Celeno’s Wi-Fi Implementation May Replace MoCA, HomePlug and HomeGrid
Every time you talk to Wi-Fi chip maker Celeno, you walk away thinking that Wi-Fi, or at least Celeno’s implementation of Wi-Fi, will kill off wireline network technologies like MoCA, HomePlug and the just-around-the-corner HomeGrid (G.hn). Celeno makes 3x3 MIMO Wi-Fi chips that incorporate a number of advanced technologies that it developed specifically for handling up to eight concurrent streams of HD video. Yes, eight HD streams and all flicker-free. It’s quite a promise.
MoCA Backbone Today; All Celeno Tomorrow
The growing consensus these days is that MoCA will be the backbone that’s used to move data and video to an area in the home, like the second floor, but then Wi-Fi is used to feed less demanding data to devices like tablets. Liberty Global’s UPC Broadband will soon start offering a STB/DVR called Horizon that comes with both MoCA and Celeno’s Wi-Fi chips. Celeno says that the MoCA consensus will begin crumbling when a pay TV service like UPC gets enough confidence in Celeno’s Wi-Fi implementation to use it exclusively and disable MoCA altogether.
It’s unfair to call Celeno merely a chipmaker. It has figured out, it says, how to deliver multiple streams of HD video in a home with a reliability that equals or exceeds any wireline network technology, including the gold standard MoCA.
Celeno produces dual concurrent band video-grade Wi-Fi chips that can handle HD and IPTV content streaming, OTT video distribution, VoIP, multiplayer gaming and Web browsing. The chips concurrently use the 5 GHz frequency and the 2.4 GHz frequency to provide flicker-free quality of service (QoS) and high performance.
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Google’s Motorola Mobility Acquisition to Impact STB Makers
Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility (MM) will have implications in the industry that makes and buys pay-TV set-top boxes. That’s assuming that Google doesn’t take the Motorola Mobility patents and run by selling the smartphone/tablet and STB box operations to someone else, either together or separately. Cisco, Pace, Technicolor and perhaps Sony or Samsung might be interested in the STB business. HTC, LG, Samsung or Sony Ericsson might be interested in buying the smartphone operations.
Motorola chief Sanjay Jha has said since he first joined MM that he thinks there can be a powerful synergy between mobile devices and TV-connected STBs. It only takes a cursory examination of Apple, Samsung and Vizio to see how they can be “entergized” in consumers’ homes. Vizio last week launched a $300 8-inch tablet that can serve as the remotes for Vizio TVs and a dizzying array of surround sound system brands.
Google Chief Larry Page said in announcing the acquisition, “Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers.”
Gupta said the deal will allow for “real convergence” in Motorola’s smartphones, tablets and STB businesses.
Both companies face two common competitors in smartphones, tablets and TV-connected STBs: Apple and Microsoft.
For starters, Google and Motorola Mobility might plot a strategy that could:
- Produce a saleable Google TV technology that consumers could figure out how to use. That’s something Motorola Mobility is so much better at doing than Google — not that anyone could have created a user interface worse than Google’s.
AirTies Points Way to HD Video on Hybrid Wi-Fi/Powerline Networks
When a company like Turkish STB maker Airties, which is one of the first to offer Wi-Fi for HD video, starts talking about powerline, you can be sure that it plans to move into the space. Given that Airties is an out-and-out Broadcom shop, the implication is that it will be done with Broadcom chips, even if it’s not done with Broadcom’s help.
The discussion that Peter White of Faultline recently had with Airties CTO Metin Ismail Taskin was aimed at the powerline method of home networking.
European operators will have problems trying to roll out any kind of powerline across Europe, whether that is HomePlug, HomePlug AV or the powerline element of G.hn, simply because of the way that parts of Europe are wired. Germany and his native Turkey and many other countries have buildings in which there are multiple power grids per home, while concentrated conurbations like Paris and Brussels have an inordinate number of multi-dwelling units where a single low-voltage power grid is shared by multiple residencies.
