Women in Cable & Telecomunications says its Signature Luncheon series will return for year two to the CES show in Las Vegas.

With the shuttering of NCTA: The Internet & Television Association's annual INTX convention last year, where the luncheon had taken place since 2010, WICT had to find new digs. WICT has called CES "the perfect partner for the group."

The next lunch will be held Jan. 10 at the Aria Hotel. The lunch salutes the best companies for women in cable and telecom.

RELATED: Cable TV Pioneers Names 2017 Class

"On behalf of the WICT Board of Directors, we are very excited that the WICT Signature Luncheon will return to CES, the largest media and technology event in the world," said Martha Soehren, chair of the WICT Board of Directors and chief talent development officer, senior VP, Comcast, in a statement. "The remarkable support we received from WICT's stakeholders during our debut earlier this year reaffirmed our partnership with CES and offers WICT a strong platform to highlight the business imperative of strong gender diversity."

Comcast is the luncheon's "premiere sponsor."

A social media thread complaining about NCTA's high-profile but restricted-audience "Near Future" conference in Washington, DC,  on April 27 has triggered annoyance among long-time cable industry executives who seem to have a Pavlovian need to attend a convention at this time of year. 

When NCTA-The Internet & Television Association unveiled details for its invitation-only half-day program, it reminded some veterans that they'll miss their traditional annual cable schmoozefest this year.

Related: The Near Future Is Now [subscription required]

In a series of Facebook postings, California public relations guru Bob Gold, president/CEO of Bob Gold & Associates, attracted complaints that NCTA is ignoring "inclusion, respect and collegiality" and prompted the association's senior spokesman to offer a lengthy explanation about the purpose and limited scope of April 27 event.

Gold said that many media and publishing colleagues have told him that they have "no idea what the event is about or who it is for."

In particular, Gold kvetched that NCTA's website for the program openly invites people to register, but trying to do so generates a response that NCTA is "unable to accommodate your registration request." Another veteran cable executive lamented that NCTA has made the "C" in its name "silent and meaningless." Several fretted that Cable Pioneers and other industry stalwarts are being shut out from the event.

Some commenters compared the response to a recent United Airlines incident that was disrespectful to loyal customers -- although no videos are involved in the NCTA process.

NCTA senior VP of communications Rob Stoddard acknowledged in a Facebook posting and in an interview with Multichannel News that the structure of the "invitation-only" announcement was awkward -- a result of NCTA's effort to be transparent while pursuing its goal of a small event for Washington policymakers and a handful of top industry executives.  

The D.C. venue where "Near Future" will be held can only accommodate about 300 people, Stoddard said, adding that he expects NCTA Board members, which include some vendors as well as some large MSOs, will attend, bringing small teams of their colleagues with them.

"We're walking a fine line by publicly talking about a conference with a capacity that's limited," Stoddard said. He characterized "the targeting of invitations" as laser focused. The audience is expected to include mid-level staff members from Capitol Hill and regulatory agencies, with a goal of introducing them to cable's leaders and technology allies.

NCTA has said that "Near Future" is not a "traditional Washington policy conference," although it is aimed at policymakers who need context for cable's role in the telecom ecosystem. The agenda, which is being co-designed with CableLabs, includes speakers from Salesforce, Google, IBM, Zoom, 20th Century Fox, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Southern California.

Mark Bell, NCTA's VP-Industry Affairs, said in an interview that the sessions are intended to demonstrate applications cable is supporting that require high bandwidth and low latency, such as projects involving smart cities, cognitive networks, natural language processing and remote collaboration -- many of which will also involve future wireless capabilities.

Nonetheless, some long-time cable convention attendees seem offended that they are being left out of the proceedings. 

NCTA's Board abandoned the big annual convention last year after an especially comatose Boston event. In my commentary, just before the 2016 convention, I recommended an overdue overhaul for the event.

With his patented low-key aplomb Stoddard spun a response to Gold's Facebook complaint, pointing to many other industry events that NCTA supports, including Cable Diversity Week, the Cable Center Hall of Fame and the Society of Cable Telecommunications's CableTEC Expo.

The tiny brouhaha reminded me of growth pains I've seen in other industries. Similar anxiety/withdrawal symptoms emerged as various computer conventions went out of business decades ago. Lots of stalwarts who had complained about going to those trade shows for years began to agonize when the events ceased to exist. Eventually, they realized they could live without them.  Similarly, a few marketing conferences were totally downsized/revamped (often accompanied by name changes at the sponsoring organizations) as their members' businesses migrated into the digital era.

One of the commenters on Gold's thread questioned why the small NCTA event overlaps with the huge National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas the same week. That scheduling conflict was bruited about last year when the intersecting timetables (NAB in Las Vegas and the originally planned INTX convention in Washington, DC) became apparent.

As it turns out, you could get a small dose of your cable convention fix in Las Vegas next week.

Related: NAB Filling the Cable Tech Void in Las Vegas [subscription required]

NAB is capitalizing on the cross-media frenzy with several programs about cable TV issues, beyond the usual retransmission-consent harangues.

Related: Altice's Dexter Goei to Keynote NAB

For example, CTAM is aiding and abetting the NAB agenda by organizing a session on "Content at the Center of Media Transformation" on Monday, April 24. CTAM  president/CEO Vicki Lins is moderating the session, with speakers from Fox Networks, Revolt  Media & TV and Lionsgate.

It may not have the lavish parties and networking opportunities of the Cable Show --  er, National Show, uh INTX -- of previous years. But then again, neither did those conventions in their final few years.

The Cable TV Pioneers will hold its 51st annual banquet in Denver on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017, just prior to the start of the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo.

RELATED: Fifty Years of Cable Camaraderie

The banquet for the 2016 class was held in Boston just ahead of teh INTX, the annual industry tradeshow. The NCTA announced in September that the show was being wound down, meaning the event originally set for next April in Washington, D.C., won’t be happening.

RELATED: NCTA 'Sunsetting' INTX

With no INTX, the cable industry’s annual technology and engineering confab will be stepping into the breach.

Nomination details, banquet location, sponsorship and early ticket details will be available in sometime in the first quarter of 2017 at: www.cabletvpioneers.org

”There were many industry organizations that generously offered their venues as a kick-off for our dinner,” Cable TV Pioneer chairwoman (and member of the 2002 Pioneers class) Susan Bitter Smith said in a statement. “We decided that for the 2017 banquet, SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo offered the stature, attendance and location that would serve the greatest number of our members.”

”As cable’s ‘hometown,’ Denver has been a hub of content, technology and operations for our industry, so it’s a great place to celebrate our roots and induct the new Class of 2017. Plans are already underway to select a memorable banquet venue, and we’re revving up our sponsorship packages,” added Pioneer dinner chair David Fellows, and a member of the 2008 class of Pioneers.

“SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo’s role as the industry’s pre-eminent nexus for learning, innovation and deal-making is a direct result of the vision and foresight of many of the Cable TV Pioneers,” said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE and a member of the 2010 class of Pioneers. “Kicking-off Expo Week with the Pioneers Banquet complements our mission of expanding the relevance of Expo to programmers, marketers, media executives and other industry professionals.”

Cable-Tec Expo is set to run Oct. 17-20 at the Colorado Convention Center. 

The Cable Center has named the 2017 class of the Cable Hall of Fame, to be inducted in Washington, D.C., on April 26. For the first time, the class includes a TV show.

The inductees are: Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal; Jill Campbell, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Cox Communications; Michael T. Fries, CEO of Liberty Global; Ken Lowe, chairman, president and CEO, Scripps Networks Interactive; The Sopranos, the HBO series, with the induction accepted by David Chase, the show's creator, and David Zaslav, president and CEO, Discovery Communications.

The 20th annual ceremony will be held during the time when the NCTA had planned to hold its former annual convention in D.C. before opting to "sunset" the convention. The Cable Center had previously said it was keeping the date in D.C. for the Hall of Fame event. The Cable Center has not named the specific venue in D.C. for the ceremony yet. The event's web site is www.cablehalloffame.com.

In a release, the Cable Center said the honorees were chosen based on their leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation in media. As for including a TV show for the first time, the center said The Sopranos and its creator, Chase, "will be acknowledged for the impact the program had by catapulting HBO and the entire cable community into groundbreaking scripted storytelling."

“This year’s Cable Hall of Fame honorees are truly the best of the best,” Michael Willner, president and CEO of Penthera Partners and chairman of The Cable Center’s board of directors, said in the release. “They are leaders of some of the most influential companies in the world, and have shaped the industry’s operations, programming and our society. We are thrilled to induct our first series into the Cable Hall of Fame as well. The Sopranos was the seminal series that proved television was more than the broadcasting networks alone, and we are excited to pay tribute to the impact it had on the growth and success of our industry.”

“It is an honor to welcome these individuals into the Cable Hall of Fame, and to recognize our first television program,” Cable Center CEO Jana Henthorn said in the release. “The passion, drive and thought leadership displayed by all of the honorees has steered our industry into the international powerhouse it is today, and we look forward to celebrating their achievements at the Cable Hall of Fame celebration."

Since 1998, 121 men and women have been inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame, the Denver-based Cable Center said.

WASHINGTON — The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is restoring “television” to its name, dropping “telecommunications” and “cable,” but preserving “NCTA,” while adding the all-important “Internet” in the leadoff position.

The result: “NCTA-The Internet & Television Association.”

The executive committee of the NCTA (that will remain the second-reference shorthand for the association) approved the new moniker earlier this summer. The new branding is being unveiled today (Sept. 19) and includes a website relaunch and a "brand promise video."

“Modernizing our brand injects a new sense of excitement into our effort to represent an industry that is America’s largest and fastest home Internet provider and the creator of the world’s best television content,” NCTA president Michael Powell said in unveiling the new name and logo.

RELATED:What's in a Name? How NCTA's New Brand Came To Be (subscription reqd.)

The NCTA was granted the fifth extension of its trademark on “NCTA The Internet & Television Association” on July 30 of this year, which gave the trade group six months to either use the name or lose the mark.

Describing the new logo, NCTA said it was meant to project “unity, partnership and energy.”

“The interlocking red circle and blue dot form a purple intersection that represents how NCTA brings together its members for unified positions and speaks with a singular voice on issues impacting the internet and television marketplace,” the association said.

The NCTA applied for the new name back in December of 2012 and rechristened its annual Cable Show convention as “INTX: the Internet and Television Expo” in in September 2014. The association’s name change comes nearly two years to the day after that

Originally known as the National Cable Television Association, the NCTA dropped “television” and added the ampersand and “telecommunications” back in 2000 (though ISPs were not so happy with the FCC adding “telecommunications” to their broadband business cards via Title II).

It doesn’t hurt to drop the “telecommunications” part of the brand, since cable ops argue their broadband business should not be classified as such.

An NCTA spokesperson said dropping telecommunications was not related to that issue, saying it was not a change based on policy but on modernizing the brand, something that “has been on the radar for a few years.”

After the NCTA registered the possible name change, then changed the name of The Cable Show, the association name change was the other shoe that many were waiting to see drop.

NCTA’s new name is a case of president Michael Powell literally putting his mark on the association.

Powell suggested that the “cable” in NCTA was too restrictive in an interview with Multichannel News back in April 2014. He said that “underrepresents the breadth of what we are and what we do. We are not some old-fashioned cable industry. We are probably, now, the country’s most sophisticated full-service communications provider.”

“The updated NCTA brand is a continuation of the association’s effort to reflect how the marketplace is no longer defined by silos of the past,” the NCTA said in announcing the change. Powell has also long advocated for eliminating the regulatory silos that different services have been placed in.

“What do you call an industry that is the biggest WiFi provider in the country? What do you call an industry that is the leading broadband distributor in the country? What do you call an industry that also distributes the highest quality video that you can consume?” Powell said when the Cable Show was renamed.

The NCTA has now supplied the answer: NCTA-The Internet & Television Association.

A version of this article is in the current edition ofMultichannel News.

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has joined the parade poking the Federal Communications Commission for what many see as Google-friendliness on various fronts.

The Tom Wheeler-led FCC is hardly the first commission to generate speculation about the influence of the powerful search engine. One media wag, for example, once christened Julius Genachowski “Googlechowski,” suggesting he was a kindred regulatory spirit when it came to imposing network-neutrality regulations on Internet-service providers while not regulating edge providers. Genachowski told then-National Cable & Telecommunications Association president Kyle McSlarrow that the focus was not Google, but “the next Google.”

But with chairman Wheeler insisting edge providers are beyond the FCC’s regulatory reach, and proposing a set-top box regime that could give Google access to multichannel video providers’ set-top data, the chatter about this Google’s rise as a lobbying power inside the Beltway has become something of a drumbeat.

Beating that drum last week in a blog post, with accompanying cartoon, was the TPA, which illustrated a blog by its president, David Williams, with a cartoon (pictured) depicting a particularly telling renovation at FCC headquarters.

Asked about Wheeler’s alleged Google-centricity, a spokesperson for the chairman responded: “Chairman Wheeler’s proposals aim to give consumers access to increased innovation, improved access to critical communications networks and more competition. These policies — from preventing fast lanes on the Internet to opening up wireless airwaves for new mobile technologies — are intended to empower consumers rather than favor any particular company.”

— John Eggerton

NCTA Talks to NAB, Hopes Confabs Can Minimize Conflicts

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the National Association of Broadcasters often find themselves on opposites sides of policy arguments.

Next April, their main conventions also are in (partial) conflict. The next NAB Show is April 22-27 in Las Vegas, and NCTA’s next INTX: The Internet & Television Expo is April 26-28 in Washington, D.C.

The NAB Show is far bigger than INTX, with a reported 103,012 attending and 1,874 exhibiting this past April. The NCTA doesn’t report INTX figures but predicted at least 8,000 would attend the May gathering in Boston. A non-NCTA source told The Wire about 6,500 attendees and 170 companies ended up being there. But when INTX is in NCTA’s hometown of D.C., the attendance numbers rise as government figures can attend easily.

NCTA officials recently thanked speakers who helped out at NCTA and said they were working to minimize conflicts resulting from the schedule clash. (INTX booked its D.C. date in 2010.) How so? Mainly by working with the broadcasters’ group on when to book key public-policy speakers, NCTA senior director of communications Joy Sims said.

NAB executive VP of communications Dennis Wharton confirmed the effort at convention comity, saying, “We are working closely with our friends at NCTA to make sure FCC commissioners and other public policy folks can attend both the NAB Show 2017 and INTX.”

If only Congress could be so cooperative.

— Kent Gibbons

‘Versailles’ in NYC: Ovation Sends French Fare to Ad Agencies

To promote the Oct. 1 premiere of costume drama Versailles, Ovation TV is sending a French street-food truck to New York City ad agencies this week. On Monday it’s at MediaCom USA, Mindshare, Maxus and Meta, 498 Seventh Ave.; Tuesday, it’s at OMD at 195 Broadway; Wednesday, Carat at 150 E. 42 St.; Thursday, Mediavest and Starcom at 1675 Broadway; and Friday, UM, Initiative and BPN at 100 W. 33 St., per the network.

Bon appétit!

