BOSTON -- The expected consumer appetite for virtual reality and high-quality video -- such as Ultra High Definition and High Dynamic Range content -- plus the eagerness of program producers to exploit the new display technologies will "drive the need for the gigabit home," says Charles Cheevers, chief technology officer-customer premises at Arris. He envisions data rates "could be as high as 500 Megabits per second: 100 times faster than current high definition TV technology." 

Cheevers's big bitstream dreams were part of his overview about the need to "widen the lanes to download the image" during his remarks at an INTX Imagine Park session on "Immersive Storytelling: How VR and Ultra HD are Mesmerizing Viewers."

His hardware and network management orientation capped an hour of presentations Tuesday morning from entertainment, reality and news producers who are pushing advanced video content into cable and OTT pipelines. Cheever also dealt with tricks to handle the massively greater bandwidth requirements -- such as "foveated rendering," a processing technique for displaying UHD and other signals. With viewers' eyes focused on the center of the screen, peripheral material (around the edges of the picture) can be displayed at a lesser resolution, thus conserving some bandwidth.

Whatever happens, Cheevers explained, the upgraded video demands "are going to affect the architecture" of the systems.

"We need to work with headset and device makers to assure a symbiotic relationship," he said.

Cheevers's remarks came on the heels of presentations that offered glimpses of the programming coming to cable from unexpected virtual reality producers such as the Associated Press as well as from familiar narrative producers.

Nora Ryan, executive VP and chief of staff at EPIX, focused on the "interactive overlay" that will be a key feature in the 10-episode Berlin Station series that will debut in September.

"We're using virtual reality and 360-degree experiences to engage fans in the show," Ryan said, emphasizing that the 360-degree views "get to a much broader audience without using headgear." The production used drones and other tools to explore the visual realm. "Where else can we take the viewer?" Ryan asked rhetorically.

In July, about two months before the series debuts, EPIX will begin offering "extended story telling" via BerlinStation.com, showing enhanced material -- not merely a second-screen experience, Ryan said. (See VR Adds Thrills to EPIX's 'Berlin Station' in the May 16 edition of Next TV, subscription required.)

Nathan Griffiths, interactive editor at the Associated Press, described the news agency's plans to delve deeper into VR and viewer-controlled immersive stories. "We think there's a big market for timely, newsy 360-degree content," he said, adding that AP is working with several large customers to create such content. He demonstrated a video that AP produced at the refugee camps in Calais, France, where people are awaiting transport to England.

He acknowledged that there was a "fairly high amount of post-production" which slowed down delivery of the video story. But he expects that new technology will make it possible to complete future productions overnight.

As for the value of such immersive reports, Griffith characterized it as "the first time you have the feeling of empathy, where you feel emotionally connected to the story." But he warned that developers should "prepare for it to be more work than you expected."

On another front, "bringing High Dynamic Range to the consumer," Craig Heiting, senior VP of business development at Deluxe OnDemand, also acknowledged that introducing the new technology will be "more complicated." Predictably he touted the value of using managed services -- such as the ones that Deluxe provides -- to facilitate the delivery of HDR, which he called "a game changer."

"We'll see improvements in HDR12, already in the works, that provides an even better color gamut," Heiting said. He stressed that "the MVPD industry will be faced with improvements in brightness and other factors" that consumers will demand as part of the ever-increasing roster of visually dynamic content.

Rian Bester, CTO of Insight Ultra HD, an entertainment reality network, reinforced that view with his demonstration of action-adventure videos, the core offering of his new network. It pushes out images at 25 Mbps -- a more demanding level than Netflix's 16 Mbps rate, Bester said.

Bester's comments -- along with the other immersive demonstrations -- queued up the opportunity for Arris's Cheevers to punch home his message about the need for faster, sturdier capabilities for the overwhelming video demands facing network operators.

(Photo of Imagine Park at INTX 2016 via intxshow.com/photos.)

Read more of our INTX 2016 coverage.

BOSTON -- Reports of the death of TV everywhere are greatly exaggerated, executives from Comcast, CTAM, Disney-ABC and Viacom said at an Imagine Park session late on Monday.

“Today, thousands of hours of content is available live, on-demand, and streamed, on your choice of hundreds of apps, across a dozen or more devices -- oh, and it’s free with your pay-TV subscription,” Anne Cowan, senior vice president of communications and marketing for CTAM, said. “We need a lot more love for this experience. Just sayin’.”

The real story about TVE is studded with telling numbers: Double-digit growth in TVE viewing in the first quarter; 84% of frequent TVE users say it’s a reason they’ll stay with their provider for another year; adoption of TVE grew by 36% amongst pay-TV subscribers in the U.S.

