Comcast Promises Beefed-Up Net Services, High DefComcast Promises Beefed-Up Net Services, High Def

In a keynote address at CES, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts promised a broad rollout of Internet services at rates up to 100 Mbps by the end of the year with more high-definition content.

information Staff, Contributor

January 8, 2008

4 Min Read
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LAS VEGAS — Just in time for digital convergence, the cable guy is getting a makeover. Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts said the cable TV provider is reaching out to other companies to enable more diverse and powerful systems, networks and services for digital entertainment.

In a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show Tuesday (Jan. 8), Roberts promised a broad roll out of Internet services at rates up to 100 Mbits/s by the end of the year with more high definition content. He also showed new Panasonic digital cable-ready TVs and a portable system as well as a Comcast video portal to rival Apple's iTunes and a unified messaging service.

Cable companies such as Comcast are complying with mandates from the Federal Communications Commission to open up their closed set-top boxes. At the same time they are seeking new ways to compete with telephone and Internet companies such as Verizon and Google who are getting into delivery of TV and video.

One of the cable industry's biggest responses has been to roll out a standard middleware layer for its set-tops called the Open Cable Application Platform (OCAP). Roberts re-branded OCAP under the new name tru2way in his keynote.

The platform also solves internal problems for cable providers. "Their time-to-market to upgrade an electronic program guide has been horrible because they have to write software for 15-20 different set-tops on their network. This gives them a single platform to write to," said Paul Liao, chief technology officer of Panasonic on hand for the keynote.

Panasonic has a high def set-top box for the tru2way platform in trials, set for delivery by June. Other set-top makers including LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung and Scientific Atlanta are developing similar systems for cable providers.

As part of the Roberts keynote, Panasonic showed 42- and 50-inch plasma TVs and a portable digital video player that docks into a set top box, all complaint with the tru2way platform. The portable system, bulky compared to other mobile players, has an 8.5-inch display and 60 Gbyte hard drive.

The portable system will not ship until early 2009, perhaps an indication of the rigorous and lengthy OCAP certification process at Cable Labs, the cable industry's R&D consortium. At last year's CES, PC Advanced Micro Devices unveiled the first one-way Cable Card device for PC systems which also went through a protracted certification process.

Two-way Cable Card devices that would let PCs link cable networks have been in development with Microsoft and others since mid-2007, said one Comcast executive in an interview before the keynote. However, it's not clear developers will be able to resolve all issue merging Windows and Java-based OCAP software, he said.

"We don't know yet if anyone will productize them. The issue is with the PC itself. It's a very complicated software stack, but I think we will get though it," said Tony Werner, a chief technologist at Comcast.

In his keynote, Roberts expressed confidence the PC will become a full cable TV client in the future, although he showed no demos and discussed no partnerships.

"We will enable tru2way for future Windows Media Center PCs without the need for a set-top box," Roberts said. "All cable content including video-on-demand and electronic program guides will be available to the Media Center ecosystem," he said.

Separately Roberts said Comcast will roll out Docsis 3.0 cable modems broadly by the end of the year. The modems can bond four or more 6 MHz channels to deliver data rates to 100 Mbits/second. Future versions will bond additional channels to hit up to 160 Mbits/s, he added.

Comcast is also upgrading its core storage network to carry more than 1,000 high def programs by the end of the year. A new underlying network architecture, deployed as part of the Comcast Project Infinity initiative, will also let the company maintain a library of 3,000 high def video-on-demand programs.

In services, Comcast is roiling out SmartZone, a PC application with an e-mail like interface for unified messaging. The program lets users check voice and e-mail messages as well as control TV functions such as remotely programming a digital video recorder.

In addition, Roberts announced Fancast, an entertainment portal where users can find, watch and manage video programming. The site will compete with iTunes as well as similar sites set up and in development by Hollywood studios.

"Comcast is the largest purchaser of TV content and now we are brining that content over to the Internet," said Roberts.

In a separate session Monday (Jan. 7) at CES, four studio executives predicted an explosion on online video use in the coming year. The growth will be driven in part by new aggregation sites such as Fancast, they suggested.

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