He also talked about interference on powerlines from other devices and said that the humble handset re-charger was one of the worst device profiles for this and they are on the rise, and pointed at attenuation on inferior-grade cabling and some examples of 3-phase electricity being in use. There is also interference created by powerline on VDSL (which operates in similar spectrum to powerline) when powerline emits an RF signal that penetrates the DSL cabling.
The European powerline market is a hodgepodge and each local market needs a different approach.
Airties is working on a single heterogeneous network, but perhaps wants to go a step beyond the P1905.1 standard, which allows applications and upper layer protocols to be agnostic to the underlying home networking technologies, by the addition of intelligence into the network so that this can be done to a set policy. If P1905 allows for either channel — powerline or Wi-Fi to be used — Airties is working on firmware to sit above this layer and control the process and intelligently aggregate bandwidth across them both. We think this would rather resemble a mesh networking system, which intelligently samples the available routes across both mediums and selected one, dynamically re-selecting periodically.
The end result would be very similar to the way Airties products work today in pure Wi-Fi, sampling different channels in both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and deciding on which channel is going to be right for the HD video it is sending around the home. Typically the same algorithms it uses for this could be used for a combined solution, sitting as an application running on an SoC CPU above both the Wi-Fi and powerline MAC layers. Such a strategy would make it possible to move equipment to any country in Europe and be sure that HD video would make it around the home, opting for Wi-Fi where the walls are thin and there is little RF interference, and using powerline on appropriately configured power cables, and when there is little power interference going on.
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5m US Households Have Cut the Cord
More than 17 million US households representing 45.6 million consumers, receive television exclusively through broadcast signals (OTA), according to new research by y Knowledge Networks
The 45.6 million, it said, is up from 42 million a year ago.
The report said that 4% of TV households, about 5 million, cancelled their pay-TV service in their current home at some point in the past and now rely only on OTA reception. That’s an alarming number for the pay-TV companies calculating how much revenue per year they’re losing. Even at a low $10 a month, it’s a sizeable number.
The numbers do not at all agree with those the pro-wireless s Consumer Electronics Association put out last week.
Knowledge Networks said the demographics of exclusive OTA-users skew towards younger adults, minorities and lower-income families.
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Sezmi, Netgem Combine to Attack Traditional Pay-TV
It’s not just over-the-top (OTT) TV and it’s not just over-the-air (OTA) TV. The new partnership between Sezmi and Netgem
Sezmi also has a cloud-based video service for mobiles.
Is this then the future of pay-TV? Over-the-top and over-the-air?
Sezmi, which has a successful US OTT/OTA business, will include Netgem’s STB and middleware as part of Sezmi’s offering to telcos that want to offer a pay-TV service but without making a major investment in their broadband network as AT&T, Verizon, BT, France Telecom and many others are doing. Verizon has spent over $20 billion to upgrade parts of its network to FTTH.
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The Demographic That Destroyed the Music & Residential Phone Industries Threatens Pay TV
The Online Reporter has been warning about this for over a year: it’s not cord-cutting that should bother the pay-TV services. It’s the cords that are not being connected.
Cord-cutting, or the lack of cord-connecting, seems to be gaining traction among the “Generation Y” crowd, according to research by Ideas & Solutions in a report called “Must Choose TV: What Gen Y Thinks About Pay-TV and Cord-Cutting.”
It says the young are less attached to pay-TV and attracted to its lower-cost counterpart: OTT.
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Optus to Offer FetchTV on 2m Mobile Devices
FetchTV wants every Australian broadband service, wireline and wireless, to offer its IPTV service — except for Telstra, of course, which has its own pay-TV service. FetchTV has signed up the cellco/telco/cableco Optus, which will be the first to offer live FetchTV on mobile phones and tablet devices. Optus expects to have 500,000 subscribers by the end of 2012.
Optus did not say whether it would also offer FetchTV STBs to its wireline broadband subscribers. In December it signed a deal with FetchTV rival Foxtel to offer Optus subscribers Foxtel’s iQ HD STBs and Foxtel’s HD channels. The deal also allows Optus to resell Foxtel’s satellite TV services as an agent.
Foxtel is a 50/50 joint venture between Telstra and News Corp.
Optus, which Singapore-based Singtel owns, said the FetchTVservice will be available to all of its two million subscribers when FetchTV launches.