It was inescapable at INTX. From a standing-room only session to attendees gleefully flailing about in booth after booth across the floor, virtual reality was a star of the show. But what cable really wants to know is whether it can live up to the hype and be the next big opportunity.

IBB Consulting recently published an in-depth report on the VR opportunity, featuring insights collected from more than 1,000 people who said they’re interested in VR (representing 17% of online U.S. consumers). IBB’s analysis points to an early advantage for cable operators that can capitalize on existing assets to assemble an end-to-end play supported by thoughtful content offerings.

Only about one-third of respondents who said they’re interested in virtual reality have actually tried it. This represents an opportunity for cable companies to show customers the value of VR through demos and convert more from the “not interested” camp — especially with more than three-quarters of these consumers willing to pay for a VR head-mounted display (HMD) and more than one-quarter of respondents saying they plan to access VR content via their pay TV provider.

With regard to content, gaming has gotten most of the attention thus far, but IBB found that movies and TV actually have the broadest appeal. In fact, about 50% of respondents in all age groups older than 18 said they’d like to watch this type of content in VR. While men express the most interest in categories like live events, user-generated content and gaming, women are 35% more interested than men in travel-themed experiences.

The VR market has seen entrants from startups to tech titans, but only piecemeal services exist today. Consumers have to research their options, find a place to buy an HMD and seek out content on different platforms. Post-purchase support requires jumping back through those same hoops in a fragmented value chain.

From our research, the most popular consumer VR use cases aligned well with cable’s core strengths of driving value to the high-speed data network, reigniting video product innovation and enabling communication services.

Cable can accelerate this market entry by leveraging end-to-end capabilities that break down barriers to VR adoption. After all, VR is another form of video for now, and cable knows how to package and sell video. It already has a billing relationship with customers, programming relationships, sales and service capabilities — essentially the key customer- experience components that others will be scrambling to piece together.

As MSOs invest in physical experience stores, they have a prime opportunity to leverage these existing assets to convert more VR awareness into interest. Creating thoughtful demos that let customers physically experience content that interests them on a range of VR HMDs with the ability to ask questions of knowledgeable salespeople may create an early advantage.

Yes, the market is becoming crowded. But today, it is disjointed. If cable makes a play now, it will be well positioned when the competition pieces together the partnerships needed to match this early advantage.

VR is here. Now, how fast will cable move to make this opportunity a reality?

Boston is New England Sports Network’s hometown (it’s owned by the local Red Sox and Bruins), so when the cable-TV industry’s national convention comes around, as INTX did May 16-18, that means inviting some visitors to Fenway Park or to a hotel rooftop cocktail party and even hitting the show floor for a bit.

For 10 NESN staffers, the Thursday morning after the show was time to uproot some invasive plants along the Charles River, along with other volunteers helping out TheEsplanade Association. (UPDATE: See NESN staffers at work along the esplanade in this NESN promotional spot supporting the organization). 

Since 2008, NESN, under CEO Sean McGrail, has encouraged employees to volunteer with three fully paid days to get out of the office and do community work.

“It ’s a win-win al l around,” Gary Roy, NESN’s marketing and communications manager, told The Wire. “Helping great organizations and at the same time getting to enjoy some time outside the office with our co-workers.”

Last year, Roy said, a shade under 90% of NESN’s 185 employees volunteered at NESN Connects events and about half went to multiple events. This year, the hope is nearly 100% will participate as the channel works to try to schedule events that can accommodate everyone’s crazy work times.

The commitment adds up to nearly 1,000 hours of community service per year to more than a dozen non-profits.

Other recent NESN Connects events included the Watertown Police Stay Strong 5K Race on Sunday, April 17: “The events following the Boston Marathon bombing hit close to home for NESN, as our studios are located in Watertown,” Roy pointed out.

And at the Walker School “Lives in Bloom Gala” on Saturday, May 7, NESN employees helped set up and staff the annual fundraiser serving a local agency that helps children and families facing complex emotional, behavioral and learning challenges.

Roy also confirmed that NESN will once again be in Newport, R.I., this July hosting the opening-night party at the New England Cable & Telecommunications Association convention.

Seeing Red (Tape) Over Title II

The Federal Communications Commission got special recognition in a Heritage Foundation report, “Red Tape Rising,” which was released last week.

It was not the kind of shout-out the FCC was looking for.

Along with “unnavigable water rules” and “the FDA food police,” the conservative group cited among the “rampant rulemaking” going on the FCC’s “Neutralizing the Internet” regulations, better known as the Open Internet order or Title II reclassification decision or, if you ask many ISPs, the !@#$%^& proposal, as an economic downer.

Heritage did not put a regulatory cost on the rules, but in citing the 229 major regulations under the Obama administration, at an estimated cost of $108 billion, only 10 government regulatory eff orts got their own bold subhead, and the FCC’s action was one.

Heritage said that, thanks to the Open Internet order, “not only will investment and growth in the Internet be chilled, but innovation itself will be hindered.”

The report also made some recommendations, including making independent agencies like the FCC and Federal Trade Commission subject to review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews executive branch regulations — the Environmental Protection Agency, for example — but not independent agencies. “These agencies should be fully subject to the same regulatory review requirements as executive branch agencies.”

— John Eggerton

C-SPAN’s Senate Spinoff Deliberates on a Milestone

On June 2, C-SPAN2 will celebrate its 30th birthday.

It was on that date back in 1986 that the channel was launched to carry coverage from the Senate chamber, adding the “two punch” to C-SPAN’s coverage of the House that launched on March 19, 1979.

So, courtesy of the proud papa, or mothership (that would be C-SPAN), here are some C-SPAN2 anniversary numbers. C-SPAN, BTW, is brought to you as a public service by your local cable company.

Hours of Senate debate televised: 33,120

Years from first proposal to broadcast from Senate to C-SPAN2 launch: 64

Number of senators around for the launch who are still senators: 5

Number of women senators in 1986: 2

Number of women senators today: 20

At multichannel.com/May30, The Wire will link to highlights from the past 30 years of senate coverage. And those nostalgic for the debate over President George H.W. Bush’s veto of the 1992 Cable Act (it was overridden), or masochistic cable operators who want to hear someone other than current Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler beat them up over being monopolists, can click through to that debate as well.

— John Eggerton

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.)

Boston – Netflix, Amazon and Hulu set the stage for OTT-delivered subscription VOD services, but a massive wave of more focused, genre-based has emerged to reach a more targeted audience, and that wave is only expected to get bigger.

That was a big focus here Tuesday (May 17) in a session titled, “Single and Loving It: The Who, How and Why of Standalone SVOD."

The benefits of this approach is that services can be created to target the “super fan” and serve an audience in a unique way that broader SVOD services don’t offer, said Martin Keely, GM of subscription platforms at Fullscreen, which recently launched a $4.99 per month SVOD service.

“We’re just getting started,” he said.

Seth Laderman, EVP and GM of Comic-Con HQ, likened the rapidly expanding SVOD market to a “race,” as everyone attempts to build and launch services for specific audiences, and then get those viewers to actually pay.

But he said there’s some risk involved in targeting niches, because those viewers will also be looking to find similar content from other sources.

There’s an “endless appetite” for premium content, so providers need to rein it in with a curated service,  Ben McLean, SVP of business operations and strategy, digital, at NBCUniversal and Seeso, the new comedy-focused SVOD service, said.

He said offering limitless choice works if viewers know what they want to watch. With Seeso, he said, “We want to [offer] a highly curated, highly-programmed environment” that can engage an audience quickly.

“Seeso is our first swing at this,” McLean said, calling its comedy focus a “large niche.” And expect more. NBCU, he added, is also “looking at digital opportunities across the landscape.”

“There are no more gatekeepers,” said Tom Pickett, CEO of Ellation, a company that produces, designs and helps to market services/brands like Crunchyroll, an Anime-focused service with more than 700,000 paid subs, and Creativebug, a service for craft enthusiasts.

But he agreed that the downside of this second stage of SVOD is the amount of choice and fragmentation in the market, which makes it difficult for a new service to breakout from the pack.

And the technology that underpins these services is as key as the content, David Mowrey, VP of product management at Clearleap, said, noting that more than 100 standalone SVOD services have been stood up over the past nine months.

Not everyone has the resources of  a Netflix to build in all the content protection, interfaces, analytics and billing support. “It’s an extremely challenging thing for a standalone service,” he said. “You need a solid technology partner to do that.”

And the core video service is just one element of these services. To gain and retain customers, SVOD providers must think about “dimensions that go well beyond the video,” Pickett said.

In the case of Crunchyroll, the service is building in additional perks and benefits. One example is its partnership with a service called Loot Crate, which a mystery box of four to six pop culture items. Loot Crate, Pickett said, recently launched a new box focused on Anime, so Crunchyroll offers its subs a $5 discount for it.

Bucking a trend amplified by a small but growing cord-cutting trend and the popularity of over-the-top video options, Comcast just came off first quarter in which the MSO added 53,000 subs, its best Q1 video result in nine years.

A sizable portion of the credit goes to X1, Comcast’s IP-capable next-gen video offering, but, according to Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s executive vice president and general manager, video services, the results are due to a confluence of efforts and initiatives that span not just the core product but also areas such as improved customer care.

Multichannel News technology editor and Next TV editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with Strauss to discuss Comcast’s ever-expanding video strategy, including  X1, usage trends for mobile and TV everywhere applications, what’s next for the operator’s IP-delivered “Stream” product, some hints at the MSO’s ambitious plans for the Rio Games, and how Comcast is positioning itself as consumers continue to adopt new TVs that are capable of supporting 4K video and high dynamic range (HDR) formats.

The following edited transcript ran in two parts earlier in the week in Multichannel News dailies distributed at the INTX show in Boston.

Multichannel News: As you look at the second half of the year, what are your top priorities? 

Matt Strauss: We're really focused first and foremost on continuing to execute against the deployment of X1. We're seeing a lot of very positive benefits from X1, both on the churn and on the increased consumption side. We're now at about 35% penetrated, and it's even higher if you just look at triple-play subs -- about 50% of our triple-play subs now have X1. 

What goes hand-in-hand with that is that we also want to finish out the deployment of our cloud infrastructure. We've been deploying cloud across our footprint -- both cloud streaming and cloud DVR – and we are very close to getting 100% deployment. We want to finish that up by the middle-to-end of this year. 

Finally, we want to continue the penetration and usage of our products and services. We’ve got a very ambitious deployment for our new consolidated Xfinity app. With the upcoming Olympics [in Rio] we want to use that as an opportunity to shine a light on this new application, which we think is a tremendous value to our customers. 

MCN: For X1, you've been deploying about 40,000 boxes a day. Is that a comfortable clip for you or are you looking to push the needle even harder? 

MS: I think there are always opportunities where we want to accelerate. But at the same time, there's a bit of a cadence where we've gotten into where we want to make it easier for customers to get access to X1, which includes self-install kits. But there are segments that prefer a professional install.

I think we're at the right pace and speed based on what we're forecasting. We're installing between 40,000 to 50,000 [X1] boxes per day. At that run-rate, our goal is to get close to 50% by the end of this year. 

MCN: With respect to the pay TV momentum, how much credit does X1 get, even as you continue to improve other areas like customer care and customer experience? 

MS: It certainly is contributing. When you look at X1, we're seeing improvements in churn. X1 customers are also consuming more video. They also have a higher attachment rate to DVRs and typically they take additional outlets in their home. There's no doubt that X1 is contributing, but I don't know if there's any one silver bullet. 

When it comes to growing the video business, it's really a combination of several factors and investments that we've been making over the past few years, both in how we've been improving our infrastructure, moving more to IP.

We're also equally focusing on reducing call volume. We've had some of the lowest agent call-in rates in years. We've taken more than 11 million calls out of the system.

MCN: How is X1 impacting viewing habits? Comcast has talked about the impact on VOD usage, but how is it affecting viewing of live, linear TV?

With X1, we're now seeing 85% usage of on-demand among X1 subs. That equals about 25 hours of on demand consumption per month. We've expanded the number of series that are stacked where you can get access to all the episodes in a season. We went from a few series a few years ago to now over 700 series that we offer fully stacked. 

When you incorporate this seemingly infinite amount of content and ultimate control and you also marry in with this recommendations and voice navigation and a level of personalization, we actually have seen an increase across the board in video consumption -- live, on demand and DVR. 

When you track an X1 households from a year ago to 2015 to 2016 we've seen an increase of over 3% in total video consumption on average across the board. 

When you marry together those things together with choice and control, we're seeing a lift. That doesn't mean that viewing habits aren't changing and shifting. But we think X1 is becoming in many ways a better mousetrap. 

[READ MORE: Xfinity TV App Starts to Support NBC, ABC Live Feeds Out of Home]

MCN: What kind of usage patterns are you seeing with the Xfinity TV app? Is the big challenge getting the message out to customers so they understand the app's full capability? 

MS: I'd almost characterize it as we're in a moment in time because we have the Xfinity TV in-home app and we have our Xfinity TV Go app. We are in the process of consolidating those into just one app, which will be the Xfinity TV app. This unification…will provide this unprecedented access to content both in the home and out of the home. And I think those lines are going to continue to get more and more blurred. 

When you look at the usage of our app in general, we have about 42% penetration of our mobile app among our double-play customers on a monthly basis. On a quarterly basis, it's almost 60% who are using one of our apps, and that's up about 16% year-over-year. 

MCN: How far along are you with this app unification plan?

MS: If you download the Xfinity TV app today, we've already started. We've already incorporated all of the TV Everywhere content and the in-home content into the app. It's primarily been targeted at X1 customers. For the Rio Olympics this summer you'll see a much more concerted effort to increase awareness around the availability of that app to the broader base. 

MCN: What's next for Comcast with respect to 4K? You've got the app for Samsung TVs but we've seen some recent reports that you'll really be focusing more on a strategy that puts an emphasis on High Dynamic Range (HDR)? 

MS: We are highly focused on ensuring we're delivering the best video quality. The realty is we're at the very early stages of 4K. There's arguably more marketing and messaging going on around 4K than actual content and choice. 

When we evaluated this -- while there's hyper-attention on 4K, when we look at the total video experience, we think 4K is part of the offering. But HDR, which is not necessarily getting the same amount of attention, is in many ways more immersive and, we think, impactful.

When you marry that with Dolby Atmos [an immersive three-dimensional audio platform], it's the combination of 4K, HDR and sound that we think is really the right combination of transcending to an almost Ultra HD experience. That's what we determined was the right experience and focus that we want to lean into. 

Instead of deploying maybe a half-baked solution, which we're starting to see a little bit of in the market, we thought it was more prudent to deliver the complete experience... and that's what's being developed with our Xi6 box, which we'll be testing this year, but it's going to really be deployed next year. 

We will be experimenting with the Olympics with 4K. There's going to be a couple of hours a day of 4K content that we will be delivering. We're also sponsoring the opening ceremonies in 4K, but we're also shooting it in HDR with Dolby Atmos sound. [Note: Comcast showed off the wireless, HDR-capable Xi5 box at INTX, and plans to start shipping it on July 4. A 4K-capable HDR box, the Xi6, is also in the works].

MCN: The video market continues to be abuzz about skinny TV bundles. Comcast has been going after that segment with the Stream TV product in some select markets. What have you learned so far and what's next on the rollout plan? 

