Series Online

SECOND SCREEN

Magic Ruby and Fremantle Create First Kids’ Second Screen App

Channel 4 Launches Network-wide Second Screen App

DIGIGRAMS

World’s Biggest Media Company Google Has the Money to Buy Live Sports

CBS Buys the Rest of TV Guide Digital

Magine Launches Cloud TV in Germany

Cable One Kills Data Cap, Consumers Rejoice

Netflix’s Sarandos: Catch-up Is Good for the Industry

Arrested Development’ Found New Young Audience on Net?ix

BT Touts BT Sports

Apple iRadio Rumored to Debut at WWDC

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-Unlocks User Interface from Device Dependency

-Charter, Cablevision and Japan’s Sumitomo Are First Customers

ActiveVideo has announced new features for its CloudTV platform that enables pay TV operators a fast and cost-effective method for delivering what it calls next gen user interfaces using the cloud.

“Users are expecting some advanced navigation and electronic programming guide capabilities to help them find content, navigate content, and make it easy for them 0 0to search and get recommendations,” Murali Nemani, SVP and chief marketing officer, told The Online Reporter. “The pay TV operators are realizing this.”

Pay TV operators have been trying for a few years to deliver a slick Apple or Netflix-like experience to subscribers. Online service user interfaces such as Hulu or Netflix, and EPG apps for tablets and smartphones look so nice because they have a lot of processing power with which to work. “These advanced UIs, they’re usually built in HTML5 or some Web based protocols and standards,” Nemani said.

“The problem is you need a browser technology to render it,” he said. “Many of these set tops were built pre-browser technology, they were built with a very different level of CPU processing capability.”

There hasn’t been much improvement on the 1980s-style EPG because it would require a massive infrastructure upgrade. “If you wanted to deliver an advanced navigation paradigm that was built for a PC browser, how are these boxes going to show that experience?” he said. “Replace all the set tops?”

Nemani said a cloud-based approach solves many obstacles presented and can deliver modern UIs very quickly, and cost-effectively, without the need to replace the STB. The platform includes applications for live TV EPGs, VoD services and the DVR

CloudTV Delivers Modern UIs to Old STBs

Device fragmentation across subscriber households has become an issue for pay TV providers. Subscribers can have one of many different receiving devices – whether it be an old STB, a new STB or a connected TV.

ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform essentially eliminates those functional differences in order to deliver a consistent and modern user interface to all subscribers. “That is the big breakthrough of what Active Video does,” Nemani said. “It unlocks the user interface from device dependencies and pushes it into the cloud.”

By moving the interface to the cloud, the pay TV operator won’t have to worry about native app development for an array of devices – “irrespective of the device capabilities, whether it’s a ten year old set top, which has very little processing power, or whether it’s a brand new device, or a connected device that has a very different implementation of a browser-rendering engine,” Nemani said.

He said the CloudTV platform emphasizes security and predictability at scale. “At scale is an important language here,” Nemani said. “In OTT, you can have issues, latency issues and scalability challenges, and ultimately people are a lot more forgiving.”

When subscribers are paying $100 or more per month for pay TV, they can be much less forgiving. “You want to be able to deliver it to 25 million subscribers,” he said, without any issues.

ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform makes these promises: …

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-Merges Linear TV with OTT Apps and Cloud DVR

Fanhattan made a left turn last week when it launched its answer to the living room rat’s nest: the Fan TV set -top box.

Fanhattan, which is known for its exceptional content aggregating app and browser site, has rebranded itself as Fan TV. CEO and founder Gilles BianRosa unveiled the box at the AllThingsD conference.

Fan TV’s Sleek Box and Remote 

A Cordless Set Top Box

The box and remote are sleek, small and round, designed by Yves Behar. There is only one input, for the TV screen. When BianRosa said the company will be launching the box with a pay TV service provider, he wasn’t kidding. The box, as it is designed now, won’t be released without having a partner for linear TV. It’s not a standalone streaming media player, it’s more like a sleek and slightly more encompassing TiVo.

The box comes with a cloud DVR, and apps – much like TiVo already has – for OTT services. It surfaces VoD offerings alongside the OTT offerings and linear TV, allowing the user to easily move between content worlds to find something to watch.

Navigate and Search Across Content Sources

We assume the interface will utilize the search and recommendation service that users have been enjoying with the Fanhattan app and Web browser, which has now opened up to the public. Content can be searched by genre, format, actor, etc. and probably searches will yield results across content sources such as VoD, linear TV and OTT services.

We don’t know which OTT services will be available on the box. The Fanhattan app searches across 29 sources from Hulu, iTunes and Netflix to network sites that offer full episodes of shows.

