The "Netflix of Europe"? LOVEFiLM streaming content available on PS3

LOVEFiLM's streamed content (about 5,000 titles) has been available on Sony BRAVIA® and Samsung Internet @ TV HDTVs and Blu-ray players in the U.K.. Now, this content is available on PlayStation 3 game consoles, expanding LOVEFiLM's potential footprint to about three million homes.

LOVEFiLM offers a subscription service starting from £5.99 (€6.80) a month. PlayStation users will be able to access the service via the console’s XMB menu system. Lovefilm is set to launch on the console in November.

Connected TVs in the managed video realm - announcements from Widevine and ADB today

There were a couple of announcements today that point to an expanded role for connected TVs beyond "over-the-top" video. Instead, the connected TV can also serve as a gateway for managed video services. Companies such as Verimatrix, Clearleap, thePlatform, Cisco, Motorola, ActiveVideo Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens, and Ericsson have all made recent announcements in this area.

Now, ADB has joined the fray, offering a solution called the Virtual Gateway. This sofware solution distributes multimedia capabilities throughout the home. Some use cases that ADB highlights are a user's ability to enjoy pay-TV, music and videos from wherever they are in the home: subscribers can use their gaming consoles to tune to a pay-TV channel or watch recorded programs, or access music tracks and videos stored on their DVR and play them on their smart phones.

Also, Widevine continues to make announcements regarding its adaptive streaming solution. The company announced that it has signed a global agreement with LG Electronics (LG) to distribute Widevine’s live and on-demand adaptive streaming, virtual DVD controls and digital rights management (DRM) on LG connected products. Widevine’s DRM and adaptive streaming software are already included in 2009 models of LG Blu-ray players and home theaters shipped in the United States. This agreement enables LG to expand distribution to more devices, on a worldwide basis.

Widevine’s video optimization and DRM platform will now be included on a wide variety of additional LG products, including connected TVs. Widevine’s video optimization technology ensures that consumers using LG products receive an excellent quality of viewing experience for both live and on-demand content. Widevine’s DRM keeps premium content secure, regardless of the LG device to which it is delivered .

More Set-top Box/Home Network Convergence: Netgem is Evaluating the Purchase of Pirelli

There are certainly synergies that exist between companies in the set-top box and residential gateway markets, and the acquisitions have followed, with a particular focus on the European market. First, there was NDS and Jungo back in late 2006. Pace Micro has been on a tear in 2010, acquiring both Bewan Systems and 2Wire. Of course, one cannot forget Technicolor, which brings requisite hardware, software, and content delivery to the table.

Now, Netgem has confirmed that it is evaluating the purchase of Pirelli Broadband Solutions. Pirelli Broadband Solutions specialises in products and platforms for the broadband connected homes and offices. Its business covers residential access gateways, hybrid IPTV set-top boxes , remote management and embedded middlewares.

AT&T Code Scanner, Free Mobile Application for Scanning Mobile Barcodes Now Available

AT&T is furthering its innovation with mobile barcodes with the availability of a free mobile application to read barcodes utilizing a variety of mobile devices across multiple platforms including Android and BlackBerry.

The announcement is the latest milestone in AT&T's efforts to develop mobile barcodes into an effective direct response solution for brands and their consumers. To that end, the company is investing in AT&T Mobile Barcode Services, a suite of products and services that enables marketers to provide measurable experiences with their target audience, at the moment of interest.

AT&T Mobile Barcode Services include:

AT&T Code Scanner: a free mobile application which provides a fun and easy way to scan 2D and 1D barcodes found in magazines, stores, and online, unlocking new ways to experience the world. Consumers can download the free application through several app stores including BlackBerry App World and Android Market on their mobile device. AT&T Code Scanner provides consumers with the tool they need to experience a sneak-peak into the exciting potential of this emerging mobile technology.

AT&T Create-a-Code: is a free service that allows consumers to create their own personal mobile barcodes. Mobile barcodes can be created to direct friends and family to a v-card, Facebook account, personal blog or favorite website.