MS: In many ways X1, we think, is satisfying the demand for how many of watch television. The average person watches about 130 hours of video every month.

But there are changes in how other segments are consuming video. When we look at skinny bundles, we believe that they are in some ways a manifestation of the economy as anything else. It's rare that you hear someone say that they want fewer choices. What’s more likely is that you might hear someone say they want to pay less. 

We have been experimenting with skinny bundles and experimenting with ensuring we're getting the right product to the right customer at the right time in their life, whether that's Internet Plus or the Xfinity On Campus product, or Stream. 

Stream, though, in many ways is not really just about a skinny bundle. In many respects, it's us looking at new ways at how we market, how we activate a video subscription, and, for instance, if you're a high-speed data customer and you are in one of the markets where we've deployed Stream you can instantly add Stream. It doesn’t' require a truck roll, it doesn’t require additional equipment. We're able to instantly activate it for you. 

Stream has a different buy flow. You can cancel it at any time. You can use a credit card. The care is primarily self-help. 

MCN: So, it's designed to be low friction. 

MS: While Stream is, at the moment, comprised of a skinny bundle, the strategies behind Stream is much more around how we're going to transform the overall end-to-end customer experience, and Stream is just one example of how we are expanding into that terrain. 

You will not only see us deploy Stream into additional markets, but we'll also evolve the Stream product which will include additional tiers of content and you'll also see us expand streams to additional platforms. 

It was initially launched for mobile and Web, but we've always known that access to the TV is going to be critical. [On April 20], we announced a deal with Roku. As part of that you will see us enabling Stream and other parts of our video subscription onto Internet-connected TV devices. 

It would be a mistake to think of Stream as a skinny bundle. It's much more comprehensive strategy in how we're looking to evolve that over time. 

MCN: Let's talk a bit about the results you’ve seen with electronic-sell through, which you launched in 2013. Also, Fandango (part of NBCUniversal) just bought M-Go and rebranded that EST service as FandangoNow. Do you see some opportunities for Comcast to align its EST product with that? 

MS: Since we've launched electronic sell-through, we've had over 5 million customers make digital purchases and it has also unlocked the ability for us to access content in earlier windows. It's not uncommon for studios to release movies digitally, in some cases, three or four weeks before physical. It's given us the ability to market to those customers in advance of some other distributor's that have not launched electronic sell-through. 

We continue  to refine the product; we're introducing bundling and pre-buys. You'll see us test different ways to add value. For example, we're testing these enhanced content offerings that when you purchase  movie digitally it unlocks companion experiences. And we're looking at gaming as another way that we can add more value to digital purchases. We're working closely with the studios to continue to find ways to evolve the product and look at ways to [support ] earlier windows. 

There certainly may be opportunities where we collaborate at some point [with Fandango], but my sense is that Fandango is interested  in exploring ways to expand and enhance their ticketing business and electronic sell-through may provide new models for them like super tickets. That has not been as high a priority for us.

Who knows? There could be some shared learnings that allow us to find ways where we could better work together. 

Set-top box data on viewership is becoming an increasingly important tool in programming carriage negotiations, Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit told an industry audience Thursday, adding that while it hasn’t totally swung the pendulum in favor of distributors, it has given them a new tool to determine a network’s worth.

 “What’s happening is we’re going into the conversations with much more data, and more facts and we’re better informed over the value prop of the content and that makes a big difference,” Smit said at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications conference in New York. “Good content is always something we’re going to want more of; comprehensive content and across more platforms.”

Smit stopped short of claiming that the pendulum has swung in favor of distributors over content providers, but added that as programming is spread out over several different platforms its worth can be diluted.

“As it goes out across OTT players and whatnot, it can diminish the value to us because it’s less concentrated,” Smit said.

Smit said he believes OTT isn’t going away any time soon, but said it “I think there are going to be a handful of players revolving around the space,” Smit said.  “We haven’t seen a model yet that is as profitable for us as packaging video within our footprint with HSD or phone or home security. We think the best return for our dollar is delivering within our footprint.”

While new OTT services seem to come on the scene every day – Hulu, of which Comcast is a part owner, recently announced plans for its own OTT service – Smit isn’t convinced an out-of-market play is in the cards for the operator.  

“We get the best return out of the capital we’ve already invested into the network where we pass 45 million to 55 million homes where we’re only 42% to 43% penetrated,” Smit said. “We see a lot of growth in that.”

Like the industry it serves, the only constant is change at CableLabs.

After decades as cable’s R&D and interoperability house, the organization has been shifting its focus and more of its resources into filling an innovation pipeline for the industry. Though projects like DOCSIS certification testing are still key to the organization, CableLabs is also looking around corners to keep a close eye on what’s coming next, and what its constituents will need to be bracing for.

Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with CableLabs CEO Phil McKinney to get an update on the current game plan, what innovation projects he’s focused on, and his thoughts on emerging platforms such as virtual reality and 8K video.

An edited transcript follows (this feature originally appeared Monday in  the show daily distribute Monday (March 16) at the INTX show in Boston.). For more about Kyrio, the recently rebranded CableLabs-run for-profit unit, and its recent work around software-defined networking and network functions virtualization, please see this sidebar discussion with McKinney and Mitch Ashley, president and general manager of Kyrio.

Multichannel News: In January, you announced “CableLabs 2.0,” an initiative that included a restructuring and refocusing of the organization. Can you get us up to speed on the main goals and the progress you’ve made?

Phil McKinney: The CableLabs 2.0 initiative is something that's been in the works for probably over three years. When I first came to CableLabs [in 2012], the charter that the board wanted to put in place for CableLabs was for it to become the industry’s innovation lab. We spent the last three years getting the organization ready. 

In addition, we did not have a multi-gigabit strategy in place for the industry. Rather than trying to transform an organization and at the same time kick off what turned into being DOCSIS 3.1, I made the call to really keep the organization focused on DOCSIS 3.1, while we started to progress the organization toward being much more focused on longer-range innovation. 

If you look to our financial numbers through last year or even up through January of this year, roughly about 14% of our spend was focused on longer-range innovation -- things that are three-plus years out. The rest of it is in the three-year timeframe, what I'd call applied research. 

Our total technical spend is not changing...in terms of total dollars spent on our programs; it's really this rebalancing of the priorities such that 50% of our spend is in applied research, and  50% of our spend is on longer-range innovation work. 

The best example of a project with a longer range...is the result of Full Duplex DOCSIS, symmetrical DOCSIS over HFC. 

MCN: What’s the status on Full Duplex, and the timing on when you'd expect it to become an official extension of DOCSIS 3.1? 

PM: We're still working on it and progress is looking very, very promising. Our current...plan is that Full Duplex DOCSIS will transition from an innovation project to moving it into a full R&D project. When that happens, the funding scales up significantly, the resourcing for that project scales up significantly, working groups get established, and that's when vendors get engaged.

We're anticipating that to be mid-summer timeframe...around the time of Summer Conference [CableLabs has that event scheduled for August 7-9 in Keystone, Colo.].  

MCN: Outside of CableLabs 2.0, what do you see as the big focus areas for CableLabs heading into the second half of 2016?

PM: Again, it's 50/50 from a funding and resourcing commitment. We’ve made good progress in getting that balance in place. We just had our Inform[ED] conference focused on our wireless work. Wireless work continues to be important. Wireless is not constrained to being R&D or innovation...we float [those resources] back and forth.

For us, it's about pushing the organization to look beyond the horizon and be the scouts for the industry about what's coming next. And that we are doing the ground work on developing those technologies, getting the intellectual property in place such that when those get within range of having an impact on the industry you're not starting from ground zero. 

The other key is to make sure we have that robust innovation pipeline. We had a good pipeline, but we're putting more emphasis on researching and experimenting and looking at co-innovation partners. 

MCN: What other areas that are on the radar for the innovation projects? Would virtual reality fall into that? 

PM: We have not discussed specific projects. In fact, Full Duplex is the only project we talk about specifically. But as far as broad areas that we're interested in, it falls into the categories of active networks [HFC and fiber], a lot of work going on in wireless, and security, as well as what we call next-generation experiences...specifically when you get into multi-gigabit kind of networks to homes and businesses.  VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) fall into what we consider are these next-generation kinds of experiences. 

MCN: DOCSIS 3.1 appears to be humming right along as equipment gets certified and MSOs like Comcast prepare for commercial deployments. What’s your sense these days on the use cases that will require speeds of 1-gig or more.

PM: The joke in the ISP world is when someone asks what's the app you run on a multi-gig network...today it's only Speed Test. 

MCN: That says a lot, doesn't it? 

PM:  It’s not about sustained multi-gigabit speeds, it's about what I call "fast synch" -- you get on the network and you've got some cloud service and, boom, everything is synchronized. You want to download the move into your iPad because you're catching an airplane, boom, it's on there. 

It's not about that I'm going to draw 2-gigs on the network continuously; it's really around the periodic apps where you're looking to get data movement back and forth very, very quickly. 

If you look out a few more years, and you look at autonomous vehicles, then our conversations are with the major auto manufacturers around what the bandwidth requirements are going to be.

With autonomous vehicles, you bring them home and park them in your garage, there's a lot of data that gets synchronized between the vehicle and the auto companies for things like updating the driving information, road conditions, all those sorts of things.  They [the auto makers] are estimating that they're going to need between 200 to 300 gigabytes per month to go back and forth between the vehicle. 

MCN: How does VR factor into the potential use cases?

With VR, the experiences today are okay. We think that they're too low resolution and too low of a frame rate. They need to be at least 120 frames and at least be 4K in what we call the viewing space -- where you're actually looking. 

Today VR is 4K, but it's 4K wrapped across the entire 360-degree space. When you get it up to a resolution with a 4K viewing area and you have 120 frames…you're looking in the neighborhood of 150 to 250 Mbps to stream that. On top of that, three people in your house watching VR simultaneously streamed and you're coming up on a gigabit pretty fast. 

MCN: VR continues to get buzz as new higher end headsets come out and more content and services are developed for them. But when do you think adoption will become mainstream? 

PM: My guess is we'll probably hit holiday season 2018 when we reach the true mainstream.

We're still in this novelty, nichey kind of thing. Unity [Technologies] is doing some interesting work on engines to make it easier to create content. There are some great tools that are coming online in the next six months. There are some movies in early stage production to be fully developed as 360 dramatic, but you basically have to change the whole format of storytelling.

MCN: We've been tracking 4K developments as they progress, but how soon before your constituents need to be thinking about 8K? 

PM: For 8K, the project at CableLabs is being driven by [Japan's] J:COM, our second-largest international member behind Liberty Global. J:COM has a regulatory obligation to be broadcasting 8K by 2020, in time for the [Olympic] Games in Tokyo.  

In the reality in our testing, consumers can't tell resolution. We put a 4K set up and an HD set up, and only 61% of consumers could even figure out which TV was 4K and which TV was HD, at proper distance.

However, what we have seen is High Dynamic Range and what the many of the TV guys refer to as Ultra HD. With better color, consumers will perceive it as being a higher resolution. 

MCN: Focusing on mobile, different MSOs will have different strategies with respect to wireless and mobility, but how do you see cable’s role in this area evolving in the next few years?  Will it become a key priority?

PM: It's already a pretty big priority if you look at what the bigger guys are doing, such as Comcast and Charter and Cablevision [Systems] in terms of footprint that they've built out [with WiFi]. Let's face it, consumers want to take their broadband with them, they don't want to leave it at home. 

All of the MSOs are saying wireless is important now. They’re all going about it in different ways in terms of: "What does wireless mean?"  Shaw [Communications] buys Wind [Mobile] and is in the middle of an upgrade to 4G/LTE as part of that expansion, and you've already got Rogers [Communications]. Then we have the MNOs [mobile network operators] buying cable operators in the form of  Vodafone having bought ONO in Spain and KDG in Germany. Why? Because they need access to that network, particularly for backhaul for their small cell strategies.  

So you see this convergence where you've got the MNOs are looking to cable as a great infrastructure play and you've got cable looking at wireless, saying it's a great service offering to be able to extend the reach of their broadband services no matter where they're at.

You're seeing this convergence with the cable operators with a great fixed network that's been built up over decades and you've got the MNOs that need to go to a small cell strategy to create the bandwidth and to deliver better services, and they need access to those assets. Everybody wants to offer broadband services to their customers where they might be -- meet the customers where they're at, not force those customers to come to some location. 

Get complete coverage of #INTX2016.

The National Association of Multi-ethnicity in Communications honored its Next Generation Leaders and Luminaries during its annual awards breakfast at the INTX show Wednesday morning, which also featured a trailer for History’s Roots reboot.

NAMIC recognized four Next Generation Leaders — emerging executives of color under the age of 45 who exemplify NAMIC’s mission of education, advocacy and empowerment to foster multiethnic diversity and inclusion in the cable industry — as well as 10 Luminaries who have demonstrated a high level of business acumen while fostering diversity and inclusion.

“They are trendsetters, thought leaders and change agents,” NAMIC president Eglon Simons said of the honorees. “They are spreading NAMIC’s vision for advocacy within their organizations.”

The diversity organization also honored Noticiero Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas with the organization’s 2016 Mickey Leland Humanitarian Achievement Award, given to an executive for their lifelong advocacy in social justice and equality for people around the world. Salinas said in her acceptance speech that as a member of the Spanish-language media, she felt a responsibility to go beyond the headlines in reporting the news.

“I always believed that there would have to be a social service component to our job,” Salinas said. “ After all, we do serve an audience that has additional needs and a community that depends on us for information that will help make their lives more manageable."

Actor LeVar Burton also addressed breakfast attendees as an executive producer of History’s eight-hour miniseries reboot of Alex Haley’s 1970s miniseries Roots about the journey of an African-American family through slavery.

Burton, who starred as Kunta Kinte in the original Roots, said he was at first skeptical of History’s plans to remake the classic 1970s miniseries, but was won over after Mark Wolper -- the son of original Roots executive producer David Wolper -- said that the nearly 40 year-old miniseries didn’t speak to his kids when they watched it.

“It is a reality that there is an entire generation of Americans who do not know this very important story,” Burton said.

BOSTON -- The video advertising landscape remains awash in technological advancements that individually advance its constituent parts, but still don’t quite give advertisers a holistic sense of audience -- or give viewers reasons to keep watching, said participants in an Imagine Park session Tuesday afternoon.

“Everyone is popping APIs [Application Program Interfaces],” observed Rhodes Mason, president of Internet Archive LLC, which makes sure online video ads play out from source to screen without glitches, so that viewers don’t bail out. “Look at all of us here -- [4C] is doing social, [Place Media] is doing programmatic linear, [Watchwith] is doing in-program, and [Amdocs] is doing stuff with subscriber data,” he said of the session’s participants. 

Nonetheless, forward progress still requires a way to pull it all together so that advertisers gain a bigger view of the audience they’re trying to reach, in a way that engages audiences. “That’s the challenge as we move forward.”

The demo-heavy session, hosted by Cross MediaWorks’ COO and CTO Stephanie Mitchko (pictured), dug deeply into what works to justify CPMs, including the role of analytics, measurement, reporting, and whether content or the audience is the bigger driver for success.