Comcast’s Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are a whopping 29 points higher amongst partakers in Xfinity TV Everywhere, said Vito Forlenza, senior director of TV everywhere content and product strategy. “When we saw that, we knew were onto something -- that it was time to double-down.”

Comcast launched its TVE product in 2011 with 45 on-demand titles. Now, on-demand, live and linear content is streaming across 18 devices, with 115 linear networks (and 150 by year end) available in the home, or outside of the home. 

Under a marketing tagline of “if it’s on TV, it’s in your hands,” some 40% of its total video base is using the service, every quarter.

ESPN, which recently added live streaming and personalized notifications (from final scores to in-game highlights) to its app, is averaging 7 million unique devices per month, which is about 30% growth per month, said Julius Lee, senior director of affiliate partnership development and operations for Disney and ESPN Networks.

“We know that fans are accustomed to coming to the ESPN app to check the latest scores, highlights and news -- now they can live stream, too,” Lee said. On its “bread and butter” college football genre, usage (measured in minutes of viewing) is up 72%; in the football nailbiter between Clemson and Alabama, fans watched via the app for 140 million total minutes viewed (a 32% increase), on 2 million unique devices (a 38% lift.)

Some 26 million Nickelodeon fans downloaded the app, and usage is more than doubling, year over year, said Andrew Borak, vice president of marketing in the Viacom Media Networks Content division. At MTV, he said, average monthly downloads are up 54%, and monthly streams are up 84%, year over year. “This past month we hit an all-time high for authentication.”

Now all that’s left is to tackle the remaining barriers. On that list, and based on research conducted by Hub Research, for CTAM: A lack of understanding (54%), a lack of awareness that even exists (53%), an assumption that it costs extra (51%).

“There’s an art and a science to breaking down barriers,” Borak said. “The art is how to use the right language -- how to say it’s free, without saying ‘free.’”

The science is the blending of traditional audience research with consumer insights from specific audiences.

Nickelodeon, for instance, unleashes kids aged 8-12 into a design lab, with instructions to create the “ideal TVE experience.” That effort identified the graphical icon of the lock and the key as the biggest barriers. “They think they have to do something to unlock it, like with a game."

(This article was updated on to correct the number of Nickelodeon fans that downloaded the app and how many minutes viewers logged on the ESPN app for the Clemson-Alabama football game.)

It’ll be hard to miss this year’s Imagine Park stage — it’s smack-dab in the center of the INTX “cityscape” show floor. As this year’s co-chairs, we can attest to the volume of goodness in store.

Refresher: Imagine Park turns five this year, and (as always) aims for a live-television, The Tonight Show–style treatment of the hot tickets in this industry we used to call “cable.” It’s three days of “show-don’t-tell,” programmed around the wheel with fresh info and demonstrations you may not have seen before.

Plus! Bountiful WiFi, on its own channel, so you won’t be competing for signal. Plenty of comfy seats and tables, to rest the feet and catch up on your stuff. A food/snack bar, to refuel. All in a park-like environment, with great music, occasional birdsong and a 5 p.m. to 6.m. happy hour on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. As we like to say: It’s always a happy hour in the Park! (Stop gagging!)

Here’s the short list of what’s hot:

Tuesday, May 5

11:35 a.m. – We’re sworn to secrecy on the particulars, but here’s a tip: The opening general session ends at 11:25, which gives you 10 minutes to get to Imagine Park. It’s a short walk. Bring a camera.

11:45 a.m. – If fresh data about over-the-top (OTT) video consumption is your thing, drop in to hear the latest from Amdocs and IE Market Research. It’s based on a 2015 poll of 4,000 domestic and international consumers, about OTT — what’s desirable, whether rights matter, how inclined we are to purchase content.

It’s part of the “Changing Face of the Interface” segment, which runs right after “the big reveal,” mentioned above. Bonus: Mari Silbey, independent tech writer and gifted tech conversationalist, hosts the session, which also features a segment on better (read: spoken) content discovery, from Rovi. Also: A look at enhanced navigation from Espial, a leader in the HTML-5 and RDK (Reference Design Kit) communities.

4 p.m. – Along the road to this year’s Imagine Park, we caught wind of a private moment during this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, where a vendor showed an (unnamed) cable CTO how to hack a “connected lock” -- to which the CTO replied, “Crap, I have that lock at home!”

See the hack during this jam-packed Internet of Things session, which features IOT aficionado Don Dulchinos, co-hosting with Parks Associates’s Tom Kerber. Plus, in terms of tech-side favs, this session features Alticast President and CTO John Carlucci, plus a double-duty demo from Comcast fellow Mark Francisco and Arris’s (always entertaining) Charles Cheevers about the how the IoT intersects with RDK.