Don’t Forget the Buttonless Remote

The remote isn’t much more than a track pad. It has no buttons whatsoever; instead, the user swipes across the pad with a thumb to navigate the interface, and it was designed so that the user doesn’t have to look at the remote. During the demo, BianRosa showed off commerce bonus features that enabled the user to view and purchase movie-related merchandise and listen to a soundtrack through a music service.

The demo video also shows that users will be able to access and manage the entertainment services through an iPad app and probably through the browser as well.

What is missing from the demo was text input. We’ll assume that the interface does allow users to type into the search and recommendation engine, so the user will probably have to use the swiping motion in the button-less remote to navigate an on-screen keyboard to type in a name or title.

Several Questions about Fan TV Future

There are still a number of unknowns about the Fan TV box: ….

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-This Time It’s East Sussex County

- Is There No One Else That Wants These Lucrative Contracts That Guarantee Billions in Revenue?

Is there any service provider that can beat out BT for the regional broadband infrastructure deals in which local and national government typically pay more than 50% of the cost? Virgin Media, BSkyB, TalkTalk and other UK service providers have given BT a free run at dominating the UK broadband market for decades, perhaps for a century, which sentences them to pay billions to BT for access. You can bet they’ll be the first to complain publicly to the government that BT is charging them too much and demanding reduced rates — TalkTalk has already started. Yet they sit on the sidelines and let BT walk off with these government-funded deals without bidding for them.

The East Sussex County Council is the latest to award BT a contract to upgrade/build a fiber-based network that will pass 66,500 rural homes and businesses in the county. The total cost of the deal in East Sussex is £35.44 million ($55 million).

The Council said that under the terms of the deal BT will make fiber-based broadband service available at speeds of at least 24 Mbps and above to 96% of residences within three years. Currently, according to Ofcom in November 2012, the average downstream speed in East Sussex was 8.4 Mbps and 11.7% of residences received less than 2 Mbps.

BT said fiber-to-the-cabinet would be the main technology deployed. It is capable of up to 80 Mbps down and up to 20 Mbps up. In areas where BT deploys fiber-to-the-home, speeds will be up to 330 Mbps.

As we have previously reported, BT often says that hybrid fiber/copper wire networks are fiber because they are fiber to the neighborhood. That’s no big deal because current copper wire broadband technology allows hybrid fiber/copper wire networks to deliver upwards of 100 Mbps to each home and homes don’t have to share the bandwidth with their neighbors. The 100 Mbps is more than enough today for most homes.

Work on the project is expected to start immediately.

The Council said it picked BT after “an extensive and thorough selection process.”

Show Me the Money

Here is how the costs are divided up:

It’s a win-win deal for BT and the residents and businesses in Sussex County but it’s a lose-lose for Virgin Media, BSkyB, TalkTalk and other incumbent service providers who can and have built broadband infrastructure.

BT through its BT Wholesale operation must offer access on equal and government-mandated terms to them and to any credible service provider. However, that means that as resellers it’s guaranteed that they’ll be paying BT billions of pounds for decades. They are also opening the door to other competitors. There are already about 80 third-party broadband service providers nationwide that are re-selling BT broadband. They differentiate themselves on the basis of monthly rates, add-on services such as a discount on pay TV and customer support.

BT through BT Retail has been on a major campaign to capture as many broadband subscribers for itself as it can. For example, it recently launched BT Sport, which has already landed some major live sports events (emphasis on “live”). BT Sport will be available for free but only to BT’s broadband subscribers. How smart! Unlike telcos in other countries, BT is not …

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- Certification Process Is Being Developed

Marketers for HomePlug and MoCA chips have put the nVoy brand on the IEEE P1905 technology, which helps users and service providers install, configure and use networks with multiple technologies. Currently nVoy works on devices that are MoCA, HomePlug, Wi-Fi and Ethernet.

The HomeGrid Forum has said that they intend to develop a 1905.1 draft standard that will also include support for G.hn and HPNA. However, there is a large barrier of industry politics that will have to be overcome before that happens.

Purva Rajkotia, chairman of the IEEE 1905.1 Working Group and director of product management at Qualcomm, said 1905.1 certification unifies the world’s most prevalent wired and wireless networking technologies.

Rob Ranck, president of the HomePlug Alliance said the nVoy program and brand would speed adoption and market recognition of interoperable hybrid products.

Charles Cerino, president of MoCA and a Comcast employee said P1905 will “accelerate the adoption of home networking worldwide and make integration of technologies, devices and services much easier for operators, equipment manufacturers and consumers.”

The first nVoy interoperability event is expected in the third quarter of 2013 and the first nVoy Certified products are expected by year-end 2013. They will include advanced diagnostics supported locally or remotely with TR-069, topology discovery, simplified security setup, link metrics, automatic configuration of Wi-Fi access points and enhanced power management.