Internet Archive LLC builds software that tracks online video advertising interactions in real time, to track the end-to-end flight delivery. “If there’s something wrong with the ad source, we’ll see that and switch to another one in real time,” Rhodes said. “It’s about looking, minute to minute, to see which [advertisements] will give you the best revenue and user experience. It’s a manual process now, that we’re trying to make automated.”

Zane Vella, CEO of Watchwith -- which optimizes the “beyond Nielsen / day four-plus” segment -- noted that the broadcast television upfronts “may be in a moment of over-correction,” as premium TV networks position themselves as “audience companies” focused on audience data. “That goes a step too far,” he said, because media buyers are looking for more than that out of premium content. “It’s about transporting audiences into a receptive state of mind.”

One way to measure audience interest is at the intersection of TV and social media, said Aaron Goldman, CMO of 4C, who called the combination “the most synchronized media channel ever.” The company analyzes 1.5 billion social media users, mapping their interactions across 250,000 interests and 50,000 brands, Goldman said. It does so via APIs with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, to track TV across 2,100 channels in 76 countries.

“What advertisers really want is the precision and optimization of digital, with brand-building power and broad reach of TV, said Derek Mattson, President of Placemedia, which represents a part of the advertising ecosystem that aggregates multiple consumer databases and real-time viewing behaviors from 16 million set-tops, so as to intelligently target audiences. 

“Next year (2017) will be the breakout year for one-to-one addressability,” Mattson predicted. “By 2018, that’s when you’ll see the omni-channel buys -- to place a buy in one placem and get online, mobile, linear TV and addressable all in one place. To me, that’s the holy grail.”

The holy grail for on-demand: The ability, as a consumer, to select one targeted, personalized advertisement to watch while binge-watching -- as opposed to the 20 ad minutes slotted into an hour of programming, said Rick Howe, the “ITV Doctor,” representing Amdocs.

“As an industry, we’ve been talking for years, and we get hung up on the fancy-schmancy targeting, bringing in data, personalizing,” Howe said. “Meanwhile, we’re sitting on mountains of data,” which could be harnessed to create a single advertisement, tailored to a viewer’s interest, “where the advertiser pays enough to warrant the network or operator stripping out those other 12 minutes of rather meaningless ads, instead putting in one that provides interactivity and and a design to take action.”

Boston -- Though no formal deal is yet in place, Comcast is demonstrating its Xfinity TV app running on the Nvidia Shield, a 4K-capable gaming console that runs the Android TV platform.

Here at INTX, Comcast is also showing its streaming TV app running on a Roku 4 as well as a Samsung smart TV, which allows for partners to offer a customized experience and the ability to search across multiple apps and tell viewers if a given program is offered by Comcast through its app, a programmer’s TV Everywhere app,  an SVOD service like Netflix or Hulu, or for purchase or rental from sources such as Amazon.

Samsung is the first announced TV maker to join the Xfinity TV Partner Program, an initiative launched last month that has emerged as the FCC looks to create new rules aimed at “unlocking” the set-top box. Comcast has also announced a deal with Roku that will bring its authenticated Xfinity TV partner app to Roku streaming players and integrated TVs.

Last month, Comcast Cable president and CEO Neil Smit said more than 40 companies had called the MSO to sign up for the program since it was introduced.

Though Comcast’s work on the Nvidia Shield was for demo purposes only, it does offer an example of the scope of platforms that could support the Xfinity TV app, an in-home app that uses the MSO’s managed IP network and isn’t delivered “over-the-top” via a public Internet connection.

Nvidia launched the Shield in mid-2015, offering an Android TV-based platform for gaming and apps such as HBO Go and WatchESPN.

Boston – Comcast plans to start shipping its first box with on-board High Dynamic Range (HDR) capabilities on July 4, according to Tony Werner, Comcast’s EVP and chief technology officer, said here Wednesday during a session with other industry CTOs.

That will ensure that the Xi5 will be available in time for the Rio Olympics, where NBCUniversal will be producing some coverage in the HDR format. Comcast also offer a taste of HDR during the games at some special screenings that will showcase the format. 

Werner said he has more personal interest in HDR, a technology that enables brighter and more colorful pixels, than 4K, a format that packs about four times the number of pixels than today’s HDTV images.

He said upconverted 1080p looks good, but HDR makes it “noticeably better.”

Here at the show, Comcast showed off the Xi5, its first HDR-capable box that will be wireless and work with the company’s IP-capable X1 platform. Comcast is also developing the Xi6, which will support both HDR and 4K.

Comcast plans to demo HDR in some hosted events it will arrange during the summer games in Rio.

As for 4K, Werner said Comcast won’t “roadblock” access to it, but said there’s need for more content in that format .

The wide-ranging discussion also touched on Comcast’s X1 platform, which is being licensed by Cox Communications and Shaw Communications and uses the Reference Design Kit (RDK), a preintegrated software platform for video and broadband devices being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter Communications).

Licensing X1 for Cox’s new “Contour” product, “was a key part of our strategy to gain scale, scale around innovation,” Kevin Hart, Cox’s EVP and CTO, said, stressing that there’s a need for more collaboration in the industry.

“The early success is off the charts,” Hart said of Cox’s new X1-based Contour product, which has been deployed to most of the MSO's markets. He added that Cox is looking to update its capital models next year in order to keep up with demand this year and into 2017.

“Once we got this locked and loaded, these guy went,” Werner said.

 The panel also discussed the evolving world of advertising and the shift to more targeted and interactive ads.

Comcast, Werner said, expanded on Comcast’s strategy to integrate interactive ads with the X1 guide environment.

Though advertisers weren’t interested in the early phases of X1 when few customers were on the service, that’s no longer true as Comcast aims to get 50% of its video base on it by the end of the year.  “They are doing the limbo under our door to get ad spots on there,” Werner said, noting earlier that he has “warmed up” to the idea of offering interactive ads on the X1 guide.  

Comcast has supported interactive ads on legacy boxes using EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) (EBIF), but plans to bring it back in a “big way” to X1 using more advanced technology.

Roku, meanwhile, is also pushing hard into this arena, and recently struck a deal with Viacom to help the programmer make its ads more relevant, said Steve Shannon, GM of content and services at Roku.

Darcy Antonellis, CEO of Vubiquity, noted that targeted advertising technologies continue to improve, but are still in the “nascent stages” when it comes to refinement, noting that her getting an for Deadpool is a “tell-tale sign” of that because she’s not in the demographic for that particular movie.

The talk also touched on the potential for virtual reality and 360 video.

Discovery Communications, which launched a VR unit last year, is “still searching for that consistent user experience,” company CTO John Honeycutt said.

And though mobile video is grabbing lots of attention and headlines, there’s a “revenge of the TV” occurring as more of those big screens get connected to the Internet, Roku’s Shannon said. “It is roaring back to be the predominant streaming platform.”

Werner said Comcast is finding tablets and other second screens to be accretive, and not a displacement of TV viewing. “They can fill gaps with it,” he said, noting that Comcast, for example,  has seen many viewers pause a show on the set-top at 10:15 p.m.  and then soon resume it on a tablet. 

Roku remained the top-selling streaming media player in 2015, accounting for 30% of the units purchased, according to new data from Parks Associates released in tandem with this week’s INTX confab in Boston.

Amazon, maker of the Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick, represented 22% of sales in 2015 (up from 16% in the prior year) as it rose to the number two slot, putting it in a virtual tie with Google, which makes the popular $35 Chromecast streaming adapter.  

Parks said the Apple TV trailed them with 20% of sales in 2015, but had the largest increase in unit sales on a year-over-year basis thanks to the Q4 2015 launch of its new apps-friendly platform. Apple’s share last year was 50% higher than its 2014 results, the research firm said.

Those four players – Roku, Amazon, Google and Apple – accounted for 94% of the streaming media players purchased last year, up from 86% in 2014.

“Thirty-six percent of U.S. broadband households have at least one streaming media player, up from 27% last year,” Barbara Kraus, director of research at Parks Associates, said in a statement. “Device makers have successfully sold streaming media players to consumers by offering easy access to a variety of content streams, as well as frequent updates that add the latest innovation. Amazon in particular has benefited by promoting its Fire TV devices in conjunction with the company’s Prime Video service as well as streams from HBO, Showtime, and other premium offerings.”

She noted that Roku and Amazon are benefiting from a strategy that centers on multiple form factors – boxes and streaming sticks – adding that streaming sticks accounted for 50% of all unit sales in 2015.

Kraus also estimated that about one-third of Roku sales were streaming sticks, and roughly 75% of Amazon sales were sticks.

“Apple and Roku were essentially tied for selling the most boxes, but Roku is expanding its base with the additional form factor,” Kraus said.

Parks estimates that 36% of U.S. broadband households have at least one streaming media player.

Looking ahead, Parks predicts that 86 million streaming media players will be sold globally in 2019. 

READ MORE: Full INTX coverage.

BOSTON – The growth of media consumption on personal devices, the desire to add programming without incurring capital and content costs and aspirations to reach viewers in growing multicultural populations came together at a breakfast session at INTX on Wednesday.

A programmer-and-distributor tandem talked up the Vemox over-the-top product Olympusat is pushing that enables pay-TV providers to add live and on-demand Spanish-language programming. Jaime Montes, director of content acquisition and digital TV services at Consolidated Communications, a telco (formerly known as SureWest) with a digital-TV product, said it embraced Vemox as part of an effort to add programming in bulk without having to do many separate linear launches. He said Consolidated hopes to have a full OTT programming array – a la Sling TV – by the third quarter of the year, though it won’t replace the need for traditional TV via the set-top box for at least a decade. “It’s a complement to the linear package that we have out there.”

Olympusat Holdings CEO Tom Mohler said IP delivery of packages like Vemox gives distributors flexibility in packaging and the ability to reach mobile devices.

Christian Martinez, head of U.S. multicultural sales for Facebook, got the session started by observing that video consumption “has gone to our mobile phones.” That in turn has changed storytelling, requiring that some stories be told quickly, to audiences that are relatively young and accustomed to dealing with more than one screen device at a time. “Let’s break the mold” in terms of reaching multicultural audiences, he said.

Javier Garcia, senior vice president and general manager of multicultural services at Comcast Cable, said his business area is a key center of growth at the company. “We had the best year in multicultural ever at the company,” he said. His team is responsible for introducing new products and features at a rapid clip, he said. In addition to video tweaks – such as launching TV Japan on video on demand – those products target multicultural customers for voice services and home security, he said. A native of Colombia, Garcia said home security was a concern for his family when moving from Bogota to homes in the United States, based on their experience of living in a dangerous place.

Other speakers at the event emphasized the need to offer the right content to targeted audiences. TV One vice president of marketing & partnerships LaTanya Butler, for example, said African-American audiences are eager consumers, but expect programming to stay “true to your culture.” David Hanono, vice president of digital development at BBC Worldwide Latin America and U.S. Hispanic, said he has found that quality programming in the documentary, nature and scripted realms from the BBC translates well from “British English” into other languages. “There is tons of appetite for scripted content,” he added, an observation that Mohler of Olympusat echoed.

Condista partner Jorge Fiterre; Patrick Rivet, head of worldwide distribution at Thema-Alterna TV; and Mark Walton, president of sales and marketing at One Caribbean Television, also shared in the conversations at the session, which was produced by Multichannel News. Walton even brought a moko jumbie action figure, representing the stilt dancers that are a brightly colored fixture at carnivals in the Caribbean. Not all consumer groups – including African-American ones – are homogeneous, he said.

Boston -- IP-VOD and a cloud DVR are among the services that WideOpenWest is planning to add to a new hybrid QAM/IP platform it’s deploying in partnership with Evolution Digital and TiVo, WOW chief technology officer Cash Hagen said here during a brief interview at INTX.

WOW is the first MVPD to deploy Evolution’s eBOX, which is being outfitted with TiVo’s software and user interface.

Hagen said the rollout of the device will get underway in earnest to about 75% of WOW’s footprint on June 13.

WOW, he said, will target that product, which blends live TV with OTT apps, to a segment of the market that wants a slimmed down pay TV package that complements (and won’t replace) the operator’s  full-freight HD-DVR offering powered by Arris’s Whole Home Solution, which also supports integrated OTT apps.

WOW’s new offering, branded as “SW!VEL,” will include the broadcast basic channels and integrated OTT apps in the initial phase of the product, Hagen said.

Phase II, slated for a summer launch, will add IP-VOD to the mix (through Evolution Digital’s new eVUE platform), and Phase III, slated for early next year, will add a cloud DVR to the mix, he said.

Boston -- The pay TV industry is undergoing a tectonic shift amid the rise of a growing array of over-the-top options, but a complete change of the industry’s complexion – and its historic business models -- won’t happen overnight.

“I believe we are in a transformative place in pay TV,” Dwayne Benefield, vice president and head of PlayStation Vue, Sony’s new virtual MVPD that just launched a set of "Slim" packages that are offered nationally, said here Tuesday on a panel titled, “Now Leaving Normal: Assessing and Inventing the Future of Pay Television.

“It’s been ripe for innovation for a decade," Benefield said. 

And it’s not just the pay TV industry. “The consumer is in a transformative state…Consumers are sending us signals” as they seek content wherever they are from a growing mix of devices and programing sources, Tony Goncalves, senior vice president and business development at AT&T Entertainment Group, added.

But that shift, which AT&T will aim to address through a trio of OTT services set to launch later this year, won’t happen overnight.

“There’s a longer runway here than the headlines might be signaling,” Goncalves said.

“We are at a point of view that this is not a massive defection of pay television,” Barbara Kalosieh, senior vice president, content distribution, at Scripps Networks Interactive, said, noting that the traditional business remains strong.

At the same time, she said Scripps is happy to work with  new players such as PS Vue and Sling TV, Dish Network’s OTT-TV service for cord-cutters, so long as they play by the rules of the game.

“What hasn’t changed and I don’t think will change is the value of good content,” Steve Necessary, executive vice president, product development and management at Cox Communications, observed.

He said consumers still require a solid search and discovery platform to surface all their content, but that there is a need for new cost models to work across the industry.

Though the perception is that pay TV is in a state of decline, the truth is that not only are they coming back, but that “they never left,” Ben Weinberger, chief product officer of Sling TV, said.

“They’re not leaving and they still want that content,” he said, noting that some consumers want to pay for content differently and have more choices in how they bundle that content together.

The panel also touched on a TV ad business that remains largely based on the 30-second spot.

While there’s still “great value” in those spots, Scripps is developing new partnerships for advertisers via Scripps Lifestyle Studios, a unit that is targeting multiple platforms, including social media, apps, websites and third-party digital media outlets.

Advertisers, Kalosieh said, aren’t just buying 30—second spots, but are looking to make digital and social media connections with programmers.

And advertising needs to become more targeted and, therefore, more relevant, to the viewer.

Advertising, Weinberger said, is part of the “entire experience” that needs to work in harmony with the programming.

And targeting ads might not be enough, Goncalves said, suggesting that advertisers and programmers need to be more creative to the point of integrating more of those messages into the programs natively, particularly with on-demand shows and short-form content. 