Code Management Platform: built for business to create, manage and measure mobile barcodes campaign experiences for their customers. It is available now for AT&T's Mobile Barcode Charter Program members, with future availability to all business segments.

Consumer barcode scanning represents the next generation of interactive targeted marketing, enabling advertisers to deliver relevant content and offers to consumers, as well as being a valuable and efficient tool for consumers to search for promotions and information using their mobile device.

In a recent United States consumer survey, 80% of respondents indicated interest in scanning barcodes with their mobile phone. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed want to scan barcodes to capture and redeem coupons and discounts.

Earlier this year, AT&T announced the formation of a 2D barcode charter program designed to provide AT&T and its customers with a better understanding of the marketing and advertising potential that 2D barcodes offers. AT&T is working closely with the companies presently participating in the program to test consumer response rates as well as the effectiveness of consumer barcode scanning technology as an interactive marketing vehicle.

For more information, click here.

AT&T Launches Wi-Fi Hotzone in Chicago

AT&T announced the launch of an AT&T Wi-Fi hotzone in Chicago that will complement the mobile broadband experience for AT&T customers who use Wi-Fi enabled devices while in Wrigleyville — the neighborhood of restaurants and shops surrounding Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. The new Wi-Fi hotzone provides coverage along the streets and in the outdoor areas of Wrigleyville on the south, east and west sides of the stadium.

The Chicago AT&T Wi-Fi hotzone is the third to be deployed as part of a pilot project to examine using Wi-Fi to supplement AT&T's mobile broadband coverage in areas with consistently high 3G traffic and mobile data use. The first pilot AT&T Wi-Fi hotzone launched in New York City's Times Square in May, and customer response has been positive; as a result, additional Wi-Fi hotzones have been turned up in downtown Charlotte, N.C. and now Chicago.

AT&T is using wireless technologies to mobilize everything that's important to customers – their favorite content, apps, entertainment and social networks. AT&T today delivers the nation's fastest mobile broadband network, as well as the nation's largest Wi-Fi network, giving customers the best combination of speed and coverage.

The popularity of Wi-Fi service — particularly on mobile phones — has grown tremendously. In the second quarter 2010, AT&T handled 68.1 million Wi-Fi connections on its network, compared to just 15 million in the same quarter last year. Customers have made 121.2 million connections in the first half of 2010, already far surpassing the 85.5 million connections made in all of 2009.

Many of the most popular AT&T smartphones support auto-authentication at AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots, making it automatic and convenient for customers to connect. Customers can log onto AT&T Wi-Fi hotzones and more than 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots nationwide without it counting toward their monthly smartphone data usage.

AT&T's Wi-Fi network complements its wired broadband and wireless 3G networks, offering Wi-Fi connectivity at popular locations like retail stores, restaurants and coffee shops from coast-to-coast. For more information click here.

New White Paper, Google TV - Searching for Success

Google is entering the market for smart TV at a time where there is much indecision about the ideal technology solution. The market is searching for a solution that will benefit the TV manufacturer, content owners, and advertisers.

This new white paper from Parks Associates looks at Google's strategy and the current market conditions for connected CE.

Click here to download.

Number of smartphones worldwide exceeded 180 million units in 2009

New research from Parks Associates, host of the upcoming executive summit CONNECTIONS™ Europe, indicates that the number of smartphones shipped in 2009 topped 180 million units worldwide, with Nokia, Research in Motion, and Apple sharing 60% of the market. Annual sales will reach almost 400 million by 2014, and as the number of users approaches one billion, consumer demand will grow for mobile broadband services that can share content, particularly high-quality video, across connected devices and the home network.

CONNECTIONS™ Europe, April 27 at the Mövenpick Hotel in Amsterdam, will feature consumer research and analysis on these new service opportunities in the mobile sector in the session “Mobile Video: The Cloud, The App Store & the Connected Home.”