Chipmakers have said that …

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- HomeGrid Members Plan to Get G.hn & HPNA Included in P1905.1 Spec

Subscribers to The Online Reporter will remember our extensive coverage of how G.hn was excluded from the IEEE’s P1905.1 standard. Qualcomm Atheros (HomePlug and Wi-Fi chips), Broadcom (MoCA, HomePlug and Wi-Fi chips) and other P1905.1 members voted to exclude G.hn on the basis that at the time no G.hn products were installed — it was only a gleam in the eye. G.hn backers responded by saying that G.hn would eventually be part of the P1905.1 spec. Now they also say that they will get HomePNA included.

P1905.1 is being developed under the auspices of the IEEE as an industry called “Standard for a Convergent Digital Home Network for Heterogeneous Technologies,” which is intended make it easier for service providers and consumers to install, synch and use devices connected to home networks with different technologies. The technologies currently included are HomePlug, MoCA, Wi-Fi and wireline Ethernet. G.hn and HPNA are not.

John Egan, HomeGrid Forum president and an executive at Marvell (G.hn and Wi-Fi chips) said this week that chipmakers in the HomeGrid Forum intend to get both G.hn and HomePNA added to the P1905.1 spec in a very legitimate way. They are developing a draft P1905.1 specification that includes G.hn and HPNA, both of which are targeted at the world’s telcos.

In its current specification, the P1905.1 committee had also excluded HPNA, which is in some 40 million installed devices, but gave no reason. Upcoming versions of MoCA and HomePlug were also excluded because they had not been shipped.

The P1905.1 implementation for G.hn will …

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 - Headlines and Content for The Online Reporter 832

Discovery Launches OTT Science Network

Skitter TV Marries Internet with Linear TV

Selling Shares in Sony Entertainment Not Standing up to Scrutiny

TV’s Future – Does It Go with a Bang or a Whimper?

France Telecom, What Took You so Long?

4K

BusinessWeek Wrong about 4K

APPLE SLICES

Apple CEO Promises ‘Incredible’ New Products

LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS

Tablets Will Outsell All Types of PCs by 2017

Vectoring Cuts Cost of Super Fast Broadband by 2/3rds

Nielsen: We Still Live in a Physical Media World

Second Screen Behavior is Global

Telcos Poised to Benefit from OTT in Emerging Markets

Smart TV Owners Still Not Connecting to Internet

3 Billion Pairs of Eyeballs to Watch Online Videos by 2018

BROADBAND AND HOME NETWORKING

BROADBAND BEAT

Hybrid DSL/LTE Networks Go Where No High-speed Broadband Has Ever Been

Huawei Rolls out Vectoring Software at 15 Telcos

UK’s Hyperoptic Building All-Fiber Network

Rostelecom’s Broadband Subs Increase 12%

Lantiq to Ship Vectoring Chips This Summer

Ikanos Vectoring Chips Shipping & Test Gear Ready

Liberty Global Shipping 10s of Thousands of 400 Mbps Horizon STBs

ENABLING TECHNOLOGY

New Intel CPU Increases Battery Usage 50%

Intertrust Announces a One-Stop-Shop for DRM

HOME NETWORKING

HomeGrid (G.hn) Absorbs HomePNA

MStar to include P1905

IPADS AND THE MANY OTHER TABLETS

Hisense and Nvidia Team Up on Cheap Tablets

OTT SERVICES, APPS AND SCREENS

OTT

The Winter Olympics Will Be Streamed

Hulu’s For Sale Sign Draws Seven Bidders

ORIGINAL ONLINE VIDEO

A Few Lessons from ‘Arrested Development’

Amazon Says Yes to 5 Pilots

SMART TVS AND OTHER OTT DEVICES

Sales of Apple TVs Still Escalating

Samsung’s Streaming Player Will Include CableCARD

DIGI GRAMS

Endemol France Hits 78,000 Subs on YouTube

Sony’s 55- & 65-inch 4K Sets Are in Stores

BuzzFeed to Beef-up Video Offerings with New Web Studio

Disney’s Sweeney Has Harsh Words for Aereo

Apple Quietly Launches New, Less Expensive iPod Touch

‘Arrested Development’ Pirated 100,000 Times in 24 Hours

Comcast Adds Voice Control to X1 Platform

Verizon: Google Won’t Come to FiOS Territory

Verizon Wireless Launches Two More AWS Devices

Netflix Complains About BBC Windows

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- Makes for a Very Powerful List of Telcos

- Provides Upgrade Path to HPNA Accounts

- Adds ‘Battle-Tested’ Certification and Interoperability Testing to G.hn

It retrospect, it was inevitable, wasn’t it? The HomeGrid (G.hn) Forum this week totally absorbed the Home PNA Alliance (HPNA) after a year of negotiations with lots of vested corporate interests and big egos involved.

First, some facts:

- HomeGrid is the name of the combined groups.