BOSTON—The quest for additional transparency in the modern measurement business will be driven, like most aspects of the TV ad industry, by the amount of money that is being directed toward it, a panel of ad experts said at an INTX Show panel Tuesday.

“The dollars will dictate how this changes,” said comScore executive vice president Cathy Hetzel at the panel session, Getting to Transparency: The Promises and Pitfalls of Modernized Media Measurement. Hetzel added that last year $3 billion of advertising spend went up for renewal and clients want transparency as to where the money is going.

Discovery Communications head of ad sales product strategy and development Keith Kazerman said making sure the data collected is accurate and reliable depends on who is delivering it and what methods are being used.

“Monetizing our investment is incumbent upon us,” Kazerman said. “We need to have a currency that is third-party verified. We should collaborate and work together, programmers distributors, measurement companies to see what standards start to evolve.”

Nielsen senior vice president client solutions Judi Allen said client collaboration is an important part of her company’s Total Audience Measurement products. And she added that clients have to look at data and measurement in general in a different way – moving to a world where shows are measured by the second and ratings periods can be days and even weeks long, requires a different mindset, even about things as simple as how views are counted.

“We want to experience all we can, but getting clients there takes time and effort,” Allen said.

Cablevision Media Sales senior vice president and general manager, advanced data analytics Paul Haddad said that accuracy and accountability also are critical to success.

“We do believe the legacy measurement system for the past six years needs to evolve, it needs to be complemented,” Haddad said, adding that taking responsibility for the lack of measurement or faulty data is just as important as accuracy.

The TV space, although under siege from digital competition, is in a unique position, Allen said, and operators and programmers should step up efforts to drive that point home to advertisers.

“The story is there about the incredible TV experience” Allen said. “There are weaknesses in the existing digital ecosystem.”

Hetzel agreed.

“This is the first year we’re going to see real cross-platform measurement,” Hetzel said. “We have our first reports where we look across unduplicated reach, the first opportunity to be able to understand how consumer are consuming TV. …Transparency is big part of that.”

Get complete coverage of #INTX2016.

BOSTON – AT&T Entertainment Group CEO John Stankey said recent moves to acquire digital content and technology are part of an overall plan to meld long-form, short-form, mobile and premium content into a new category, a so-called digital bundle that could help draw consumers who have been reluctant to participate in pay TV into the fold.

At Tuesday’s INTX Show General Session, Stankey pointed to AT&T’s joint venture with former 21st Century Fox chief Peter Chernin – Otter Media – and other moves including its purchase of Quickplay, are all part of that overall plan.

The Quickplay deal, he said, fulfills a desire the company has had almost for the dozen years it has been in the TV business – to won he full stack of technology behind its services. Quickplay, a multi-screen video firm for managed and over-the-top video that currently supports AT&T U-Verse’s TV Everywhere service, is a move in that direction.

“[Now] we own the entire technology stack to deliver to end users,” Stankey said. “Most people are going to play in the full stack approach,” Stankey said, adding he feels good about what the moves does for the company.

Related:Behind AT&T’s Cross-Platform Video Moves: Q&A With Tony Goncalves [subscription required]

Stankey said that in the next two or three years, he envisions a world where AT&T has fused its products in the mobile, premium content with other short-form and long-form programming from Otter and other sources, creating a new category where the two are blended together.

“If we’re successful, it’s also an opportunity to start pulling folks who haven’t moved into; subscriber services into subscriber services,” Stankey said. “I don’t know what precisely that is going to be, but mobile allows you to try a lot of different things.”

Stankey stopped short of calling AT&T’s moves an attempt to create a gateway product for younger consumers, and added that some consumers will never be coaxed into the pay TV model.

“I definitely believe we need to have a set of training wheels,” Stankey said. “And I do believe that some will never come into the ecosystem. But we’re starting to see where different sized bundles allow you to address different parts of the market.”

He added that building the right architecture, providing connectivity and helping consumers move the “tonnage” of bits for entertainment or what have you while maintaining a proper return on investment, “that’s OK as a business too.”

Stankey also joined the chorus of pay TV operators in opposition to recent proposals by the Federal Communications Commission to unlock set-top boxes and xx, addingthat the current environment that encourages investment in infrastructure “seems to be a winning  combination.”

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.)

Get more #INTX2016 news.

A new, unified app from Starz that supports the premium programmer’s new OTT subscription offering and serves as a TV Everywhere platform for Starz’s pay TV partners has expanded its reach with a version that runs on select Android TV devices.

The app, which provides on-demand access to Starz original series such as Black Sails, Outlander, The Girlfriend Experience and Power and hundreds of movies (Star Wars: The Force Awakens is coming to Starz later this year), is now offered on Android TV-powered devices such as the Google Nexus Player and certain models of connected TVs from Sony.

The Android TV expansion adds to other platforms supported by the new Starz app, including the Google Chromecast adapter, Apple TV (fourth-gen and newer), iPhones and iPads, and most Android smartphones and tablets.

Starz launched the new app in April, offering a streaming platform that supports the network’s $8.99 per month OTT service – sold via the Apple App Store and Google Play -- while also supplying authenticated access to viewers who get the service from a pay TV provider. (Early on, Comcast is not authenticating subs for the new Starz app, but does provide access to Starz content via the MSO’s Xfinity TV and Xfinity TV Go apps.).

The new Starz app also delivers content (for streaming and downloading) from the Starz sister networks, Movieplex and the recently rebranded Starz Encore.

Amazon also sells Starz subscriptions as an add-on, for $8.99 per month, to Amazon Prime members.

The flagship Starz service has about 24 million U.S. subs,  and Starz Encore has 32.4 million subs. 

There appeared to be a majority of commissioner votes for the FCC taking more time to review its broadband privacy proposal, which drew applause from an INTX2016 crowd concerned about the impact of the framework on their business models.

That came Tuesday (May 17) at a special taping of C-SPAN's Communicators series at the INTX 2016 show in Boston, and despite the FCC's recent decision, at the bureau level, not to grant requests for an extended comment period on the proposal, which would require an opt-in regime for third-party marketing of customer data, though there is not such limitation on edge providers like Google.

The panel session Tuesday morning featured four of the five FCC commissioners--the chairman, Tom Wheeler, is scheduled for a Wednesday Q&A at the show.

C-SPAN took its Communicators series on the road for a special taping of the INTV panel session, appropriately titled "The Communicators: The FCC Commissioners on Competition, Convergence and Consumers," with host Peter Slen, senior executive producer, C-SPAN, doing the querying, along with Lydia Beyoud of Bloomberg BNA. (The show airs Saturdays at 6:30 p.m.).

Republican members Michael O'Rielly and Ajit Pai both support giving stakeholder more time top weigh in, but Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel also said Tuesday she thought it would be appropriate to have a longer proceeding.

She reminded the audience that she had said it was a complicated proceeding. "I want to point out that I was the one who pointed out there were more than 500 questions [teed up in the proposal] and I believe this is the kind of subject that is complicated and would benefit from a longer rulemaking."

O'Reilly shot back, asking why chairman Wheeler had said "absolutely not," adding: "Why won't [the chairman] listen to the three of us and agree that we should have more time on such a complicated subject."

Rosenworcel did point to those questions as suggesting the proposal was not yet set in stone and issues like opt in and opt out were subjects on which there would be more discussion.

But while Pai conceded they were having a robust discussion about it in Boston, back in Washington he suggested it was pretty much a fait accompli.

"We will clearly talk about it," said Pai, but added: "I think it is pretty clear from FCC leadership that the writing is on the wall." He said the fact that the FCC would not give stakeholders a few extra days to submit comments" suggested minds had been made up already.

The Republicans had the same complaint about FCC Chairmen Tom Wheeler's set-top box proposal--to require MVPDs to make their programming and data streams available for re-aggregation by third-top navigation devices.

While the Democrats on the panel pointed to the fact that it had asked lots of questions, and was still a work in progress, the Republicans countered that they expected it to be voted on in essentially the same form.

Pai said that it was not a conversation the FCC had started on set-tops, but a dictation, a case of sentence before verdict in which the FCC had taken an ideological position and only gone through the formality of seeking comment on a decision that had already been made.

Asked if the FCC should pause that proceeding, as well, as some in Congress have asked while various studies are conducted on the impact of the proposal, there was certainly not push from either Democrats or commissioners for speed over contemplation.

Rosenworcel said the FCC had to take into account those requests from Congress, but also the mandate from Congress in statute to promote competitive navigation devices.  She said the FCC was currently wrestling with all that.

Mignon Clyburn suggested all that wrestling—which the Republicans were clearly not conceding—was a healthy exercise in “pausing” and weighing all the input and moving forward if that was necessary "in order to improve, encourage and to sometimes push these dynamic ecosystems that we have.”

O’Rielly suggested the place for the proposal was “the garbage.”

WideOpenWest has become the first operator to rollout the eBOX, a hybrid QAM/IP device from Evolution Digital that is powered by TiVo’s software and user interface.

WOW is starting to deploy eBOX for its new “SW!VEL” service, which integrates the operator’s live pay TV service with over-the-top apps and services. It also gives WOW a new option that can complement a whole-home DVR offering based on an Arris-based platform that also allows for the integration of OTT apps such as Netflix.

Evolution Digital introduced the eBOX and WOW’s plans for it late last year, underpinning it with TiVo’s software, UI and search capabilities. Last week, Evolution Digital announced it would also fit eBOX with eGUIDE, an interface that runs on Rovi’s Fan TV software platform (Rovi and TiVo are merging under a $1.1 billion deal announced in April.).

Evolution Digital said eBOX can be configured to support an all-IP platform, including live linear, VOD, as well as a network DVR on a unified platform.

Brent Smith, president and chief technology officer at Evolution Digital, said his company is working on a cloud DVR product that would work with its “eVUE” IP video platform, which handles the ingest, streaming and content management for linear TV, VOD, and mobile services.

WOW is the first announced MVPD to launch eBOX. Smith said some “large” tier-2 operators have the device in their labs, and that he expects the company to move ahead with a “substantial number” of deployments of eBOX in 2016.

“We are thrilled to launch SW!VEL, as well as to become the first broadband provider to offer Evolution Digital’s eBOX, as integrated with TiVo’s cross-platform search capability, to our customers,” Cash Hagen, chief technology officer at WOW, said in a statement. “Entertainment consumption is evolving, and this solution helps customers find and enjoy content no matter what platform it is hosted on.”

“We are proud to partner with Evolution Digital to bring WOW! customers a great next-generation set-top box,” said Thomas Elam, vice president and general manager, TiVo North American Service Provider Business. “The TiVo user experience is unmatched, and we are excited to expand our offerings to include Evolution’s eBOX to cater to the changing needs of operators.

“We look forward to continuing our collaborative relationship with Evolution Digital to further the tremendous successes of WOW,” added Thomas Elan, VP and GM of TiVo’s North American service provider business. 

Get more #INTX2016 news.

Tightening its technology ties to a major pay TV joint venture, Cadent Technology, a new ad-tech unit that merged the teams of BlackArrow and Cadent Network, said it has licensed the Reference Design Kit (RDK).

The move positions the ad-tech company to support the RDK, a preintegrated software platform that’s managed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global, which also happen to be some of Cadent’s largest customers.

Cadent Technology recently complemented its on-demand advertising platform with one that supports addressable linear TV.

As for the RDK, Cadent said its primarily focus is on Linear Segmented Advertising that inserts targeted ads into live and time-shifted experiences on the RDK-V (Video) software.

RDK Management announced earlier this week that more than 15 million devices are running the RDK, and that its licensee base now spans more than 275 partners, including north of 25 cable, satellite and telco service operators.

“It’s an exciting time to join the RDK community,” Stephanie Mitchko-Beale, Cadent’s COO and CTO, said in a statement. “The RDK’s standardized stack and collaborative methodology help us develop advanced advertising solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into our customers’ existing infrastructure.”

With twosessions dedicated to it here today at INTX, network virtualization is a hot topic for service providers and their array of vendors.

Kyrio, the recently rebranded CableLabs for-profit spin-off, has also been taking aim at network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN) in the form a new interoperability lab based at the organization’s Louisville, Colo., and Sunnyvale, Calif., facilities.

Multichannel News recently caught up with Phil McKinney, CEO of CableLabs, and Mitch Ashley, president and general manager of Kyrio, to learn more about Kyrio and the aims and plans for the new lab and why they think it will be important not just to cable, but to other industries as well.

Multichannel News: In February you rebranded your for-profit NetworkFX subsidiary as Kyrio as it pursued areas like wireless roaming and WiFi testing.  And recently you announced that it will open an SDN]/NFV interoperability lab. Can you offer a bit more detail on the goals of that new effort?

Mitch Ashley: Kyrio is a wholly owned subsidiary of CableLabs and what we're doing is building off the phenomenal technology transfer model that CableLabs has had for the cable industry of creating technologies and innovations that show up in vendor products and show up in cable operator networks and in customer homes. 

NetworkFX (the former brand of the Kyrio spin-off) was started originally around taking the PKI (public key infrastructure) service that CableLabs had done for the entire cable industry -- coming up on over 500 million security keys for devices like cable modems, CableCARDs... That sort of proved out the model for Kyrio. In January we announced the rebranding of the company but also that we were expanding into other lines of business, like wireless testing. 

[For the NFV/SDN lab], we're providing a vendor-neutral laboratory environment where hardware manufacturers, software providers and even chip manufacturers can come in. Much like we do with cable modems and other technologies, now we can interoperable with each other and go through test deployment scenarios, do basic testing across devices in a friendly environment where they know that the confidentiality of their information is maintained. What we focused on was how do we help those vendors get their products to market in a mutli-vendor environment. 

It's pretty difficult for one manufacture to get the bevy of SDN and NFV devices into their labs to do testing with. We provide that platform, where they can maintain an ongoing presence in our interop lab or do some remote testing. And we'll do hosted events -- like the OPNFV interop...on May 9. 

We can also provide remote access to both hardware and software manufacturers and provide new builds and loads onto their equipment and test that across multiple hardware manufacturers and software solutions.

Phil McKinney:  The SDN and NFV worlds are moving fast. We see it having a great opportunity to have an impact on the MSOs but the overall cost of network infrastructure and encourage the vendors to...move quickly. That's why we brought that expertise and opened it up to anybody and everybody not related or tied to cable operators.

MCN: Will there be a qualification stamp that comes out of this like CableLabs does with DOCSIS? 

PM: Even on the cable side when we do an interop, there's no certification or stamp. Anything that happens inside the interop, stays inside the interop. But there are still some gaps in the NFV world around interoperability. They can get access to a set of configurations that they wouldn't be able to afford on their own in order to do a better job of bringing the entire industry together. The focus, step one, is just on interoperability.

MCN: How would you characterize the cable industry's work with SDN and NFV with respect to competing industries? Are they in lock-step, ahead of the curve, behind the pack? 

PM: I can tell you that most of the major MSOs are keenly interested in taking advantage of the SDN and NFV worlds. The main driver there is can you speed up the process of deploying new products and new services.

The bigger operators are very involved in SDN and NFV; they are all having discussions with their vendor suppliers. Many of them have their own labs set up. Some are doing deployments...but it's in the early days. That's why I think there's so much excitement about the interop labs.