Session speakers:

-- Klaus Milczewsky, Senior Mgr, Deutsche Telekom AG
-- Peter Percosan, CTO, Cable Europe Labs
-- Andy Tiller, Marketing Vice Chair, Femto Forum

In a recent Parks Associates survey on mobile convergence, over one-third of U.S. smartphone users expressed an interest in streaming multimedia content stored on home CE to their mobile device. Service providers will have to adapt their mobile and video strategies to meet the demands of multiple platforms, and the panelists will discuss these challenges, plus the impact of new devices such as the iPad and the HP Slate.

For information or to register for CONNECTIONS™ Europe, visit www.connectionseurope.com.

Number of smartphone users to quadruple, exceeding 1 billion worldwide by 2014

The demand for smartphones is creating a demographic shift among users, who will exceed 1 billion worldwide by 2014, stimulating demand for more entry-level models that offer mainstream solutions such as mobile email and social networking applications, according to Parks Associates’ Smartphone: King of Convergence.

This new report includes consumer data from Parks Associates’ primary study Mobile Convergence: Platforms, Applications, and Services. This consumer survey finds only 30% of current smartphone users are the stereotypical young and tech-savvy aficionados.

The other user segments exhibit more mainstream demographic attributes and more divergent usage patterns. One such segment, dubbed “pragmatists,” consists of budget-conscious, middle-aged users who prefer mobile email service over Internet access. Another group is keen on the smartphone’s communication features, ranging from mobile Internet to social network access.

Smartphone: King of Convergence tracks smartphone sales and market shares and analyzes carrier strategies, new mobile applications and services, and mobile technology trends. Mobile Convergence: Platforms, Applications, and Services is a survey of U.S. mobile consumers about ownership and attitudes regarding mobile devices and services.

For more information, visit http://www.parksassociates.com/mobile.

Retrevo's Role in the Consumer Decision Process

Retrevo is an interesting company that has come across my radar on several occasions prior to 2009. I like to think of Retrevo as "The Google of the Consumer Electronics Buying Process" in that they have created and maintain a centralized, independent source that covers consumer needs in three key categories - Find, Buy, and Use. Retrevo does this by analyzing more than 40 different electronics categories, hundreds of thousands of products, millions of facts, and millions of user and expert reviews from thousands of publisher sites, user reviews, blogs, forums and more.

We were pleased to have Retrevo represented at the CONNECTIONS event, and we heard from Vipin Jain, their CEO, on a couple of occasions in Santa Clara. He and Tricia Parks, our CEO, addressed the core elements of the consumer electronics purchase process in a Wednesday morning session titled Navigating the Changing CE Purchase Purchase Process. Both Parks Associates and Retrevo conducted large consumer surveys regarding consumer electronics buying decisions in Q2 2009, with the following key questions examined:

• How have consumers changed their consumer electronics purchasing habits in the last year?
• Can puchase behavior changes be attributed to the recession or other factors?
• With changing purchase habits, where are the opportunities and challenges for consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers?
• Do CE shoppers have specific brand affinities in specific product categories? What causes brand switching? How to raise visibility of your brand?
• Where does retail shine? Where is it weak? What can companies do to optimize their retail positions?
• How will the service provider play a larger role in the delivery of hardware?

Vipin was also a participant on my panel Building the Holistic Support Environment. I asked the Retrevo folks if they would be willing to be interviewed as a follow-up. Here is the transcript.

Parks Associates: Can you please describe the work that Retrevo is doing?

Retrevo: Retrevo (www.retrevo.com) is a new kind of marketplace that makes shopping for consumer electronics simple and fun.

Retrevo uses artificial intelligence to analyze and visually summarize more than 50 million real-time data points from across the web to give shoppers the most comprehensive, unbiased, up-to-date product information they need to make smart, confident decisions about what to buy, when to buy, and where to buy.

To learn more about how we do this, read more about us here.

Parks Associates: What does consumer use of a site like Retrevo tell us about some of the key aspects of how consumers research and buy consumer electronics?

Retrevo: More than 3M users visit Retrevo every month to research what consumer electronics products are right for them. Retrevo observes and analyzes these millions of users behaviors in aggregation, to discover interesting activities and trends. We track these publicly using the CE Demand Index and CE Price Index.