- HomePNA, a coax only technology, was essentially a one-company alliance — Sigma Designs — and it had a fully functioning and proven certification and interoperability (C&I) process in place. HomeGrid was still developing its C&I process so it gets the benefit of HPNA’s C&I expertise and experience.

- HomePNA did not have a roadmap for future technology development. HomeGrid provides Sigma Designs and telcos who standardized on HPNA such as AT&T a way forward.

- Months ago, Sigma announced it would develop a chipset that included both G.hn and HPNA. That will allow telcos that are selling HPNA gear the ability to standardize on one STB that does either, which will reduce their inventory costs and simplify life for their installers. We believe but have no confirmation that AT&T is testing equipment that has a combined HPNA/G.hn chipset although it has said it is testing equipment with G.hn chips.

- No other chipmaker that we know of has indicated any interest in producing combination HomePNA/G.hn chipsets. It would be difficult for any other company to develop and get certified an HPNA chipset.

- The HPNA certification logo will remain and any new HPNA STBs can still undergo the certification process. HomeGrid will have a separate certification logo for equipment makers to put on their retail.

- The combined HomeGrid/HomePNA organization includes major players such as AT&T, ARRIS, Cisco (which makes HPNA STBs), CenturyLink, Telus and Bell Canada. It’s a strong and powerful group.

- Most of the announced interest in HomeGrid so far has come from China and is primarily in the powerline version.

- So far Marvell is the only company with a G.hn certified chipset but we expect several others to be announced shortly especially Sigma Designs.

- There is an installed base of 40 million HPNA devices, according to its Alliance, which is a sizeable number. HomePNA president and Sigma Design employee Eran Gureshnik said HPNA is “a mature, field proven technology that is used by telcos on four continents.” He said, “the obvious future direction for all wireline home networking is to migrate to G.hn.” It certainly is for HPNA accounts that want an upgrade to a compatible network.

- The new and improved HomeGrid Forum has more than 70 members, including 28 service providers, mostly telcos, and some very large equipment makers and retailers.

Leading Service Providers

AT&T

Bell Canada

British Telecom

Chunghwa Telecom

Telecom Italia

Telefonica

Plus these others…

3 Rivers Communications

Bell Aliant

Connexion Technologies

Consolidated Communications

EATEL

GVT

Hawaiian Telcom

Highland Communication Services

Logic Communications

Moapa Valley Telephone

MTCC

New Hope Telephone Cooperative

Northeast Louisiana Telephone

Phonoscope

Randolph Telephone Membership

Rural Telephone Service

Sandwich Isles Communications

Smithville Telecom

Tata Sky

TBayTel

Triangle Communications

yes (DBS Satellite Services)

AT&T, the major purchaser of HPNA gear supported the merger. Eric Puetz, AT&T director of industry standards said, “As an active member of both the HomePNA Alliance and the HomeGrid Forum, AT&T sees the merger of these two industry organizations as a great step toward advancing and harmonizing these standards-based home networking technologies.”

There is a white paper available for service providers who are selling HPNA gear called “Converging Technologies – Moving from HomePNA to G.hn.” Among other things, it says, “Service Providers worldwide are running G.hn products through rigorous testing and trials, with plans to deploy in late 2013 or early 2014.”

A Talk with the Men That Put the Deal Together

We talked to Rich Nesin, who headed up the HomePNA Alliance and to John Egan, a Marvell employee who heads up the Home Grid Forum, about the combined organizations. Having initiated and worked closely on the deal, they were very enthused about the synergy the combined groups would create. They said the merger was a natural evolution for the two organizations.

They pointed out that HPNA brought in lots of equipment makers to what had been a very chip-oriented group. For example, Cisco and ARRIS have joined the board of HomeGrid as a result of the deal. They said HPNA brought a lot of expertise such as its work in reducing with telcos to reduce the average installation time from four hours to one hour.

They said a merged organization could support HomePNA while easing and promoting the migration to G.hn.

Nesin’s contract with HomePNA has been extended until June. Egan has submitted his resignation so the new board can select a leader, which could well be Egan, Nesin or a third person.

P1905

Inevitably, the conversation got around to P1905 …

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Roku announced it has received a $60 million investment during a series of funding, which the company said will be used for “growth around its streaming software and services businesses,” the company said.

Roku said it will be using the money to launch a new product for a line of smart TVs. “Roku is working with two dozen OEMs who are making more than 3.5 million ‘Roku Ready’ devices, predominantly TVs that will be in retail by the end of the year,” the company said.

Could Roku be launching a device-less OS for smart TVs? AllThingsD seems to think so, and has reported that’s what the company is planning as an expansion to its streaming media players and smart TV dongles.

Roku announced at CES this year 14 CE maker partners that have been Roku Ready-certified. Instead of TV set makers developing their own smart TV OS, Roku will serve as a default operating system for those sets via its streaming stick. [For more on Roku at CES, see TOR812]….

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