In this case, we're trying to bring everyone along together and it actually shortens the timeframe of going from, this is a nice concept, one in which I can actually commercially deploy this in a broad-based format. 

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association's rebranding of its annual show to "Internet" and "television" was clearly the right way to go if a new survey has it right.

According to just-released findings, 80% of video streamers subscribe to at least one streaming service in addition to, or instead of, a pay TV service from a cable, satellite or IPTV company.

The survey, commissioned by CSG International, which helps companies set up and cash in on online distribution, also found that 79% of streamers primarily stream to their TV sets.

Among millennials, more than half spend more time watching Internet video on their TVs than traditional TV programming.

Almost three-quarters (72%) said sports programming is the most important to stream.

"[S]treaming services with the highest subscription rates offer original content and sports content," the study found. "To align with these trends, the ability to offer new skinny bundles and innovative OTT-like services will become increasingly important for pay TV providers."

Streamers said they are watching more than 26 hours of online television each week, with half of that on services including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime.

The report concludes the way to get a bigger piece of that online video action is "not by an intensifying price war, but by offering more options for packaging and pricing the specific content that streamers want."

"Personalize the bundle," CSG said. "Provide a user experience on par with the most popular competitors, making content transportable across devices and providing enhanced features like recommendations and search, not only for a single service but across as many distinct services through partnerships wherever possible.

"Offer aggregated billing, discounting and payment options to the all-important subscribers of more than one service or type of content," the report advised.

Millennials see decreasing value in traditional pay services, the survey found, and 20% said they planned to switch, downgrade or disconnect their pay services in the next six months.

They also are the biggest commercial skippers (via bathroom breaks and snack runs in particular). "Among those 18-24, 43% always or often avoid commercials, compared to 35% of the general population," the study said

In a finding that could buoy, at least slightly, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's push for uniting video services in a single access device, 48% said they would "greatly value" centralized search across all their paid subscriptions, regardless of provider. (But cable operators note they are already launching apps that can reside side-by-side with other online services on, say, a Roku platform, just not disaggregated program streams and data, as the chairman has proposed.)

The survey was conducted in January among 1,900 randomly chosen adult broadband users who stream video -- short- or long-form, free or paid service -- on one or more connected devices.

CSG clients include Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Dish Network, ESPN and Verizon.

Get more #INTX2016 news.

Boston -- “Machine learning” will pave the way to delivering better experiences including “how quickly we can put apps on the X1 platform,” Comcast EVP and chief technology officer Tony Werner explained here in an introductory overview at the Imagine Park opening session on Monday. 

He envisioned “a ton of very cool apps,” comparing the ability of DOCSIS 3.1 to replace “a backhoe or forklift” in implementing new services for cable operators.

“I love Full Duplex,” Werner enthused about a symmetrical multi-gigabit project underway at CableLabs and being demoed here by Nokia, before he scooted off stage to support other Comcast executives at the opening of their nearby booth on the INTX show floor. 

As fellow panelist and visionary Andy Lippman, senior scientist and Associate Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, showed his “Ultimate Media” project, Werner quickly noted that, “You don’t have all the online sources loving it.”  Werner cited the prioritization for certain news sources within the MIT algorithm.

For his part, Lippman envisioned a shifting media landscape in which TV networks assume the role that Hollywood studios have taken in the motion picture industry -- they become venture capital sources for creative producers.  He called it a re-invention of the broadcast industry. 

Lippman also emphasized the speed of change, citing the rapid move away from schedule programming to on-demand programming. 

Boston -- Whether it’s authenticated TV everywhere services or new direct-to-consumer offerings, mobile video is no longer a funky little trend but a key part of the video and TV landscape that programmers and distributors must continue to focus on and adapt to.

“It’s not a trend. It’s here,” Ryan Spoon, senior vice president, digital product, design and audience development at ESPN, said here Monday at a session titled: “Air Power: Strategies and Sensibilities of the New Mobile Video Marketplace.”

Consumers, added Bob Toohey president of Verizon Digital Media Services (VDMS), simply want content now wherever they happen to be. “There’s no mystery to that,” he said in a panel moderated by CNET’s Maggie Reardon.

But there is some mystery to which distribution models programmers should adopt, whether it’s TVE apps, subscription VOD, or ad-supported services.

Turner is playing in all of those areas, though the rules and windows tend to shift depending on the business model being supported, John Harran, senior vice president of business development, digital distribution and strategic partnerships at Turner, said.

But mobile means different things to different people. Plus, this massive array of distribution and business models can be confusing to consumers, Reardon observed.

Harran agreed that it consumers have more options than ever before, which can make it confusing, but said strong brands, programming and storytelling “cut through that clutter.”

Spoon said ESPN has endeavored to adapt its content to the various screens, apps and platforms the programmer must now support, noting that programming on its Snapchat channel is filmed in portrait mode.

And Harran said the media world should stop looking at millennials as if they are “creatures from another planet…They are people who like to be entertained.”

Toohey agreed, noting that mobile video is rising in stature not just because it’s how millennial audiences are consuming their content but because all consumers are moving at a faster pace and require quick access to content while they are on the go.

“Mobile often equates to speed…and the user’s mindset,” Spoon agreed, adding that consumers are usually accepting of lower-quality production standards in exchange for more rapid access to that content, such as a video clip from a game-changing moment in a sporting event.

And like millennial audiences, panelists said it’s a mistake to lump social media outlets only to younger audiences.

“The demographics are everyone,” Spoon said. “The numbers are so massive.”

But programmers must be able to tweak and recraft content when they are targeting these various social media outlets, Harran said.

“We are seeing tremendous engagement” on mobile, Harran said, but “No one has cracked the code.”

And building in more personalization will help to support advertising-supported services, Toohey said, referencing Go90, Verizon’s free, ad-supported “mobile-first” OTT service.

Mobile needs to be more personalized, he said, in order to ensure that viewers actually watch the ads, he said.

The panel also weighed in on the controversial topic of mobile data caps and zero-rated services that are exempt from usage-based data policies. 

“I look at it and see it as a nice problem to have,” because it means consumers are spending more time watching programming on mobile devices, Harran said.

Toohey said sponsored data is still in its “early” days, but acknowledged that there’s been more change there in the last six months than has been seen in the past three years.

For its part, Verizon in January introduced FreeBee Data, a sponsored data offering that exempts some content from the mobile service operator’s  usage-based data caps.

Get more #INTX2016 news.

Boston -- Even as AT&T, Dish Network and a new wave of virtual pay TV providers, including Hulu, develop and deploy competitive multichannel services, Comcast expects to resist the temptation to offer its own services beyond its traditional footprint.

“We don’t have any plans to do that,” Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chairman and CEO, said when asked about the company’s OTT plans as programming rights continue to evolve during a media scrum here Monday at the Comcast booth following the morning’s opening session.

“The world always changes, so these answers are good for this moment,” Roberts allowed. “We have a clear value-add in-market,” he added referring to the operator’s fleet of 3,500 trucks and array of call centers. “We have a physical connection with [the customer].” 

Roberts also pointed to Comcast’s improving video results. It added 53,000 video subscribers in the first quarter of 2016, its best Q1 video growth in nine years.

“If something is working, I’m not sure you need to change it.” 

Last month, Comcast Cable president and CEO Neil Smit said there’s nothing stopping Comcast from going OTT from a tech and rights perspective, but added that Comcast has yet to see an OTT business model “that really hunts." 

Though Comcast has no current plans to take its TV service over-the-top, it is looking to expand its own X1 platform through a licensing strategy that, so far, has scored agreements with Cox Communications and Shaw Communications.

“We want to make this platform available around the world,” Roberts said. “We have a whole group that is doing nothing but that.”

Roberts also said it’s difficult to predict the competitive effect of virtual MVPDs, which will include Comcast corporate cousin Hulu, which is partly owned by NBCUniversal.

“One of the things we’re assuming is we’ve got to have the best product and we’ve got to have the best service,” he said. “We’re assuming that the world is going to get more competitive. We didn't buy NBCUniversal to change that trajectory but rather to participate in the changing ecosystem." 

Roberts was also asked about the Federal Communications Commission’s pursuit of new set-top box rules, and reiterated the MSO’s belief that the market for retail video devices that can support pay TV services is evolving without more government intervention.

“Do we need more regulation in this competitive, super-technologically changing world that we're living in? Probably we disagree on that,” he said. “We feel competitive pressure every minute." 

Roberts also disagreed with any suggestion that the FCC’s network neutrality rules aren’t impacting Comcast’s investments in network infrastructure.

“It’s not no big deal,” he said of the current rules, which classify broadband as a Title II service (the NCTA is suing the FCC over it). “Regulations affect your ability to invest…Uncertainty doesn’t equal investment.” 

BOSTON -- Comcast is using this week’s INTX confab here to show off several new consumer products that will debut soon, including a new wireless video client device, called the Xi5, that will support High Dynamic Range (HDR), a format that enables a richer image through brighter and more colorful pixels.

That device (the one in the middle shown here) will work in tandem with the XB6, a multi-service gigabit wireless gateway that will also support the MSO’s Xfinity Home service.  The Xi5 is currently in small field trials.

To facilitate whole-home coverage, Comcast is also showing a network extender product (far right) that supports several platforms including WiFi, Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) and Ethernet.  That product is expected to start shipping in 2017.

Also on show is a sleeker remote control that emphasizes the MSO’s voice search/navigation platform. That will start to ship by the end of this year and reach volume shipments sometime in 2017.

More to come…

READ MORE:Powell Pushes Back: Q&A With NCTA Chief on the Eve of INTX [subscription required] | Get more #INTX2016 news.

National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell told an INTX 2016 opening session crowd Monday (May 16) that their industry is under a "relentless regulatory assault" by the FCC of chairman Tom Wheeler.

Citing in particular the FCC's set-top box and broadband CPNI proposals, Powell said the mantra of "competition, competition, competition" are instead the unprovoked hammer blows of "regulation, regulation, regulation."

He said the policy blows the industry is suffering, and would weather successfully, he concluded, are more than just "modest regulatory corrections, instead they are "thundering, tectonic shifts that have crumbled decades of settled law and policy."

Evoking epic battles between dinosaurs, though without the suggestion they were in any danger of  extinction, Powell painted the new online competition as behemoths loose in the land. "There are formidable new creatures roaming our traditional feeding grounds," he said, ones being nurtured by the FCC while cable ISPs get the back of its regulatory hand.

Powell slammed the Wheeler FCC for labeling ISPs as gatekeepers while letting edge providers roam free. He drew applause from the crowd when he said: "It is a mistake to view network providers as an impediment to that growth, rather than a valued ingredient of it."

Powell said the FCC's regulatory attack had been unprovoked, saddling the industry with new regs without evidence of consumer harms.

READ MORE: Our coverage of the FCC's set-top plan

He said that the FCC's set-top box proposal--to mandate program streams and data be made available to third parties--was confiscating their property and turning it over to competitors.

"Instead of unlocking the box, this proposal has unlocked fierce opposition from all quarters, from distributors, content providers, civil rights groups, labor unions and over 150 members of Congress," he said.

Powell said that, and the proposal to potentially regulate the rates of cable business broadband, even though they are new competitive entrants, were examples of what he saw as the "emerging government view" that the marketplace is "bifurcated," with the edge companies "nurtured" and network providers "shackled."

He called that a jaundiced view that will hurt the country's Information Age ambitions.

Powell said that rather than set the two against each other, the better course, and one he said his industry is pursuing, is to make partners, not adversaries, of the edge. "We see a marketplace big enough for all competitors," he said.

Wheeler will be in Boston Wednesday (May 18) to provide his view of the regulatory regime.

Get more #INTX2016 news.

Float Left, a TV app development division of Olympusat, has unleashed Flicast, an interface/user experience platform targeted to content publishers that are looking to launch direct-to-consumer video streaming services.

Float Left said Flicast pairs a customizable and unified UX with a cloud-based content discovery platform, noting that it’s compatible with TV Everywhere, subscription and ad-supported VOD services, and TV on demand service models, and enables discovery through a mix of recommendations, watchlists, and video browsing history.

Flicast, the company added, supports several streaming platforms, including Roku, Apple TV, iOS and Android mobile devices, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Xbox consoles, Opera TV, and LG and Samsung smart TVs.

At the show, Float Left will demo Flicast at the Olympusat booth (#360).

“With the number of streaming video services growing every day, consumers are overwhelmed with choice,” Float Left CEO Tom Schaeffer said, in a statement .“Content publishers have been struggling to figure out how to keep viewers engaged, drive loyalty, and remain competitive. We developed Flicast to not only help brands reach their audience across the connected ecosystem, but also to engage and retain their viewers through innovative personalized experiences.”

Float Left said it has launched over 250 TV Everywhere and OTT apps across more than 30 devices, and counts clients such as AMC Networks, Fox, CBS Sports, Red Bull, and Viacom.

Get more #INTX2016 news.

About 54% of consumers who are interested in virtual reality think it’s not a fad, but less than one third (31%) of that group have actually tried VR, Interactive Broadband Consulting Group, found in a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers who expressed an interest in the emerging format.

The study, which took aim at the VR opportunity beyond gaming and was released to coincide with this week's INTX show in Boston, discovered that 77% of those surveyed are willing to purchase VR equipment, with 18% saying they’d pay more than $250. Notably, that’s still less than the starting price of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, as well as the coming Sony PlayStation VR.

And VR skews toward men, with two times more men being interested in the platform than women, though interest balances out a bit among middle-aged respondents (age 35-54).

The movies and TV category had the most interest (50%) among all age groups, with men more interested in that category, along with live events, gaming and user-generated content. About 35% of women are more interested in men in travel-themed VR experiences, the study found.

With a nod to OTT video models we see today, 42% said they’d watch a VR ad in exchange for free content, and 34% said they wouldn’t watch ads.

“VR is on the radar of almost every mobile, cable and media client we work with and the most frequent question we get is whether this makes sense for their business right now,” said Jefferson Wang, senior partner at IBB Consulting, in a statement. “Initially, IBB predicts that the VR market winners will be companies that can break down the barriers to entry with an end-to-end play.

IBB said it surveyed 8,471 U.S. consumers during the week of April 25, 2016. Of this group, 1,025 consumers expressed an interest in virtual reality and completed the survey results detailed above.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely at or on your way to the 2016 Internet & Television Expo, a.k.a. INTX. As is usually the case, the tech-talk scene is oozing with impressively nerdy gibberish. May this handy decoder ring help you navigate it with aplomb.

Let’s start with APSIS — pronounced “app-sis” — which stands for “Adaptive Power System Interface Specification.” It hails from the world of energy sustainability, specifically the SCTE’s Energy 2020 program. The gist of it is this: A lot of the big stuff in broadband/cable networks use electricity all the time, and not as a function of usage.

But what if you could “turn down” or turn off certain components when they’re used less, say, in the middle of the night? That’s the aim of APSIS. It’s a big deal because it’s that outside plant — the “access plant” — that represents about 80% of a typical service provider’s annual spend on electricity.

Capacity is perennially a trending topic at gatherings such as INTX, and this year offers no shortage of tech-talk around it. Watch for a lot of discussion about threading fiber deeper and deeper into neighborhoods, thus making serving areas smaller and smaller — so that at some point, when Bandwidth Hungry Harry wants a direct-fiber connection, it’s not a budget-buster to get it to him.