The CE Demand Index reflects the (net dollar) demand for consumer electronics products across 40 categories. This index is a leading indicator of consumers’ purchase intention (or sell-through potential from sellers’ perspective) using various offline and online retail channels. The CE Price Index reflects the price trends for actively selling products across 40 categories that consumers have an interest in purchasing. Some of our analysis from the indexes is made available for free through the Retrevo Pulse Reports. Read more about the Retrevo Pulse here.

Parks Associates: From what you can tell, what appear to be key triggers to the purchase of a particular product?

Retrevo: Overall demand is down 15% year over year, and when consumers do come out to buy, Value (price to pay for the features a product offers) is definitely top of mind for consumers. But a study of buying behavior across categories shows some interesting patterns: Consumers care about innovation and want the latest and greatest (in a meaningful way, not from marketing speak). Sure, consumers are spending 20% more time researching, but at the same time, they are willing to spend more for the innovation. Examples of this can be seen in Digital Camera and Optical Disc Player categories, while lack of innovation shows in categories such as Home Theater Systems. A full report is available here.

Parks Associates: What does your knowledge about consumers and CE buying tell you about how particular CE brands tend to fare? Are there products where consumers are more brand loyal, and brands where they are less loyal?

Retrevo: We recently did some studies about brand affinity, and came up with interesting conclusions. Value (features for the price) trumped brand in all but the strongest categories. While we do not share data about specific brands or products, the aggregate results showed brand affinity to be consistently low across many categories including: DVD Players, Picture Frames, Laptops/netbooks, camcorders, and home theater systems. Cameras had a 180% higher affinity than average, and TVs were are 200% of average.

Other myths that were disproved were:
Myth: Customers are loyal. Once you acquire them, they are yours for life
Fact: Only 56% users stated that they would buy products from the same brand because they had a positive experience with them. 24% of users stated that they would consider buying from the same brand if that brand continued to represent a good value and/or good quality and/or innovation (features/functions in the product). So, even with a positive brand experience, consumers are sensitive to (and sometimes skeptical about) brand’s continued commitment to their differentiation, a hard reality in face of every increasing complexity, innovation and competition in product space.

Myth: A positive product experience means repeat purchase from the same brand
Fact: Even though 80% users had a positive view of a brand they owned and stated they would consider buying from them again, the stated intent didn’t translate into their actions when we silently studied their shopping behavior on the Retrevo site. It appears that consumers get into a different mindset when researching products, not completely rationalized by their beliefs and experiences, highlighting the complexity and fear surrounding consumer electronics purchases. 76% of the users spent better part of their product research identifying/finding products for purchase without ever choosing a brand explicitly. Factors that contributed to brand switching / product selection were good value at 34%, trusted sites and experts raving about a different product/brand at 25% and other users talking positively about a different product/brand at 10%.

Parks Associates: Retrevo has been able to provide some interesting information about what products are “hot.” What can you tell us about the 2008 hot products or brands? What products or brands tended to top the list in 2008?

Retrevo: Retrevo Pulse looked at the behavior of millions of users along with their level of interest, reviews from experts and users and pricing data, to identify the top products of 2008. The Pulse Awards go to products that have been recognized for high quality, high level of demand (user interest), rich feature sets, and most importantly, high value. The winners for 2008 are listed below. For more details, click here.

• TVs: Samsung LN46A650 (LCD) and Panasonic VIERA TH-50PZ80U (Plasma)
• Cameras: Canon SD1100 IS (Point-&-Shoot) and Nikon D90 (SLR)
• GPS: Garmin Nuvi 360
• Netbooks: Asus Eee PC 901

• Laptops: HP Pavilion dv5t

• Blu Ray Player: Sony BDP-S350


• Camcorder: Flip Video Mino

• Cell Phone: iPhone 3G 8GB


Parks Associates: What trends are you seeing in consumers purchasing high-definition televisions? What are they looking for? How do features like high refresh rates impact purchasing behavior?

