Everything You Wanted To Know About Cable Technology

* But Were Afraid To Ask

By Leslie Ellis -- Multichannel News, 5/24/2010 12:01:00 AM

It happens to all of us. You’re in a meeting.
Engineers are present. You veer off mentally — just for a second! — and by the time you’re back, the conversation thickened into uncomfortably unfamiliar technical territory.

Acronyms, nested acronyms, spoken acronyms. Wideband, IP, QAMs. Cable tech jargon has a beginning (the late 1940s), but it has no end. For that reason, we’ve put together this roundup of tech “translatables” — to answer the unasked questions, and, at the least, to make you a capable tech-conversationalist.

1 Why is everyone talking about IP video?
Perhaps the strongest undercurrent in cable technology today is the shift toward “IP video” and “IPTV” — because it’s considered more efficient and cheaper than regular cable TV. On the surface, it’s about sending the full video lineup (linear and on-demand) through the cable modem, over a home network, to connected devices including and beyond the TV.
IP touches pretty much every component of video delivery, from the way it’s sent from originators to the way it’s navigated by consumers and everything in between: ingest, transport, headend gear, in-home gear, home networks, software. The work of it is opening up the interfaces between components to extend development to Web-based interactions.
But what is IP, exactly? Technically, Internet protocol is a nickname for a longer protocol, known as TCP/IP, or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It’s the underlying language of the Internet, used by data communications equipment to speak to one another — so that all of the pieces of the chain know where and how to send information.
The good news is that we don’t have to call it “TCP/IPTV.”

2 Explain “all-IP” versus “all-digital.”
At the 2003 National Show, Microsoft’s Bill Gates asked Comcast CEO Brian Roberts whether and when the cable industry would go from “all-digital” to “all-IP.”
Since then, the digital transformation occurred — most cable providers now offer the core lineup of cable networks in standard and high-definition digital.
Just as there were different ways to send analog signals — your radio tunes AM and FM frequencies, for instance — there are different ways to send digital signals. IP is one of them. “MPEG transport” is the other. (And it came first.)
In the shortest of shorthand, IP transport moves data through the cable modem side of the house. MPEG transport moves data through a set-top box.

3 Can cloud computing help cable?
In its simplest form, “cloud computing” means processing and storing stuff in the network as opposed to at the end points, like your TV or your set-top box.
Cable could definitely benefit from this category, particularly with navigation across multiple screens. One screen (the TV) may be outfitted for MPEG-2 decompression, while a newer screen (handheld) may use MPEG-4.
Likewise for screen resolution — each screen needs a specific amount and type of code. But should that processing be done within each end device or higher up in the network?
Cable operators could also offer more services to businesses.
The cable industry is already an interconnected system of local, regional and national networks; in other words, it already is a cloud.

4 What’s the difference between EBIF and SelecTV?
SelecTV is to EBIF as Tru2way is to OCAP: the public marquee for a group of technical specifications.
Just as “Tru2way” became the retail front for the still-active technical specs known as “OCAP” (OpenCable Applications Platform), “SelecTV” will become the icon that visually indicates an interactive event to TV viewers. Refresher: EBIF stands for Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (see Special Report). It’s a way to get a clickable thing onto a very wide footprint of cable-connected screens.
What’s big about EBIF is its reach — as many as 30 million homes this year. Its reach is wide because it’s small enough to run on set-tops deployed a decade or more ago.
Watch for EBIF to show up in force later this year, for advertising (click for more info), participatory TV (click a contestant gone) and things like Comcast’s “ready remind record” feature, for keeping people linked with the programming they like, even if they forgot to set the DVR.