Related gibberish that’s good to know: When people start talking about “N+0,” or “N+1,” they’re talking about the number of amplifiers after the node (where fiber optics hand off to coaxial cable). The lower the better, and it doesn’t get much lower than zero.

Taking fiber deeper also means an assured increase in the number of nodes — by 3 times, in some estimates, and depending how deep the fiber reaches. That’s why energy efficiency is a constant refrain in design discussions about next-generation gear. It’s also why the term “remote PHY” keeps popping up, too, where PHY stands for “physical layer.”

“Remoting” the “PHY” sits (as one of several terms) in the vast bucket of tech-talk that is Network Functions Virtualization and Software-Defined Networks. The idea: Take some of the stuff out of those nodes and put it “higher up” in the network. Two INTX tech sessions will attempt to tackle that chewy topic.

Speaking of the tech-paper scene at this week’s Spring Technical Forum — it’s the mother lode of solid engineering information, every year, and this year doesn’t disappoint. My favorite for the oh-so-nerdy title: “4096 OFDM implementation on the HFC Plant with Fiber Deep and Distributed Access Architecture,” by Cisco’s Maxwell Huang.

My personal/professional favorite 2016 tech paper — and as someone with a long and deep history of concern about the super-skinny “upstream path” (Internet-facing, from the home) — especially as webcams proliferate: “Full Duplex DOCSIS,” by John Chapman and Hang Jin, with bonus points for the uber-succinct title.

Here’s why this matters: “Full duplex” is when a transmission medium can transmit in both directions, simultaneously. (By contrast, a walkie-talkie is “half duplex,” as in, “hello, over.”) You can’t do full duplex if there are amplifiers anywhere along the communications path, because they contain the (diplex) filters that define the downstream and upstream signal directions (which brings us back to “N+0”).

Yes, there are ways to widen the upstream from its current boundary (42 MHz) to other, higher/wider boundaries — but with full duplex, there’s no need to keep revisiting amplifiers to change out the filters, to go to the next step wider, and the next one after that. It’s immediate, dynamic, and adjustable. That’s pretty big stuff. The question to ask, should this come up in your cocktail conversations, is this: “Sure, Joe, but how non-trivial is it to get there?” (Engineers tend to cleave to that word “non-trivial.”)

Relatively new this year but big for automation and, initially, making customer care and product development better is the landscape of machine learning, artificial intelligence and cognitive/neural adaptations; there’s a whole session on it on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m., led by Comcast executive vice president and chief technical officer Tony Werner.

For the show floor — mind you, this is being written the week before INTX — here are a few pointers on some “under the hood” things that matter: Almost all talk about “smarter WiFi,” and “better/smarter connectivity,” will be anchored by the next version of the Reference Design Kit (RDK). That’s what gave rise to Comcast’s X1 line, Liberty Global’s “Horizon” navigation and all the stuff that’s generally received as “gorgeous navigation.”

Next up is “RDK-B,” where the “B” stands for “broadband,” and aims to do the same level of “making stuff better” for cable modems, gateways, WiFi spigots, and all the stuff that feeds our online lives.

That’s a quick look at the tech talk of this year’s INTX. You are now in a good position to play “stump the chump” with impressively nerdy fare! Good luck and see you there.

Stumped by gibberish? Visit Leslie Ellis at translation-please.com..

(Photo Credit: Captain Midnight Decder Ring, by Sobebunny - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7274827)

Get more #INTX2016 news.

A year after Cisco Systems used INTX in Chicago to trot out its next-gen cable access platform, the vendor announced ahead of this year’s confab in Boston that the cBR-8 is approaching 100 customers worldwide, with 30 already in deployment.

Cisco said cBR-8, a high-density  Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) product Cisco is now also referring to as its “Giga box,” is also employing DOCSIS 3.1, the industry’s new multi-gigabit CableLabs spec for hybrid fiber/coax networks.

The device, Cisco added, is deployed with operators in countries and regions that include the U.S., Europe,  Asia Pacific, and Latin America, and is now being used to deliver services to more than 7 million pay TV subs. Recent wins include Midco, which has kicked off 1-Gig trials in Fargo, N.D., with plans to expand trials to Sioux Falls later this year. Quickline AG, meanwhile, has completed a migraiotn to the cBR-8 and is using it to help 21 cable operators deliver multi-Gigabit services for 400,000 customers in Switzerland.

Per a blog from Todd McCrum, senior director, strategy and product management at Cisco’s Cable Access Business Unit, the cBR-8 hardware shipping today also supports “Evolved CCAP” functionality, which includes DOCSIS 3.0, voice and MPEG video, plus DOCSIS 3.1 downstream and upstream and remote PHY.

Cisco is battling for dominance with other suppliers in the cable access market. Among individual companies, Arris held 53% of total revenues in the category at the end of 2015, followed by Cisco (26%) and Casa Systems (15%), according to SNL Kagan. In March, Jeff Heynen, senior research analyst for SNL Kagan, said Cisco has been picking up momentum in recent quarters as the cBR-8 gets into the field.

Get more #INTX2016 news.

The 2016 Cable Hall of Fame inductees are a group of significant players from a wide variety of industry disciplines, from present-day leaders in technology and operations to the executive who helped launch one of cable’s iconic programming services to a pair of key political power players with front-row seats to this year’s intriguing presidential election.

The new honorees include Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe; Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications; John D. Evans, chairman and CEO of Evans Telecommunications; Tom Rogers, non-executive chairman of TiVo; Robert J. Stanzione, chairman and CEO of Arris, and John O. “Dubby” Wynne, retired president and CEO of Landmark Communications, who helped that company launch The Weather Channel.

All will be honored at the 19th annual Cable Hall of Fame celebration, set for Monday (May 16) in the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel’s Grand Ballroom. The gala event, to benefit The Cable Center in Denver, coincides with the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s INTX: The Internet and Television Expo.

“I am thrilled to welcome these seven industry leaders into the Cable Hall of Fame,” said Michael Willner, president and CEO of Penthera Partners and the chairman of the 2016 Cable Hall of Fame selection committee. “This year’s class members represent so many different aspects of our industry — from programming to operators, to technology and equipment. Each one of them has had a unique and immense impact on the growth of the cable industry and its influence on today’s society.”

Also to be honored at the Hall of Fame ceremonies — in his hometown of Boston — is Continental Cablevision co-founder, chairman and CEO Amos Hostetter, 2016 recipient of the Bresnan Ethics in Business Award, named in honor of the late William Bresnan, founder and chairman of Bresnan Communications and a longtime member of the Cable Center board (see profile).

Katty Kay, lead anchor of BBC World News America, the BBC’s flagship U.S. newscast, will return to emcee the Boston event. She also hosted the 2012 Hall of Fame celebration.

“We are delighted to have Katty Kay return as the master of ceremonies for our Cable Hall of Fame celebration,” Jana Henthorn, president and CEO of The Cable Center, said. “The Cable Hall of Fame is the premier event that honors our industry, and I look forward to welcoming industry friends and associates as we gather to salute our seven honorees.”

Special thanks to Erica Stull of Stull WordWorks for honoree profiles.

Amos B. Hostetter Jr.
2016 Bresnan Ethics in
Business Award Honoree

Long known as a role model and industry statesman, Amos Hostetter is a natural fit for the Bresnan Ethics in Business Award. Over the course of his more than 50-year career, Hostetter has consistently demonstrated ethical leadership and personal commitment to community and society.

The co-founder, chairman and CEO of Continental Cablevision entered the cable industry in 1963. That’s when he and Amherst fraternity brother Irv Grousbeck each came up with $1,500 to build cable operations in Tiffin and Fostoria, Ohio. From that humble beginning and 4,000 subscribers, Continental Cablevision grew to serve 4.2 million customers across the U.S. before it was purchased by US West in 1996. Continental was the nation’s third-largest cable MSO at the time.

Unlike many cable companies that got bigger through acquisition, Continental grew by building new franchises, a process that put company leaders in close contact with local franchise officials. The early days of cable franchising were rough and tumble, with operators and communities aggressively pressing negotiating advantages. Unimpeachable ethical standards were a trademark of Continental’s franchise activities, and the “square shooter” reputation helped the company succeed.

“The single most important thing I did to maintain ethics in the company was recruiting,” Hostetter said. “Irv and I wanted people with a well-tuned moral compass. The standing rule was, ‘don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read about in the newspaper.’”

Hostetter has served as a board member and chairman of NCTA, and he was a highly respected representative for the cable industry. In his 1999 interview for The Cable Center’s oral history program, Hostetter told interviewer Steve Nelson that cable was an industry that can do well by doing good. “I think the companies that have set a standard of service and performance and contribution to their communities have in fact been the companies that have financially done the best … I would certainly argue that that was Continental’s objective in its years in business.”

Hostetter was a founding board member and former chairman of C-SPAN and of Cable in the Classroom. He also served on the boards of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Children’s Television Workshop. Today, he is chairman of Pilot House Associates.

His charitable work includes positions as chair emeritus of the WGBH board of trustees and Amherst College, and trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Mika Brzezinski
Co-Host
MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’

With more than two decades on air and multiple best-selling books to her credit, Mika Brzezinski has earned her place in the spotlight. The co-host of one of cable’s most popular news shows started out in Hartford, Conn., as a broadcaster, editor and reporter with WTIC-TV. Brzezinski went national in 1996 as a CBS News correspondent and anchor. Her work for CBS included live reporting from lower Manhattan during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She moved to cable in 2007 as co-host of Morning Joe, where she provides counterpoint to the comments of co-host Joe Scarborough.

Politics and hard work come naturally to Brzezinski. Growing up during the Carter administration as the daughter of national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and sculptor Emilie Brzezinski, she was exposed early to big ideas and remarkable people. The family hosted dignitaries, including the pope, and the budding journalist had a view of work-life balance at the highest level. She said her father’s political experience, writing and ability to communicate policy helped prepare her for her current job. And she credited her mother for fostering her career commitment.

“She was always an artist first and a wife and mother second,” Brzezinski recalled. “To be a better mother and wife, she needed to foster her passion for art. In doing so, she taught me how to be the best version of myself by following my own passions. I respect my dad for so many reasons, but one of them is his faith in my mom and her talent.”

As the demands of covering a presidential campaign increase, Brzezinski recharges by running. Central Park is her favorite route when on home turf, and she often conducts interviews and business calls as she runs. A student and chronicler of the unique challenges women confront in their careers, Brzezinski is an advocate for women in the workplace — especially through her Know Your Value campaign. She advises the next generation of female journalists: “Don’t apologize — speak with conviction and confidence. Don’t worry about making everyone comfortable — command respect first and friendship will follow.”

Pat Esser
President
Cox Communications

Growing up in Algona, Iowa, Pat Esser was hooked on cable early. The future Cox executive was dazzled when cable came to town and his family suddenly had access to 12 TV channels.

“Our rotary antenna was our portal to the world,” he recalled. As a youngster, Esser also learned about personal commitment to customer service while running deliveries for his family’s dry-cleaning business. “I understand what it means to have your family name on the door. I fully appreciate what the Cox family feels about their company.”

Esser got his first cable job climbing poles and then making door-to-door sales calls while studying at the University of Northern Iowa. After graduation in 1979, Esser joined Cox as director of programming with the company’s new cable system in Hampton Roads, Va. He returned to UNI to earn a master’s degree in communications media and then came back to Cox for his first big professional challenge: building the company’s advertising sales division, known today as Cox Media. “Building a cause, building a business” was the source of some of his happiest memories, Esser said.

Named Cox’s corporate vice president of advertising sales in 1991, Esser became the company’s Western division vice president of operations in 1999. Promotions continued, and he was ultimately named president of Cox Communications in 2006.

Esser has led the Cox team through a range of business obstacles over the years, but none would be as challenging as Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Cox operates in Louisiana markets, and Katrina was devastating for the company’s employees and communities, as well as its cable plant. “Being part of that recovery, how Cox responded to our people, our customers, changed me forever,” Esser recalled. “[Cox chairman] Jim Kennedy didn’t blink. He said, ‘Make sure we know where our employees are at, make sure they’re OK, that they know we’re going to rebuild the market and they’ll have jobs.’”

That experience was one of many that cemented Esser’s passion for his job. “I’ve been at Cox 37 years, and I still love coming to work,” he said. “My heart rate still picks up.”

John D. Evans
Chairman and CEO
Evans Telecommunications

John Evans has been a leader in media from an early age. He served four years as a U.S. Navy communications officer during the Vietnam buildup, and was put in command of Navy television worldwide at 26. He went into radio after the service, but saw cable television as a “sunshine industry” with huge potential.

When American Television and Communications offered him a cable-system job in Charleston, W. Va., in 1972, he grabbed it. In 1976, Arlington TeleCommunications Corp. (ARTEC) recruited him to head up the creation of the first cable system in the Washington, D.C. area. Because it served members of Congress, FCC commissioners and other federal officials, the Arlington system played an outsize industry role as cable grew and drew greater scrutiny.

When ARTEC’s investors sold in 1983, the system became Hauser Communications’s flagship operation. Evans became president of Hauser Communications, working with industry visionary Gus Hauser for more than 12 years.

Even with an impressive cable operations background, Evans may be best known for his contribution to programming. In 1977, he went to lunch with an old Navy buddy, Brian Lamb, who was then Washington bureau chief for Cablevision magazine. Evans commented that the House of Representatives had just installed closed-circuit cameras. The two friends talked about beaming the House’s closed-circuit feed across the river via microwave to the Arlington system for public distribution.

“Maybe we could open the government up,” Evans recalled thinking. He believed doing so might prevent another Vietnam War. “We filed for a microwave license from Capitol Hill to our headend site, and agreed to provide free of charge all the technical space and facilities.” That was the start of C-SPAN.

Evans has been on the National Cable & Telecommunications Association board of directors since 1981 — the organization’s longest-serving board member. He has also been a C-SPAN board member since the network’s inception in 1979. Public service is a strong value for Evans. He represents the industry as the only nonacademic trustee of Internet2, an advanced, higher-education technology community connected by 18,000 miles of fiber backbone.

Designated a “Patron of Diplomacy,” Evans serves on the U.S. Department of State’s Fine Arts Committee and its LGBT Global Equality Fund. As founder of the John D. Evans Foundation, he is committed to social justice, AIDS vaccine research, environmental protection, technological innovation, education and the arts.

Tom Rogers
Chairman
TiVo

If Tom Rogers were a superhero, he might be known as the “Rejuvenator.” Over the course of more than 30 years in telecommunications, TiVo’s chairman has made a specialty of bringing organizations back from the brink. “I guess I’ve always had fun when something that looked like it was over and irrelevant was born again,” he said.

Rogers’s early fascination with media was inspired by an eighth-grade social studies teacher. “He brought media into the classroom as a way of understanding the world,” he says. Rogers was probably the only teenager in Scarsdale, N.Y., with his own TV Guide subscription who also had a fascination with the magazine’s weekly column on the FCC and industry activity.

