itvt

–Interview with the Report’s Author, Steven Hawley

"IPTV Set-Top Boxes and the Subscriber Experience," the third in [itvt]’s series of six reports on IPTV, is now available. With the advent of advanced video codecs, software-based content protection, new system-on-chip processors and multi-room whole-home set-top designs, IPTV set-top boxes are undergoing a generational change that reflects the evolution of IPTV itself.

The report focuses on three main types of IP set-top boxes:

• Basic IPTV set-top boxes with video decoding for multichannel television, Web-on-TV walled garden functionality and VOD.
• Midrange set-top boxes with hard disk drives for PVR and additional functionality for karaoke and other specialized applications.
• High-end multi-room devices that employ the latest system-on-chip designs for high-definition television and media center functionality.

Concurrently with "IPTV Set-Top Boxes and the Subscriber Experience," [itvt] is releasing a set of matrices that contain comparative data on over 140 individual set-top box models from around 70 individual manufacturers. Comparison points include applications, processing environment, peripheral device and network connectivity, software, video codecs and vendor technology partnerships.

Like the first two reports in [itvt]’s IPTV series–"An In-Depth Introduction to Internet Protocol Television" and "A Practical Guide to IPTV Middleware"–the IPTV set-top box report and matrices were authored by prominent IPTV industry analyst and consultant, Steven Hawley. According to Hawley, "unlike many of the studies available from market researchers, this report describes what set-top boxes do and what’s inside. It provides a great reference point for service providers to cut through the bewildering number of set-top boxes and vendors building devices for broadband IP television, to help them find the right ones for their own service requirements."

Hawley recently spoke to [itvt]’s Tracy Swedlow about new technology developments in the IP set-top space, about how these developments translate into product evaluation criteria that operators need to be aware of when launching an IPTV service, about the criteria he employed in drawing up the set-top matrices, about the future of the IPTV space and more.

[itvt]: You’ve just completed the third paper in your six-paper research series for [itvt]. The paper’s title is "IPTV Set-Top Boxes and the Subscriber Experience." Why did you consider it important to publish a paper specifically on this topic at this time?

Hawley: This paper was developed at a very interesting time for the IPTV space. The roughly simultaneous emergence of MPEG-4 advanced video codecs, new set-top microprocessors and advanced software have made it much more practical for telcos to offer a competitive mix of live and on-demand programming–both standard- and high-definition.

[itvt]: Why is that?

Hawley: In a nutshell, because these new technologies have made offering IPTV much less expensive than before. With these advances, telcos suddenly don’t have to worry as much about upgrading their networks from copper to fiber, to support higher bandwidth. And although they seem to get the most attention, the availability of advanced video codecs isn’t the only change currently taking place: another very important change impacting the IP set-top box space–and discussed in depth in this paper–has to do with the microprocessors that drive set-top boxes. We’re now transitioning from an era where you had multiple dedicated microprocessors for core-processing, application-processing and video-decoding to an era where a single processor can do all of these things. Having separate chips for each of those processes was fairly expensive, and increased the price of the set-top box. By contrast, today’s generation of system-on-chip processors can do what used to require a whole set of chips with a much smaller set of chips or even with a single chip–at a much lower cost.

At the same time, the video-decoding function can now be done by software that’s resident in that single chip. Similarly, content protection can now be done in software that also runs in the system-on-chip device, eliminating the need for a costly hardware SmartCard device. If a better codec becomes available, or if the content protection is somehow compromised and must be replaced, the service provider can download new software to the box without a site visit or without having to rely on the subscriber to intervene. In combination, these factors have significantly reduced the cost-per-unit for set-top boxes.

[itvt]: I take it that these new technology developments translate into product evaluation criteria that telcos and others need to be aware of when considering launching an IPTV service…

Hawley: Yes they do. And although most of the reports I’ve seen about IPTV in general, and set-top boxes in particular, make reference to these developments, they don’t take the next step of truly helping the service provider target the right kinds of devices, and the right suppliers, to address their unique needs. This paper covers these changes and explains their impact on the features and functionality of today’s IPTV set-top boxes.

Set-top boxes represent the largest percentage of the capital expenditure on equipment that most service providers will make. If a telco is going to make this huge CPE commitment, it will want to make sure that those boxes incorporate and support the latest technologies that not only have the least disruptive impact on the rest of their network and the rest of their operation, but also will have the longest possible useful life.

As IPTV ramps up and telcos of all sizes are moving toward IPTV deployment, it’s very good timing for a paper like this to come out and talk about the changes that are taking place that impact the IP set-top space.

[itvt]: Broadly speaking, what kinds of IPTV set-top boxes are out there?

Hawley: This report defines and details three classifications of IPTV set-top boxes: low-end boxes, which are essentially basic set-top boxes that can render the user interface, accommodate some basic interactivity, and decode video; midrange boxes, which add memory, processing power, and local storage; and high-end boxes, which add multi-room and media-center capabilities.

