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• 29-Sep-2009 by Benjamin Schwarz
• Post IBC Analysis: Set Top Boxes
• IBC 2009 News

I was expecting a stream of widget demos at the STB maker booths, but my itinerary took me mostly to the operator STB boxes.  We have to settle for a generation-and-a-half behind the best retail boxes like Roku or Popcorn hour.

Negotiations are going on behind the scenes between channels, operators and device makers so that the long awaited widgets can become context aware and we get a win-win-win situation. If these discussions come through we should at last expect some really exciting widget demos at IBC 2010. I’m told NDS was the only place you got a peek at this future.

It’s frustrating to feel all that potential for over-the-top and content shifting services, but so little of it implemented in operator boxes. There is an understandable fear of loosing control. But too much control will just push users to get the retail boxes that do what the user wants. Virgin Media seem to have understood this better than most with their much-acclaimed implementation of the BBC’s iPlayer.

Makers were unanimous, though, about climbing up the value chain. Using the word delinearization rather than DVR with a HD is a sign of maturity. Enabling devices to share content in the home (Pace, Moto) or even beyond the home [in Echostar’s case with Slingmedia] providing end-to-end services like VoD (NetGem), hyper-specialising into niches like DLNA (Awox) or simply packing more and more features into the box.

A lot of real 3 screen demos were shown with ‘follow me’ type of applications (as oppose to last years’ mock-ups). We will probably have to wait for IBC 2012 or so for these to be truly plug and play, so even your grandma could use them.

Pace

Like last year the Pace booth was full of hybrid models except that this year most of them were from live deployments. The hybrid satellite/IP Cube that Pace built for Canal+ is a beautiful object with a beautiful interface. It’s already won several awards. French friends that use the new Canal+ box, all adore their sexy new device but they do complain endlessly about its slowness. That’s one of the prices you pay for a powerful middleware; NDS is this case. A bit like the addicted yet unsatisfied iPhone users of which I’m one.

Another DTT/IP hybrid box, destined for a secret UK customer, was so nippy despite having a lot of 3D interface objects flying around, demonstrating it can be done. With the iPhone example, Pace has come up with its very own 3GS.

Like most makers, Pace is currently lacking a hybrid cable box. And also like most Pace has an grand green positioning, but I am still awaiting data to back up their claims of championing green initiatives for over 10 years now.

Pace referred to delinearization during our talk on hybrid boxes. This clearly indicates that they are no longer trying to move up the ladder; Pace are positioning themselves as already several rungs up. Long gone are the box shifting days.

Another sign of their ascension in the value chain is the vision, albeit shared with other vendors like Echostar, that the STB should be the home network’s hub. One often forgets what some of the really simple, yet compelling reasons are. STB’s don’t crash (at least not as much as PC’s do). That could be a dangerous argument as people might put a Mac in the centre of the living room instead of a Pace box!

Either Pace want to stay in the safer high volume areas of operator boxes or they don’t have the rights to use the consumer recognized Philips brand. That’s the only way to understand why they don’t put some of their sexier boxes out there for the rest of us to go and buy in retail stores. Pace must believe that people like FetchTV are never going to make it in a retail model. You will however find Phillips Freeview zappers, designed by Pace, in UK retail stores so maybe they will come over one day and put some meaty DVRs on the retail market.

Motorola

As reported earlier, [feature: six encoding updates] one is whisked from one place to another on Moto’s booth as there is so much to see.

On the STB side my green penchant was pleased to see Motorola talk about the environment, but the demo was a washout as the Microsoft powered STB’s on show didn’t support power saving! The other box being demoed showed a drop in consumption from an impressive 8 Watts in operation to 2.5 in standby mode. That’s over twice next year’s EEC target. Apparently ST Micro will deliver new API’s for the 7105 chipset used for the demo to get below the fated 1W. It is understandable why Motorola would want to talk about this, but baffling as to why they wouldn’t/couldn’t demo it.