After graduating from Columbia Law School and working for two years with a Wall Street law firm, Rogers began his telecom career in 1981. He was hired as senior counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Telecommunications, Consumer Protection and Finance Subcommittee, with responsibilities that included FCC oversight and drafting the Cable Act of 1984. The ’84 Act, he said, “was very much about unleashing the cable industry’s potential for more channels to develop, which was a key theory of the case.” Even with his belief in the promise of cable, Rogers said, “it surprised me just how many channels, how much content, how many sources of information, ultimately emerged.”

He joined the private sector in 1987, going to NBC and quickly becoming first president of NBC Cable, starting up the division and launching CNBC. Rogers then led Primedia for four years. The company owned media properties ranging from Cable World to New York magazine.

He then joined TiVo in 2005 as CEO. As cable operators developed competing digital video recorders, TiVo’s successful run appeared to be in jeopardy. Rogers attacked that issue with a vengeance by bringing TiVo ultimately to a full embrace by the cable industry and setting the company back on a path to growth. TiVo now serves about 75 operators in more than 30 countries. In May, the company agreed to be acquired by Rovi in a deal valued at about $1.1 billion.

Rogers advises the next generation of cable programming executives not to “rest on existing models, but know that if you don’t push to the next level, someone else is gonna push there and make you less meaningful or relevant in a changing content distribution and viewership world … No matter how many noes others say you will get, if you’ve got the right plan, the cable industry will listen and ultimately buy in.”

Joe Scarborough
Co-host
MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’

Joe Scarborough has always dreamed big. As a kid, he wanted to be “an all-star shortstop in the major leagues and a guitarist in a band bigger than the Beatles.” And he has been talking about politics most of his life.

The Morning Joe co-host enjoyed watching the news with his father from an early age. “We would watch election night returns together,” he recalled. “Those were some of my earliest and best memories with him.”

As an attorney in Florida, Scarborough continued to pursue his interest in politics. He ran as a Republican in Florida’s 1st Congressional District, seeking to replace the retiring Democratic incumbent. Scarborough won that vote and went on to serve four terms in Congress, representing Florida from 1994 to 2001 and serving on the Judiciary, Armed Services, Oversight and National Security committees.

After leaving Congress, Scarborough found his way into cable as host of Scarborough Country, an evening political show on MSNBC. When Don Imus left the network’s morning show in 2007, Scarborough lobbied to replace him. Morning Joe debuted in July 2007.

Scarborough said he believes his time as a politician gives him valuable perspective as a political commentator. “When I was a congressman,” he said, “I witnessed politics up close and saw what happened behind closed doors. That insight allowed me to call out politicians when they weren’t being straightforward with the voters and the press. Being a politician … has always enhanced my analysis and given me better intuition in interviews.”

In addition to his career as a political representative, cable commentator and author, Scarborough has almost achieved one of his early dreams. They’re not bigger than the Beatles, but Scarborough’s band, Morning Joe Music, is an important part of his life. The nine-piece group performs regularly in New York, and recently went on the road for a gig at South by Southwest in Austin. Scarborough plays guitar and sings lead.

“I just love music,” he said. “It’s great to share the experience with other people — especially members of the band who have become my friends. I love the process from start to finish.”

Robert J. Stanzione
Chairman and CEO
Arris

“When a door opens, walk through.” Robert Stanzione’s advice to future cable engineers has guided his own career and yielded tremendous results.

As a kid in South Carolina, Stanzione dreamed of being an architect, an airline pilot or an engineer. He chose the third option, earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Clemson University and a master’s in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University. “Engineering was and still is a great basic education; a way to get started in industry,” he said. “The rest of it was on-the-job training.”

AT&T gave the young engineer room to explore. He spent 25 years with the company, eventually moving into general management. Stanzione was introduced to the exciting world of cable when he managed an AT&T-Bell Labs project with ANTEC Corporation. “It was sort of a skunk works within Bell Labs, the first hybrid fiber-coax in the industry. I became fascinated, not only with the technology, but with the dynamic aspects of the cable industry and the people in it … It was ready, aim, fire; let’s try it out, see if it works, and if it works, we’ll deploy it.”

Nortel Networks and ANTEC formed a joint venture in 1995 and recruited Stanzione to start Arris Interactive. It was an exciting time as the cable industry prepared to introduce telephone service. Stanzione recalled: “It was a fairly radical idea in the early ’90s that a cable operator could offer reliable telephone service. It was a lot of fun being at the front end of that and seeing our products going into networks all over the world that allowed cable companies to offer reliable two-way service. We knew the technology was solid, but we didn’t know whether the industry would accept the responsibility of this culture of reliability. It came through with flying colors.”

Stanzione and his team worked their way through the telecom crash of 2001, subsequently building Arris into a Fortune 500 enterprise through a series of strategic mergers, acquisitions and the internal development of advanced broadband and video platforms. He has walked through lots of doors over the years, and advises others to do the same.

“Just have fun!” he advised. “[Cable] is such a dynamic business. It always has been and will continue to be. Look forward, try new things.”

John O. “Dubby” Wynne
Retired President and CEO
Landmark Communications

Although he wasn’t a weatherman, Dubby Wynne has always known which way the wind was blowing in cable. He and his Landmark colleagues seized an opportune moment in the industry’s growth to build The Weather Channel, an international institution.

A talented high school athlete, Wynne liked competition and change. “I went to law school because I thought I wanted to go into politics, and quickly learned that isn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a businessman.” He joined Landmark in 1974 and was in charge of the company’s broadcasting and video division and new business development by 1980.

“It was one of those crazy times,” he said. “Cable programming provided a rising tide for lots of us. We got a lot more responsibility than we would have gotten in mature industries.”

When broadcast meteorologist John Coleman proposed creating a national TV-weather service for cable, Wynne was intrigued, but believed that local weather was the real opportunity for a new network supported by advertising. Wynne’s team created a device to insert local National Weather Service forecasts into cable system headends. The Weather Channel was ready to roll in 1982.

Wynne remembers, “When we launched our service, most people were just laughing at [the 24-hour weather concept]. Although in some areas like New York City, people already carried an umbrella all the time. In California, they said, ‘I don’t care, it never rains here.’ But we knew from our television and radio experience that weather in most communities was a subject of high interest.”

After a year, Wynne and team realized their ad-supported financial model wouldn’t work. “We needed subscriber fees. We showed our finances to the cable operators. It was just a few pennies per subscriber, but getting that done was what made The Weather Channel successful.”

Retired since 2001, Wynne continues a full schedule of philanthropy and volunteer work, including improving the state of Virginia’s approach to economic development. “I don’t think there’s any better feeling than helping other people improve their lives,” he said. “When you take somebody who doesn’t have much, help them break through, when you help an institution get better … it’s just gratifying.”

READ MORE:Big Names Head 50th Class of Cable TV Pioneers | Cable Pioneers: 50 Facts for 50 Years | The Legend of 'Cable TV Pioneer' George Spelvin

It started out in 1966 over a nice dinner at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach, Fla., celebrating 21 of the cable industry’s most influential members.

This year, the Cable TV Pioneers hosted more than 550 people at its annual dinner gala on May 15 in Boston.

Along the way, it helped create and sustain what is now The Cable Center, the cable industry ’s historical and educational hub, in Denver.

Not bad for an organization that will induct 14 new members to its impressive rolls this year. They are, alphabetically: Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner Inc.; Charles David Cerullo of INSP; Glenn Duval of Challenger Cable Sales; Leslie Ellis of Ellis Edits Inc.; Marwan Fawaz of Sarepta Partners; John Gibbs of Comcast; Steve Goldmintz of Marcum Search; John E. Heslip of Comcast; Yvette Kanouff of Cisco Systems; Peter Kiley of C-SPAN Networks; Mark Lieberman of Viamedia Inc.; Mike Mason of Comcast; John Arthur Ogren of Speed Connect and Brian Roberts of Comcast.

After that first dinner, Fred Stevenson, who ran Rogers TV Cable in Rogers, Ark., sent an enthusiastic letter to all the original pioneers, asking whether any of them would be willing shell out $5 for a color photo of the group taken at the dinner.

‘JUST KEEP BREATHING’

A couple of weeks later, after hearing from only a couple of pioneers, Stevenson sent out a tongue-in-cheek press release announcing that an organizational meeting of the Pioneers Club had taken place in Stevenson’s office. “Only Mr. Stevenson was present at this organizational meeting and, being eminently qualified for the job, especially because of his age, he was nominated (by Stevenson ), seconded (by Stevenson) and subsequently elected by acclimation (by Stevenson ) to be the new executive chairman or this illustrious new club.”

“When asked what the purpose and goals of the club would be, [Stevenson] replied, ‘No purpose, no goals, no nothing. Just keep breathing.’”

Eventually Stevenson exited the group and Ben Conroy, who started Uvalde Television Cable in Uvalde, Texas, took over. Others who joined in to take leadership roles included Ed Adler of Weston Cable Television Corp.; Sandford Randolph, who built the cable system in Clarksburg, Va.; and Les Read, the HBO executive who has been the group’s executive director since 1996 (and a Pioneer since 1977).

“Les is really the keeper of the flame,” Susan Bitter Smith, the Pioneers board chair and executive director of the Southwest Cable Communications Association, said. “No one can duplicate his knowledge of the history of the Pioneers, the industry, and our members.

“Les knows and keeps track of every member and he has been invaluable not only for those amazing connections, but also for that incredible voice that guides us through the induction dinner every year.”

The Cable Pioneers has always focused on camaraderie, community, friendship and a little networking. The dinners are traditionally formal affairs and held at the same time as the NCTA convention (now known as INTX).

EMBRACING A CAUSE

In 1983, the executive committee decided the group needed a higher calling. Talks took place with Penn State University to form a cable-television museum and learning center at the university.

The museum opened in 1985 with $20,000 in seed money. The Pioneers later undertook a campaign that raised $2 million to provide an endowment for operations and to fund a chair at Penn State.

When the museum moved to University of Denver in 1997, the Pioneers again stepped in to help fund the operations of the Cable Center and expand the Hauser Oral History Project. While the organizations have two distinct boards and responsibilities, the Cable Center board and Cable TV Pioneers board work closely to advance the mission of the Cable Center.

As Mike Pandzik, founder of National Cable Television Cooperative and former chairman of Cable TV Pioneers, said in his oral history of the group: “We’re not involved in world peace. We’re not involved in nuclear disarmament. But in our little corner of the world, I think we do a very good job. And this Cable Center in Denver is a great example of what can happen when you get a bunch of people together who care about each other and care about their industry and want to leave something of substance.”

Added Read: “It’s the finest crowd in the business. You can’t keep an old entrepreneur down. They just keep coming back, like rich people.”

For more about the Cable Television Pioneers, please read on through these pages.

Get more #INTX2016 news.

4KUniverse, the 4K TV channel from Mance Media launched in March, said it has inked an exclusive partnership with AVP to film the pro volleyball league’s U.S. matches in the pixel-packed format and stream them live around the globe.

4KUniverse’s first live 4K broadcast of the AVP is set for July 14-17 from Manhattan Beach, Calif. AVP tour matches feature athletes such as three-time Olympic gold medalist Kerri Walsh-Jennings, Olympic gold medalists Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser; Olympic silver medalists April Ross and Jen Kessy; and two-time Olympians Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal.

The 4KUniverse-AVP deal also covers in-game highlights, pre-game broadcasts of athlete interviews. 4K coverage plans also include slow-motion cameras, a drone and productions that utilize High Dynamic Range (HDR).

The agreement is 4KUniverse’s first with a sports league. Its first original series – Model Turned Superstar – is slated for a June 28 debut.

“With any new video format, live sports is always the driver for consumer adoption,” Matthew Mancinelli, founder and CEO of 4KUniverse said, in a statement. “With the addition of the AVP, and an Olympic sport for that matter, 4KUniverse becomes one of the first premium general entertainment 4K TV channels to exist. I’m excited to partner with the league and to bring this beloved sport to the masses in a whole new way.”

“This partnership with 4KUniverse  allow fans to experience the excitement and athleticism of the AVP and our athletes like never before,” added AVP Managing Partner Donald Sun. “The highlights and athlete interviews will add another dimension to bring our stars closer than ever. Beach volleyball is an incredibly beautiful sport, and I am looking forward to showcasing its vibrance and excitement in 4K resolution.”

4KUniverse costs $5.99 per month and is initially available over-the-top via YouTube and Vimeo, though the service is also seeking carriage deals with cable operators, IPTV providers and other types of MVPDs.

Cisco Systems and Roku said they are working together to enable Cisco’s Cisco VideoGuard Everywhere video service protection platform on Roku’s streaming players and integrated Roku TVs.

Cisco VideoGuard Everywhere, a software-based video security product whose roots stem from Cisco’s $5 billion acquisition of NDS in 2012, will also be used to support Charter Communications’ Spectrum TV app for Roku devices, they said.

Cisco and Roku added that they are collaborating to pre-integrate  VideoGuard Everywhere, a security system that compasses both conditional access and digital rights management, into Roku firmware starting next month. All Roku devices will be automatically upgraded to include Cisco security software.

Initial features and services the security integration support on Charter’s Spectrum TV app for Roku devices will include secure video-on-demand and linear TV playback, as well as control the number of devices that can be used simultaneously per subscriber account.

Charter is deploying the VideoGuard Everywhere solution across its systems, including the MSO’s new IP-capable “Worldbox” and Charter Spectrum TV apps offered on a variety of consumer electronic devices such as PCs, tablets and phones.

In February, Charter shed a bit more light on its downloadable security system, telling the FCC in a filing that it had completed two national centralized data centers to support the MSO’s new platform. Pursuing a retail option for that downloadable system was part of a set-top waiver that the FCC granted to Charter in 2013 that allowed the MSO to deploy dual-security boxes as it developed and deployed the new downloadable security platform. The FCC, meanwhile, is trying to move forward on new set-top rules that would apply to cable operators and other MVPDs and aim to "unlock" the set-top and spark a more vibrant retail market for video devices (the cable industry has argued that a new government mandate is unnecessary because the retail market for video devices that are capable of supporting pay TV is evolving amid natural market forces.). 

“We are always looking ahead for ways to make our customer experience better, providing more flexibility and options for accessing the television content people want to watch,” said Jim Blackley, Charter’s executive vice president, Engineering and IT, in a statement. “By expanding the Cisco downloadable security solution to our Spectrum TV App channel on Roku streaming devices, we can better control device streaming rights and functions within the home without compromising on the experience.” 

“We have been working closely with Roku to deliver a lower-cost, easy-to-deploy software security solution leading to innovative services like the Spectrum TV app on the Roku platform,” said Rajeev Raman, senior director of Strategy, Studio Design, and Product Management, Video Software and Solutions, Cisco. “Charter has been a pioneer in the industry for downloadable security to give its customers more options to watch what they want on the devices they want in their homes.”

“Utilizing the fast growing Roku streaming platform in combination with the Cisco VideoGuard Everywhere security solution enables operators to simply and securely deliver their branded video streaming services to the home, and optimally manage digital sharing rights for their content library,” added Andrew Ferrone, vice president of pay TV at Roku. “With this powerful combination, Charter continues to offer its pay-TV customers unique options to watch TV in ways that fit their lifestyles.”