[itvt]: What other kinds of IPTV customer premises equipment are there?

Hawley: Some will argue that devices like Sony’s LocationFree TV and the Slingbox are also IPTV devices. Broadly speaking, because they do use broadband IP networks, they can be characterized as such. But in order to keep this report focused, although it discusses Internet TV devices in general terms and provides some examples, it concentrates primarily on the boxes that are deployed at the consumer end of managed, secure, switched digital video deployments, rather than the open Internet.

[itvt]: Your report is accompanied by very thorough matrices which examine the feature sets of the various IP set-tops available on the market. Could you talk about why you decided to prepare these matrices, which weren’t originally foreseen as part of the paper series?

Hawley: This paper discusses the "what" the "why" and the "how" of IPTV set-top boxes. It delivers a body of knowledge about what set-top boxes are. But by the time you’re done reading the paper, hopefully you’re at the point where you’re wondering, "Where can I get these boxes? Who makes them? What are their features? And how do I evaluate all of these products?" That was the reason for these matrices.

The main report details the anatomy of IPTV set-top boxes in general, while the product and feature matrices allow would-be buyers to compare more than 140 individual set-top box models. With all the developments that are impacting the IP set-top box space, it’s very useful to have this all summarized in one place. Anybody evaluating set-top boxes and weighing a commitment of capital dollars to a commercial deployment would, I think, benefit greatly from this knowledge-base.

When I started work on the paper, I thought that I could provide an overview of the different set-top boxes that are available in maybe 30 pages or so. But, as I got deeper into this topic, I started to realize just how many IP set-top box vendors there are out there, and just how complex they are. Of course, in the trade press, you usually hear about the same 10 to 15 vendors who have good marketing departments–and, admittedly, pretty good products. But there are actually a huge number of vendors that just aren’t so well known–because they’re start-up companies, or because they don’t do very effective marketing, or because they’re engineering-driven companies that build OEM products for other vendors. So I did my best to identify all these companies, profile them and get their products into the matrices.

[itvt]: Could you outline for us some of the criteria that you included in the matrices?

Hawley: The first rows describe the basic features of the device. Does it support only linear TV or will it support on-demand services? Will it support Web-on-TV? Will it support features that are important in certain geographic markets–like videoconferencing, for example, which is an important application to service providers in Europe? Or karaoke, which is pretty important to service providers in the Far East?

 

Other criteria were added to answer such questions as: What’s the processing environment? How much processing and memory power does it have? What software is included with it? What network connectivity does it have and what devices does it output to? Can it output only to a standard-definition TV or does it also support HDTV? Which HDTV formats does it support? Does it only have an analog output or does it have a digital output? Which video codecs does it support? Which content-protection technologies does it support? Is any software bundled with it? Whose equipment has it been tested with? What companies does the manufacturer partner with? All these questions are answered in the matrices.

Another goal in preparing the matrices was to make it clear that there is no such thing as a "one size fits all" set-top box. Service providers need to be aware of the variety of set-top box choices. The types of services enabled by each of those levels of set-top boxes is different, and a decision by an operator in favor of one or other level of set-top box will impact decisions about other areas of their IPTV deployment–for example, whether or not it is more economical to store content in the network or in the set-top.

If, as an IPTV service provider, your priority is to keep costs down, the intuitive thing to do would be to look at the low-end set-top boxes. These kinds of boxes can decode video and present the user experience using HTML, JavaScript, Web graphics and, of course, a video feed. They have an operating system and a browser built into them, so they can frame a user experience that includes TV and text data, and they can essentially render what looks like a Web page on TV. On the other hand, some service providers might opt for high-end multi-room devices that will cost more, but that ultimately allow them to offer additional services, at a reasonable cost per room, that end up bringing in enough revenue to more than justify the additional upfront cost. So, another goal of the report was to make sure that service providers are properly informed as to how set-top purchase decisions are likely to impact their business model over the long term.

[itvt]: What do you think are the implications for the interactive TV space–and for television in general–of this new generation of IP set-top boxes that you researched in this paper?

Hawley: Well, this new generation of processors, coupled with the increasingly low cost of memory, means that today’s IP set-top boxes can host a very robust applications environment, and thus allow very rich interactivity. Applications which, in the past, one might have run on a PC but which one would never have thought of running on a set-top box can now be ported to these new set-tops.

[itvt]: You’re now working on the next paper in the series. What will that paper cover?

Hawley: Content, content models and content protection. Content, after all, is what comes into a set-top box and is what enables a service provider to make money. Subscribers don’t buy good engineering; they buy programming! But if that content is packaged in creative ways that represent revenue-generating service bundles while being protected in such a way that it can’t be stolen, this protects the interests of both the service provider and the content owner. And at the end of the day, all three constituencies–service providers, content owners, and consumers–must benefit.