Retrevo: High momentum in the first half and excess inventory in the second half of 2008 depressed prices to unrealistic levels last holiday season. Negative margins forced brands and retailers to raise prices post-holiday season as excess inventory cleared from the channel (ASPs went up more than 30% from January to mid-April). Even though the category has gone through a refresh cycle in last few months (more than 50% of currently selling HDTVs were introduced this year), demand hasn't picked up even after a technology refresh cycle. What is the innovation in HDTVs lately? Transition from 720p to 1080p? Yawn! Consumers are not biting. Let's work on the basics. Get the best out-of-the-box experience without worrying about ISF specs, calibration, refresh rates, etc. Get HDTVs to network and "simply" download content from your computer and from the Internet, and we will have a shot at making people spend more for the newer technology rather than simply gravitating to value brands for a seemingly commoditized technology.

Parks Associates: Who do consumers trust for advice? What is the role of professional product reviewers vs. bloggers vs. friends and family?

Retrevo: The product category, and the stage that a consumer is in during the purchase process, dictates who influences them.

Our research shows that for many technology categories that are considered purchases (including HDTVs, Laptops, Home Entertainment Systems etc), consumers read expert reviews earlier in their shopping journey (to get some grounding and guidance) and use user reviews very close to the purchase to get the final reinforcement and/or reason to buy or not to buy. In fact, more than 75% of people behave this way. Our definition of experts includes not just professional product reviewers, but also vertical sites, blogs and anchors on passion sites (around specific areas of interest)..

Some technology categories are more social / user review friendly from recommendation perspective, mostly mobile categories such as cell phones, MP3 players, accessories/add on etc. Most of these categories fall under either “impulse/emotional” buys.

Parks Associates: What products or categories are you seeing as hot in 2009? What are you anticipating for the holiday 2009 shopping season?

Retrevo: The high unemployment rate and other economic factors are most likely contributing to lackluster growth in many product categories including game consoles, MP3 players, and even digital cameras. The primary categories with any buzz in the marketplace right now are laptops (particularly netbooks) and smartphones. They will likely enjoy modest growth in demand. The next several months leading up to the holidays could find consumers buying smaller ticket items like universal remotes, radar detectors, and headsets which are all showing growth trends on Retrevo's Pulse. TV demand has been on a slow decline for the last few months but has just recently started to show signs growth.

2Wire Follows up on Residential Gateways

As CONNECTIONS™ was originally designated as "The Residential Gateway Conference" in its inaugural year (1997), it's great to bring leaders in this space together every year for a refresh and a look ahead. This is exactly what we did in Santa Clara last month, with a panel titled Service Provider Home Networking Strategies: RGs and Services.

The residential gateway's role for telecom services has become better defined with each year, and the rollout of advanced broadband services, bundles, and telco/IPTV will continue to drive growth. From our recent report Home Networks for Consumer Electronics, we anticipate that residential gateawy deployments will grow from 36% in 2009 to 52% in 2013. The nature of residential gateway deployments among cable operators is a really interesting area to watch right now, with debate on both sides to the merit and need as of this point. However, it's clear that - at least for certain service providers - the reliance of advanced customer premise equipment in faciliating both consumer-facing and backend services and actions - is critical.

Jayant Dasari led a conversation at CONNECTIONS with a number of leading vendors. We have some follow-up responses to share from Jaime Fink, Vice President of Technology and Strategy at 2Wire.

Parks Associates: What are the key hardware and middleware components that need to fall into place for the RG to take on the role of media center in the home?

Jaime Fink: We see two clear gaps that need to be filled for the residential gateway to assume the role of media center in the home:

The first gap is the lack of clearly a defined home networking standard for distribution of media to fixed devices (TVs and STBs) and mobile devices. The race is on, with competition heating up between a variety of wired technologies – none of which have captured either retail or service provider acceptance in a unified fashion – and the increasingly popular wireless technologies. With recent advances in wired technologies like ITU G.hn, as well as the silicon advances in the 5GHz spectrum of wireless 802.11n by expanding up to 4x4 radio implementations, it appears that both wired and wireless technologies will benefit from significant improvements in the very near future. While it’s too early to call a winner in this race, it is safe to say, if the market continues moving toward support for connected TVs and DLNA devices, that wireless is the more desirable approach, especially in areas of the world where wiring quality remains substandard.

