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page twenty eight www.csimagazine.com Cable & Satellite International july-august 2009
Show review
Despite difficult times, the
ANGA Cable show closed
with another record in
exhibitors and attendees, attracted more
than 13,600 trade visitors, an increase
of 13% compared to the previous year.
The number of exhibitors increased to
380 from 33 countries as Europe's de
facto main cable exhibition becomes
increasingly international.
While the conference agenda is not
as rich or diverse as that of the Cable
Congress, it covered some of the same
ground as operators grapple with DOCSIS
3.0 and triple play as the battle with
satellite, digital terrestrial (DTT) and IPTV
telcos intensifies.
On the local front, Kabel Deutschland
(KDG), Germany's largest cable company
with over nine million subscribers, has
deployed packet voice switches from Cedar
Point Communications to provide VoIP and
support its migration to PacketCable 2.0
(a technology that CSI will be covering
in some detail early next year as early
deployments ramp up).
Much of KDG's network is digitised but
the vast majority of its customers - some
eight million - are still analogue, reflecting
the German market as a whole. Although
one of Europe's largest, Germany still lags
behind many other European markets in
terms of advanced services such as digital
television and PVR.
Signs are this is slowly changing, with
Kabel BW, which has 2.3m subs, set to
deploy PVR and VoD using gear from NDS
and Harmonic. The VoD service is slated for
launch in late 2009 and will be the
country's first major cable VoD deployment.
Below, we pick out some of the
highlights from our talk on the show floor.
Televes
A Spanish-based company with offices
in France, Italy, the UK, Germany, Middle
East and Portugal that is now increasing
its international focus, including Russia
and Central Europe. While Televes expects
15% of revenues to come from
international markets this year, it expects
this to grow from 25% to 50% by 2012,
according to Sergio Martin, the company's
communications manager. It designs and
develops a range of products from set-top
boxes and antennas, through to headends,
amplifiers, splitters and repeaters.
Televes used ANGA to give out two clear
messages: firstly, that HDTV is the
company's primary technology vision. With
the DSO coming across Europe in 2012,
it believes DTT is where HD will mainly take
place and consequently all its products are
with that purpose in mind. Secondly, Televes
is trying to position itself differently in the
market by having the entire design,
development and manufacturing process all
done in-house in Santiago, Spain.
“European technology made in Europe”
is the company's slogan.
The flagship announcement at the show
was the DAT HD antenna, which uses the
company's proprietary BOSS (balanced
output signal system) technology that
enables the output signal level to be
regulated automatically. It has been
developed specifically with the transition to
digital in mind, and Martin claims it repels
echoes - digital signals' biggest enemy -
better than other products in the field.
Martin has high hopes, believing it will be
the company's star product in the next five
year that will bring in “huge revenues”.
AppearTV
Appear TV launched an audio levelling
module that allows the operator to
individually adjust the audio level of each
channel, without consumers having to reach
for the remote control to adjust the volume
after every channel change. It does this by
analysing audio packets in the MPEG
transport stream (TS) which contain
packets that control the volume. Each
module, which sits inside the headend, has
a capacity of up to 250 channels. Appear
TV's own headends can take more than of
these modules.
The problem of inconsistent audio levels
is an issue because there is no standard in
Europe, according to CEO Carl-Walter Holst.
Aurora
MSO want to exploit the infrastructure they
have, not “rip and replace”. With this in
mind, Aurora launched the MC2000 optical
node platform and has been deploying
fibre-deep products since 2002, which it
sees as a cost effective way of meeting
ANGA Cable show ends on a high
Best in show
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Cable & Satellite International july-august 2009 www.csimagazine.com page twenty nine
Show review
bandwidth requirements. The MC2000
is optimised for the European market
and has ports at the bottom, for example.
It lends itself to the MDU market that is
prevalent in Europe and Asia, as well as
RFoG - indeed, turning it into an RFoG hub
is the product's “natural conclusion”,
according to Aurora's marketing director,
Dawn Emms. While all-IP is the future, there
is a lot of life left in HFC networks and
there is no need for this approach as yet,
said Emms.
ActiveVideo/Avinity
ActiveVideo Networks (formerly ICTV) used
the show to announce its acquisition of
Avinity Systems, based in The Netherlands,
as it looks to make greater inroads into the
European market. Both companies use so-
called “cloud-based” interactive TV
platforms and applications.
ActiveVideo's European operations will be
relocated to Avinity's headquarters in
Hilversum, near Amsterdam, meaning that
its small UK office will be shut down.
ActiveVideo counts Tele2 as one customer
in Europe.
The company expects to be in 5m homes
worldwide by year-end 2009, although
predominantly still in the US, where there is
lot of pre-deployment activity taking place.
This activity proves the system can scale,
and the company can prove this through its
larger US deployments, said Avinity's CEO
Ronald Brockmann, who will become the
merged company's MD for Europe.
Jungo
The US, the biggest MSO market, is
dominated by Motorola and Cisco. That
relationship defines the cable gateway
industry, according to Eran Rom, CEO of
Jungo, a supplier of gateway middleware.
CableLabs, which is trying to control and
define specifications, is impacted by the two
vendors in particular, he said.
As telcos become more sophisticated, so
cable is fighting back, and part of this
strategy is the gateway. The next step is
incorporating video/IPTV functionality, with
the converged gateway, which will take care
of the entire home network, the level after
that. Whether this will be the “super
gateway” or the “super STB” depends on
where you sit.
Jungo has traditionally been stronger in
the telco market but recently won a deal
with ZON TVCabo for its OpenRG
residential gateway middleware. ZON will
deploy the first real DOCSIS 3.0 gateway
based on Jungo's solution and Rom expects
this to be a logical evolution of the gateway
and the first of many such products given
that MSOs are all going the 3.0 route. He
therefore expects similar deals with both
European and US operators, as operators
look to exert more control of the gateway.
Normally, the middleware component is
supplied by the cable modem maker, but
this model enables the MSO to separate the
software from the base hardware and
transfer it to equipment made by other
DOCSIS vendors.
RGB
RGB Networks has upgraded its Broadcast
Network Processor (BNP), the company's
flagship product, to support several
advanced capabilities including support for
the MPEG-4/H.264 video format, as well as
the addition of digital Emergency Alert
System (EAS) capabilities.
The company also introduced its Dynamic
Bandwidth Manager (DBM) to European
cable operators, enabling them to expand
their VoD offerings leveraging existing QAM
and fibre infrastructure. Operators can
deliver up to 50% more VoD programming
within existing bandwidth through advanced
transrating technology.
Verivue
CSI also caught up with Verivue, a start-up
formed in late 2006 by Boston-based
entrepreneur Jim Dolce. Of the 90 people
employed by the company, 78 are
engineers. It believes everything will go
unicast and envisions cable/TV and internet
video converging and as such targets
everyone from cable to telcos and internet
TV and broadband players.
The company's flagship product is the
MDX 9000 Series Media Distribution
Switch, a carrier-class, network-centric,
Flash-based video platform. Based on the
modular, blade concept, the MDX 9000
chassis can operate in the range of
20Gbps to 200Gbps, and provide between
2TB and 24TB of storage.
Verivue has raised some $65 million so
far and is funded by the likes of Comcast
and Arris, which is also acting as a re-seller
of the MDX 9000 to MSOs.
ANGA returns next year in Cologne at the
earlier date of 4-6 May.
CSI
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