Routers in the Living Room!
Ah! Six tuners, multi-room DVR, 500GB of storage, a built-in router, USB ports on the front and MoCA! What more could a digital media loving person want?
All of that is in the Arris’ Whole Home Solution STB that Canada’s Shaw Communications will offer its 3.4 million subscribers. Wi-Fi 802.11n is an option for those who don’t already have a Wi-Fi network.
It’ll be called the Shaw Gateway. Initial installations are in Calgary and ultimately will be throughout its footprint. It will connect to Arris Media Players that are attached to TV sets in other rooms so they can use the central DVR.
Shaw will use the boxes to offer broadcast and narrowcast video, video on demand, DOCSIS 3.0 broadband, two lines of carrier-grade voice over IP, OTT videos and media sharing of user-generated content. It also supports DLNA to connect with subscriber owned DLNA-enabled devices that are on the home’s network and supports CableCard conditional access.
The Arris Media Players (satellites) support full HD via HDMI, component, and composite outputs, front and rear USB ports, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet and MoCA 1.1+. It’s operated with a backlit remote control.
Arris Broadband Communication Systems president Bruce McClelland said the product “will accelerate and ease the transition of content delivery to a cost-efficient, all-IP model.” It will, he said, bring the broadband experience of the future into their customers’ homes.
The Real World: Routers in the Living Room
Consumers buying smart TVs, Blu-ray players, gaming consoles and smart TV adapters will start finding they need a router or switch in the living room and perhaps one in the bedroom, depending on how much equipment is installed there. An increasing number of devices need a home network connection, preferably wireline Ethernet for maximum reception.
Sure Wi-Fi could do but just as pay-TV won out over antennas for reception clarity in millions of home, so will wireline Ethernet win out over Wi-Fi, at least the current iterations of Wi-Fi. If wireline Ethernet is the chosen path, then it makes sense to put a router or low-cost switch in the living room so that only one Ethernet cable has to be run from the home’s router that’s connected to the broadband modem.
If the router or switch is being installed in an area of the house like the bedroom where Wi-Fi reception is dodgy, then it makes sense to install a second Wi-Fi multi-port router.
Having a router built-in to the DVR box as Arris is doing makes the installation easier and results in fewer wires. If it weren’t so cold there and for so many months, a digital media lover might move to Calgary.
LG Adds Smarts to TV Sets
There are millions of HD TVs in homes that are not smart TVs but whose owners want Netflix or other OTT services after seeing them at a friend’s. So far Apple, Roku, Boxee and Logitech with its Google TV have been the answer. There are also Blu-ray players.
LG has entered the fray and is now shipping in the States its ST600 smart TV adapter, which upgrades any HD TV that has an HDMI connector to a smart TV. It’s $129 at retailers like Wal-Mart, Amazon and NewEgg.
$129 LG Smart TV Upgrader
The big news is that it has a Web browser that lets users see news, reviews and other content. It’s not clear whether it’s a full Internet browser that lets users view TV shows on Hulu and the network broadcasters’ Web sites. They ganged up to prevent Google TV users from watching their shows.
LG’s Netcast service offers more OTT services than the $99 Apple TV, and includes:
Motorola Uses New Wi-Fi Box for Pay-TV & OTT Video in the Home
There’s another possibility for “no new wires“ networking besides HomePlug, MoCA and HomeGrid. And, except for wireline Ethernet, it’s the oldest home networking of them all: Wi-Fi.
STB maker Motorola and chipmaker Quantenna want to make Wi-Fi the standard in homes for delivering pay-TV and OTT videos as we reported at: http://onlinereporter.com/2011/04/19/motorola’s-new-vap2400-uses-wi-fi/
An interview with Motorola senior product manager Gabriel Rubinsky and excerpts from Faultline has provided new information.
Motorola Brings Wi-Fi to Pay-TV
Motorola’s VAP 2400 is a Wi-Fi video bridge for home use that has 4x4 MIMO chips from Quantenna Communications. Motorola says the VAP 2400 overcomes the two biggest drawbacks for Wi-Fi when it comes to transmitting pay-TV video compared to wireline home networking.
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