5 What on earth is a QAM?
What’s part hardware, part signal, part unit of measurement? QAM. People tend to say it as a word — kwahm. It stands for “Quadrature Amplitude Modulation.” Unless you’re wired to listen for it in three ways, QAM is the king of cable jargon.
In one sense, QAMs are physical hardware, shaped in the “pizza box” style of rack-mounted gear. A solid vendor community exists to build video QAMs and data/voice QAMs. Gear-related QAM discussions these days usually center on density — how many can fit in one pizza box? Comcast’s new “CMAP” initiative aims for 160.
QAM is part method because it exists to imprint (modulate) digital information onto a communications carrier for conveyance to the items at the end of the plant: set-tops, cable modems, voice terminals.
And QAM is partly a unit of measurement, in that its current carrying capacity is 38.8 Megabits per second. (People often round this up to 40 Mbps). Example sentence: “We’re using four QAMs for IPTV.” That means dedicating four 6-MHz channels, each with a carrying capacity of 38.8 Mbps, to make one big, 155-Mbps IPTV passageway.
There’s just no escaping QAMs. Best to learn to listen for it three ways.

6 Will CDNs ever replace satellite TV?
As IP infiltrates the world of networks, so does traditional satellite receiving technology get augmented with fiber backbones, loosely known as Content Delivery Networks, or CDNs.
Remember the telecom bust a few years back? In its wake was a glut of dark fiber, strung but not lit up with traffic. Sending data over those local, regional and national fiber rings, all interconnected, is less expensive than sending it up into space, then back down again. That’s why CDNs are gaining so much attention these days.

7 Will cable operators ever offer smart phones?
They already are! Rogers Communications in Canada offers a full line of smart phones, and U.S. operators are expected to get in on the game.
In the language of “smart phones,” walled gardens are what’s dumb. Remember when carrier-provided “walled gardens” were the only way to get new applications for your cellular phone? Smart phones come with Internet protocol (IP, there it is again!) connections for zipping off to the Internet, or an open-source apps store, for whatever you desire for your mobile gadget.
Cable companies, which are notorious for wanting more control of the network, will find that the open-source nature of the smart phone is a selling point, not a competitive downside.

8 What’s up with DOCSIS 3.0?
You’ve heard about DOCSIS 3.0 for a while now — it’s the latest metamorphosis of the technical specification for the cable modem. And you know that “channel bonding” is the big feature, and that cable operators are up to their eyebrows in deployments. Why do you continue to hear it peppered in every other conversation?
Because it’s those bonded, 6-MHz channels — those bonded “QAMs” — that become the transit lane for IP video. Back-of-the-envelope calculations from cable’s engine rooms indicate a need for between six and eight 6-MHz channels, bonded, to carry an exact replica (in IP) of what’s already available in linear and ondemand TV.

9 What’s ‘TV Everywhere’/ authentication?
Part of the business of getting subscription TV on screens other than the TV is making sure Customer Jane Doe really is Customer Jane Doe — and not her 50 friends, outfitted with her log-in credentials.
That’s why cable operators and programmers are working, individually and together (in an underground tech effort known as the Open Authentication Technology Committee), to make sure consumers can get to the content they’re paying for. Easily, and without a lot of hassle, on the TV, PC or handheld.
Ultimately, the intent is for subscribers to be able to go to an aggregated video site (e.g. Fancast/Xfinity) or to individual program network sites, log in — once — and view the content associated with their subscriptions.
And even if Customer Jane closes her browser, goes to lunch, comes back and opens another content owner’s site, she’s still logged in. Much less of a hassle for her. That’s the plan.

10 What’s a selectable output control?
“Selectable output control” is regulatory-speak for giving movie studios permission to select the set-top output that keeps their titles the safest (from piracy).
This one dates back eight years. Remember the Memorandum of Understanding, submitted by cable and the consumer-electronics industry, which ultimately begat the one-way plug-and-play agreement?
Short version: Cable sided with CE, saying that it wouldn’t disable the analog outputs on its set-tops. Reason: CE didn’t want their sets to go blank, for any reason. Ever.
But studios were (and are) concerned about what’s known as “the analog hole” — the ability for a premium title to flow over an unprotected (component video or other analog) connector to a screen or recording device.
The fear: Titles get compromised at infancy. With a predictable effect on revenues.
Selectable output control, often abbreviated “SOC,” re-entered the day-and-date mainstream on May 7, when the FCC approved its use.
Despite its wonky name, this is a big one because studios are now comfortable offering cable day-and-date showings of new movies, in near the same window as theatrical — think how hot this is for VOD!