Wednesday, May 6

12:45-1:30 p.m. –Joan Gillman, EVP and COO of Media Services for Time Warner Cable, makes her Imagine Park debut this year, as host to “The Money Cloud” -- which, as you might imagine, examines the intersections of advanced TV advertising, and cloud-based technologies. Bonus: The session debuts a “web speed” cloud technique only seen before in a CES “whisper suite.”

2:45-3:45 p.m. – The two of us co-host the first part of this session, where we’ll run through the hit list of what’s hot, both at INTX and within Comcast’s nearby booth. That’s followed by a deep-dive into the latest in “immersive engagement,” led by the talented and lively Rebecca Rusk, new head of BexUx.

4-5 p.m. – Definitely don’t miss the INTXHACK finals, hosted by Mike Hayashi, who left Time Warner Cable at the end of March to head up Jinsei 2.0 Consulting. The finals conclude a live, 24-hour developer challenge involving six Chicago-based startups, competing for accolades and cash money. As if Hayashi isn’t enough — Comcast chief software architect Sree Kotay will be on-hand as an INTX judge. And, when it ends, the second Imagine Park Happy Hour begins!

Thursday, May 7

9:45-10:30 a.m. – If Wi-Fi is in your crosshairs, drop in for “The Wireless Frontier” to see a live demonstration of Comcast’s new “Xfinity Share” service, powered by webRTC. Also: Fresh data about how Wi-Fi calling (also known as “Wi-Fi First”) is faring amongst service providers, and more.

10:45-11:30 a.m. – This is our favorite part of Imagine Park, every year: Lab Week. Here’s the background: A few years ago, in pursuit of the “agile workforce” culture that’s foundational to broadband-natives like Facebook, Google, Etsy, and Spotify, some MSOs opted to dive into the world of regularly occurring “lab weeks.”

That’s where developers are encouraged to develop a solution to a problem — internal or consumer-facing — then to demonstrate their work at a one-day “science fair.” Liberty Global, Time Warner Cable and Comcast return to the stage this year to show the latest from their respective lab weeks. Drop in to see a webRTC-based virtual truck roll, a Siri-like desktop problem solver, and (lots!) more.

Note: This is but a short list of Imagine Park fare. Be sure to check out the full slate here: https://intx15.ncta.com/show-floor/imagine-park/

See you at the park!

Leslie Ellis is technology analyst for Multichannel News and Next TV. Tony Werner is Comcast’s chief technology officer.

LOS ANGELES — This year’s Imagine Park program — a live TV “show within a show,” now in its fourth year at The Cable Show and designed to shine a light on the hot tickets in cable and broadband technology — served up plenty of sizzle, but a few rose to the top of the list.

Let’s start with FanTV, a new entrant in hardware-based video streamers and by far the most attractive and uniquely designed in the category. (Especially now that the original and very funky Boxee Box is officially “tele-vestigial,” meaning no longer on the market.)

FanTV is hands-down gorgeous — swoopy and elegant, with a buttonless remote that fits in the palm of the hand like a smooth rock and perches magnetically on top of the player like some kind of electronic cairn.

Its intent, market-tested with Cox last year and now scheduled to enter Time Warner Cable’s footprint, is to provide subscription and over-the-top video to broadband-only consumers. If you live in a Time Warner Cable market, run-don’twalk to get one when it hits the (retail) market this summer.

Also a gift to the category of television: “Dolby Vision,” an effort by the stalwarts in sound to make HD video brighter, for lack of a visual term.

The set-up: When we think of HD, we think of higher resolution — more pixels. Dolby’s position is that two other dimensions can be manipulated to enhance television, beyond additional pixels: Better pixels and faster pixels. It’s all about improved color gamut (blacker blacks, greener greens) and higher dynamic range. Watch for it to enter the market next year, as it gets licensed by CE and screen manufacturers.

My favorite Imagine Park session this year, even though it hadn’t happened yet at press time: A showcase of innovation coming out of the developmental labs inside Comcast, Liberty Global and Time Warner Cable.

For starters is the fact that these “lab weeks” even exist. All of the MSOs involved sponsor the activities as a way to let their developers stretch their wings, design-wise, then “pitch” their ideas internally throughout the year. It’s Part One of a broader body of work, known as “DevOps,” that blends people from product development and operations. It’s happening as a way to get new services out more quickly by removing the friction that traditionally hamstrings those two groups.

Here’s a partial list of what was scheduled to happen in the Lab Week session: A tablet mosaic that links related, Websourced content to subscription video; cloud-based services on legacy boxes; and a way to take your home phone service with you, internationally, on your mobile.

One other bit of extraordinarily good news coming out of this year’s Cable Show: The NCTA’s annual compilation of tech papers will be available online. Not just this year’s batch — all of them. And they go back for decades. Hallelujah!

Stumped by gibberish? Visit Leslie Ellis at www.translation-please.com or multichannel.com/blog.