Picture-in-Picture Viewing Within the TV Program Guide

Just a few short years ago, Internet Protocol television, or IPTV for short, was the new kid on the block and didn't get much attention. That's certainly the case no longer, as this technology has proven it's here to stay. IPTV is the focal point of both exhibits and a number of special seminars and educational opportunities at the NAB Show.

For Enrique Rodriguez, Microsoft's corporate vice president for TV, Video and Music Business, the key trends in the IPTV industry are scale and service differentiation.

"We are now witnessing major deployments and mainstream consumer adoption," said Rodriguez.

He said his company has "seen 150 percent subscriber growth over the past year," to more than 2.5 million global subscribers to TV services powered by its Mediaroom platform. Rodriguez attributed this spike in interest to IPTV's superior ability with regard to its competition to offer more "quality of experience" services.

To illustrate this, he cited AT&T's U-verse IPTV service, which launched Total Home DVR last year. This service "offers a number of innovative applications such as AT&T's U-bar for customizable weather, stock, sports and traffic information," he said.

What's more, he noted, IPTV is no longer a telecom-only proposition. Cable's move to DOCSIS standards enabled it to launch IPTV services, he said.

"This past January we announced China-based Guangzhou Digital Media Group as the first cable service provider to use Mediaroom to deploy an IPTV service," said Rodriguez.

Microsoft will demonstrate Mediaroom, Windows Media Center and Silverlight to present the full spectrum of opportunity available to content owners and service providers looking to deliver entertainment across multiple screens.

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HaiVision's Interoperability and "Video Over IP" Charts

HaiVision's Vice President of Marketing and Business Development Peter Maag, noted that companies can cash in on the ubiquity of industry standard H.264 by employing multipurpose encoding. The Montreal-based equipment supplier and integrator is demonstrating its IPTV platform, MAKO-HD.

"What people really want to try to achieve with their IPTV — with whatever network video challenge they're working on — is to encode once and use many times," said Maag. "There have been additional things that have been worked into the [MAKO-HD] product architecture that enable it to extend beyond the walls of that confined point-to-point communication environment. What you can do with it up and down the line is very new."

Profiting from the more widespread availability of higher bit rate transmission as well as optimized encoding technologies should also be considered, said Ramzi Shakra, senior marketing manager for Electrosonic Systems Inc. The Burbank, Calif.- based equipment and system integration services provider is introducing its new ES7100 encoder.

"IP video transfer is being used as backup or as a substitute for [higher priced] satellite transmission for high image quality applications such as live sports broadcast," said Shakra. "Electrosonic offers broadcasters, through their PURE3 compression codec, the ability to transfer high-definition video at full resolution with low latency, low bit rates and high image quality."

TO CASH IN, PLAN AHEAD

In order to benefit from these trends, Gary Meyer, product manager for JDSU, urged industry participants to plan ahead. He and his company are particularly concerned that plans include the implementation of a well monitored integrated system.

The Milpitas, Calif.-based provider of communications test and measurement solutions will display its integrated portfolio of handheld equipment, probes, analyzers and software for IPTV.

"Investing in the proper tools and systems to monitor the service from end-to-end helps enable, early on, rapid and profitable growth," said Meyer. "Service providers should implement an integrated system for accurate diagnosis and analysis."