So the next paper will talk about the methods of content protection and the business models that content protection enables, and at the same time will talk about the kinds of content that are currently available and where they come from. These issues are very relevant to phone companies–or any broadband carrier–right now: just as is the case for set-top boxes, anybody implementing IPTV is bombarded with lots of different content and content-protection choices.

In fact, one thing that keeps coming back to me as I research the contents of these papers is that every one of the categories that make up a complete IPTV solution–headends, networks, set-top boxes, processors, middleware, content, and so on–is absolutely crowded with vendors. So it’s going to be very hard for someone who’s not embedded in the industry, and who’s not in a position to talk to all the vendors dispassionately, to sift through all those vendors and determine which one is best suited to their needs.

If a telephone company is going to be spending millions of dollars on set-top boxes, and additional hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on content protection, and also spending large amounts of time on putting together agreements with content suppliers–they absolutely need to be familiar with the landscape of what’s available and to get educated on the fundamentals of the technology. So that as they are approached by vendors–and vendor proposals are going to be coming at them every day–they have enough knowledge to make an informed and objective decision that isn’t going to cost them down the road.

Look at the content-protection space alone: just off the top of my head, I can name 10 to 15 companies in that category, all of which claim they’re the best. Prospective IPTV providers have to gain a thorough understanding of what the different approaches to content protection are, of which of the approaches is most effective for which kinds of deployments, of which approaches are being supported by the studios, and so forth.

Until they do the research, most service providers don’t realize that there are actually a number of interlocking technologies that make up the whole content-protection picture. DRM is about the business rules that govern the use of content, while encryption makes that content unusable unless the user is authenticated; IP-specific authentication methods are replacing traditional conditional access, and there’s watermarking for forensic analysis. These elements all have to work together, and not all the vendors deliver the full repertoire of those interlocking elements. Only a handful of them actually do.

[itvt]: Why do you think IPTV is important?

Hawley: IPTV–whether it’s implemented by a telephone company or a cable provider or an ISP–is fundamentally a two-way platform. It provides content owners with a new distribution channel for their content assets. It also will be part of a unified multi-service platform that can offer the same content and the same services on multiple connected and wireless devices in multiple form factors.

IPTV creates an opportunity for new service providers to enter into and compete within what was formerly an unavailable playing field. As the telcos enter and present their business requirements, interactive applications developers can respond by producing sophisticated interactive applications.

[itvt]: What’s ahead for IPTV?

Hawley: IP is a major catalyst for the truly converged world that people have been talking about for 30 years now–where you can have any content, anywhere, at any time, on any consumer device. But to get there, as anyone doing it can attest, will be a real challenge. One way the challenge will be made bearable is by agreeing to a common set of interfaces that make it easier for a service provider to assemble a set of devices, networks and software that define and deliver their services without expensive custom development.

Consequently, technology providers are beginning to offer service delivery platforms that use a services-oriented architecture to integrate across the disparate IT systems found in IPTV deployments. There is also a gradual but steady move toward software standards, and the IPTV world is likely to leverage the good work being done in the OCAP and DVB-MHP arenas. Last year, ATIS–the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Standardization–formed working groups to deliver IPTV reference specifications and best practices recommendations that are expected to be delivered in draft form within the next several months.

So to answer your question of "what’s coming?": all of this is emblematic of a maturation of the IPTV space.

[itvt]: Why does IPTV interest you?

Hawley: Well, first off, because it integrates a lot of technology areas that I’ve been involved with in the past. I’ve been involved in enterprise networking, in telecommunications, in software, in user experiences, in digital media. IPTV–or "telco video" or "switched digital video," as we used to call it when I first got involved in the space–represents the integration of all these areas that I’ve developed expertise in over the course of my career. It’s an intellectual challenge!

Another reason I’m fascinated by IPTV is that it creates competition in an area that sorely needs it. IPTV represents a way for new players to offer media services to consumers. Many of today’s cable and satellite providers are owned by vertically integrated media conglomerates. These conglomerates not only own the pathway into your home, through which the media gets to your TV set or to other consumer devices, but also–as you work your way back upstream through their network into the headend and all the way back to the origins of the content itself–in many cases, the parent company owns, or at least has technology holdings in, much of that too.

From a public policy perspective, I think the emergence of IPTV is very, very important. When I think of how few media companies there really are, I begin to think about the diversity of information that enters our lives and whether or not it’s enough for us to function effectively in our democratic society. Basically, IPTV is enabling new forms of competition at a time when it’s really needed, and in some ways it’s already beginning to upset the media industry’s current conventional wisdom. To me, that’s a good thing.

—

To order "IPTV Set-Top Boxes and the Subscriber Experience" and/or the comprehensive matrices that accompany the report, email paper@itvt.com or call 415 824 5806.

Click http://www.itvt.com to subscribe to our free email newsletter, which contains all the news stories you see on this Web site, and additional breaking news and scoops, in-depth features, interviews, screenshots, videos, and other exclusive content you will not find anywhere else.