Motorola also presented their Gateway to the home. I was really tired at this stage after about 24 demos and should have taken a break. The presenter’s enthusiasm kept me going and translated in my cloudy mind into mysticism so I couldn’t help thinking of the device as a Gateway to Nirvana, probably because of a conversation the night before with my son about Led Zepplin’s iconic Stairway to Heaven. Anyway the mother of all boxes that would solve all box problems (actually it does have an impressive array of holes in the back to plug various things in) was twirling around in my hands. But the poetry came shattering down when my presenter, Malcom Latham, explained that it was really a “headless” (his word) STB. That word somehow broke the spell and woke me up. So actually it was a home gateway and cable-modem all in one. This could have provided some neat demos targeted at cableco’s like Virgin Media, who actually have the device in their labs now, but on the booth the box was displayed as a treasured end in itself, only the pedestal was missing.

Awox

Awox are an interesting company from the south of France. They set out as a YASTBM (Yet Another STB Maker) and have ended-up a DLNA champion whose business is “Connectivity, media and service sharing”. This was their first year at IBC.

They have had some mild success in STBs themselves including the just launched Canal+ box providing access to Canal+’s own VoD offering - there’s another interesting story as to why there are so many different Canal+ boxes, but hat’s for another post.

Awox have been more successful selling their DLNA stack to other makers like Amino (UK), Onda (Italy), Action Tech (US) or SAGEM (France). They have also got their software into some set-makers like the high-end German brand Loewe and the mobile phone part of Motorola.

NetGem

Netgem are another French STB maker present in the IPTV hall. One thing that makes them stand out from the crowd is the delivery of a complete VoD service including portal, content and all. In the UK their technology is behind FetchTV.

It’s an interesting gamble to be in this situation, as they can be perceived as a threat to most of their potential customers.

Another USP they are proud of is that they have been tweaking their STB software for about 15 years and probably have some of the most impressive finely tuned 3D interface demos that get the last drop of power out of current chipsets.

Cristophe Aulnette, Netgem’s new Chief Executive, said the hybrid market was really taking off for them and they announced at the show a new deployment of the least common combination i.e. IP and DVB-C for Monaco Telecom. Expect a blog entry on that interesting project pretty soon. This is a rare combination because Cablecos wanting to implement VoD usually use Docsis 3.0.

You could see this sleak interface with the V5 demo on show, fine-tuned to a Sigma Designs 8634.

They currently deliver to France’s second largest IPTV operator SFR, so know a few things about scaling up. They also build and operate the Fnac-Box for one of France’s key retailers.

It will be interesting to see if they can package this software and sell it separately, in which case the middleware vendors would have another serious challenger. Netgem will have to clarify their position on openness and standards because membership of the OIPF alone isn’t enough.

Sagem

Living in France I found it interesting to be see what the next generation of STB will be like for Bouygues Telecom’s customers with a ST 7105 chipset and a pluggable 2.5 inch hard-disk. Strangely it’s all hush-hush here.

The use-cases of two Sagem demos were inscrutable.

Firstly the DLNA demo let you see a photo from a USB key plugged into another STB. Imagine Mum shouting, from in front of the living room TV to her child upstairs, “Please put the holiday snaps into the STB in you room.” Mmm… must have missed the point.

The other difficult-to-comprehend-demo was Sagem’s contribution to the 3D bandwagon. In the demo, an STB could read a 3D encoded stream and display it as a normal 2D Stream. Wow, but whatever for?

Others demos included a Forward Error Correction (FEC) enabled STB.  FEC & VQE are all about coping with lost packets. FEC tries to encode more stuff at the head-end so the decoder (ie STB) can still survive if a packet or two are lost (there's an overhead of 15% or so in bandwidth required) whereas VQE is all about retransmitting lost packets from a dedicated server not too far from the subscriber. Both technologies are to extend the reach of DSL lines for IPTV and must be implemented on the STB as well as in the network.

Back to the Sagem demo, where I was a little perplexed, because there was no way of knowing that the demo was ‘real’. There was a single corrected video but one couldn't tell what, if any, artifacts had been corrected. Sagem and other exhibitors should get inspiration from the convincing way Cisco conduct these demos by turning the technology on an off so you really see the difference in the video quality. Well, actually, Cisco show their competing VQE technology not FEC, but for the demo it's all the same).

Sagem showed the future DVB-T2 boxes destined for the UK market and a highly technical demo of a Sat/IP hybrid box about line rates Vs. VoD rates.

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