By: Scott St. John, Pipeline
As an industry, we have a tendency to complicate things. In the beginning, the great innovators of the time simply connected two devices together with a wire to transmit signals. And in
the years that followed, the industry proceeded to put many more, and many different, devices together, then added a variety of wires and protocols and ultimately removed the wires
altogether. Today one could only guess at the number of standards, interfaces and devices that have been spawned from this relatively simple initial concept…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
What does it mean to watch television? Pose this question to five different people and you’re likely to hear five different definitions. That’s because TV is having a bit of an
identity crisis—what used to refer to an appointment-like pastime that occurred in living rooms, basements and bedrooms has transformed into
an “anytime, anywhere” activity. TV has changed more in the past 5 years than it did in the previous 50, but because “TV” also refers to the means by which we watch—to put
it another way, people listen to music, not record players—the term “video” is really more appropriate in this case…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Nothing stirs emotions in a country built on the pillars of freedom of speech and personal privacy like the specter of unwarranted government surveillance; intrusions into liberty vibrate in
dissonance against the ideals that shape the American identity. So it was no surprise that all eyes turned to the business practices of communications service providers (CSPs) after Edward
Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), alleged in early June that AT&T, Sprint, Google, Skype, Facebook, and many other companies had violated the
public trust by participating in a secretive effort aimed at capturing and recording all communications data…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
The next time you’re at a family party and you want to end an awkward conversation with an annoying relative, start talking about the least sexy thing in the living room: the set-top box (STB).
Point to that drab rectangle below or alongside the television with a half-cocked smile and your freedom from small talk is all but guaranteed. In an age dominated by ultrathin,
high-definition TVs that make it virtually impossible to set anything on top of them, contemporary STBs, with their large size, clunky programming functionality, LED display, and
rudimentary user interface, seem decidedly out of place…
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By: Alice Bartram
Sponsored by: ComverseThe changing face of PayTV People all over the world still love to watch TV. The number of households that subscribe to pay-TV, an umbrella term
that encompasses cable, satellite and IPTV (internet protocol television) services, currently stands at 804 million, having grown 8 percent last year, and is expected to
pass the one-billion mark by 2017, according to a recent report from Multimedia Research Group (MRG). Although cable still accounts for the largest segment of pay-TV households,
satellite services increased by 12 percent in 2012, while IPTV grew a remarkable 36 percent…
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By: Jean-Michel Planche
The migration to all-IP networks and the flood of new viewing devices, from smartphones and game consoles to smart TVs, signal that the video delivery market is going through a
major revolution. The surprising speed with which tablets have been adopted has led to the normalization of multimedia consumption on the move, leading to a shift in the way services
are delivered and video quality is controlled, just as a shift in the way that cable, satellite and telecom operators engage with customers has emerged because
of “video application providers”—in other words, pure internet players—that now compete with the industry’s established service providers…
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By: Sekhar Banerjee
Most mobile subscribers who sign up for LTE services are lured by a network that’s faster than their current devices are capable of handling, one that allows them to access
high-quality content when they want it, where they want it. Enhanced quality of experience (QoE) is another draw, and LTE provides mobile operators with a low-latency, high-bandwidth
network that’s significantly superior to 3G; encouraging LTE subscribers to consume more data than the average 3G customer…
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By: Becky Bracken
The creativity employed by service providers and operators to offer IP services is being smothered by slow, decrepit access networks. Although the initial installation
is expensive, everyone’s getting the idea pretty quickly that fiber broadband is where it’s at, especially in terms of streaming video. As an added bonus, once you’ve got
fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) hooked up, you can tell your cable or satellite operator to take its ugly box/dish and expensive subscription package and get bent…
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By: Becky Bracken
Once upon a time, broadcast television ruled the land, but these days its kingdom is beleaguered by dismal ratings and declining ad rates. And cable, despite still being able to lure
sizable audiences with dramatic fare like Homeland (Showtime), Game of Thrones (HBO) and AMC’s triple threat of Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, is
losing viewers to cheaper alternatives like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and even YouTube. Perhaps even more significantly, once people started watching shows online and on devices
other than their TVs, they started to wonder if the old set in the living room was still necessary…
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By: Mate Prgin
It is undeniable that over-the-top (OTT) video streaming has impacted mobile service providers in ways they could never have predicted. The Ericsson Mobility Report for June 2013
revealed that video accounts for more than 30 percent of all mobile-data traffic around the world today, and is on a trajectory to pass 45 percent in the
next five years. And according to Sandvine, by April of last year YouTube alone was able to claim 27 percent of all downstream mobile-data traffic in North America…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Is the government monitoring your cell phone? The hottest news in telecommunications last month came from Edward Snowden. The self-proclaimed whistle-blower produced
documentation that he claims is proof of the United States government’s engagement in an elaborate surveillance program that monitors and records all telecommunications. Snowden, a
former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), stated that the program infiltrates Chinese cellular networks as well…
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By: Tim Young
“I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.” —Orson Welles “The idiot box” is fairly easy to criticize in the abstract. For as long as television has
been a popular medium, there have been lousy shows on television. Of course, there has also been a wealth of superior entertainment available to millions of viewers. Within the last
decade or so, thanks to the wide range of choices offered by cable and premium channels, there has been a sharp increase in trash TV (Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (TLC), anyone?) as
well as some of the highest-quality programming in television history, including series such as The Sopranos (HBO), Homeland (Showtime) and Mad Men (AMC)…
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