The second gap is the lack of a unified user experience for access to multiple content sources and next generation digital home applications. While DLNA has achieved some success in this area, it has not been fully embraced by the public, due to shortcomings in both user experience and legal accessibility of desirable content, including broadcast television, DVR, and over-the-top content. A new approach to user experience must be introduced – one that enables the home media hub to integrate all of these content sources and next generation applications into a single, consistent user experience for television, mobility, and digital home applications. It also means that an acceptable approach to DRM within the home must be established to prevent the various renderers (TVs/STBs, IP-connected Blu-Ray players, etc.) from implementing multiple divergent DRM techniques.

Parks Associates: What will be the major cost drivers? Is there an industry consensus on what the price point needs to be at in order to promote a wider acceptance of RG for all residential services?

Jaime Fink: In determining price points, consumer demand will play a larger role than production costs, as residential gateways and other CPE are typically subsidized by the service provider. However, the intention of gateway manufacturers such as 2Wire is to gradually add only incremental cost to the gateway as more processing power and home networking technologies are added. This will serve to keep the cost basis relatively competitive with other gateway technologies, while aligning today’s costs with tomorrow’s services.

It is important to note, however, that additional peripheral home products and technologies will likely be required, including a very large hard disk, and perhaps technologies such as Zigbee for home automation and home monitoring. Service providers are leaning toward requiring that consumers determine – and pay for – the size of hard disk that corresponds to the amount of storage they require, and this disk must be easily attachable to the gateway (via cable, snap-on SATA, or USB 3.0 connections). This modular approach to the hardware keeps the base gateway systems reasonably affordable, allowing them to be given away or largely subsidized, letting consumers add hardware features as needed to support desired applications and services.

Parks Associates: What are some of the concerns that operators have in deploying an RG that is capable of serving as a multi-service delivery platform?

Jaime Fink: The biggest concern seems to be the lack of a single standard that could be used to manage services. There are several management approaches and service architectures available (TR-069, OMA-DM, OSGi), but none provide a common approach that solves all the needs of the multi-service platform in the home. There are several efforts in standards bodies to align these approaches, facilitating the addition of new APIs to encourage the development of next generation services, but this will take some time to achieve. In the meantime, it is important to begin implementing solutions that prove the value proposition and ease-of-integration with the service provider’s architecture. Only by establishing such proof points can we promise a true turnkey solution that enables services and content from any source in the service provider’s architecture.

Parks Associates: What value added services do you envision the service providers introducing via an RG in the next 12-18 months?

Jaime Fink: The initial demand is for a whole-home storage and backup solution for multiple PCs in the home, including ‘super-backup’ of the most valuable content to a secured Internet-based storage disk. Additionally, there is strong demand for home monitoring solutions, including a variety of camera and other ‘lifestyle’ sensors which provide peace of mind and limit damage in emergencies.

Parks Associates: Will embedded storage be an important component in RGs?

Jaime Fink: YES! The residential gateway is ideally positioned for embedded storage, as it is the center of the home network, accessible to every device, with typically fast link speeds with each device. With cloud-based storage, average users are limited by very slow uplink speeds – sometimes upwards of two months! By contrast, in-home networked storage provides superior speed and user experience, and can even help organize the user’s media library. In the future, as IPTV and IP-connected televisions increase in popularity, the home network storage disk will be the logical solution for caching VoD content and live broadcast TV for availability to all the television sets in the home.

Follow-up with Valens Semiconductor

Micha Risling, vice president of marketing at Valens Semiconductor, was kind enough to respond to some follow-up questions from the panel Extending the Reach of Wired Networks and Interfaces.

Parks Associates: During the panel, I had expressed skepticism about seeing a really large market opportunity for whole-house HDMI solutions, and I asked Micha about this.

Risling: He notes that this skepticism isn't totally unwarranted, but he also indicates that we should expect to see consumer electronics vendors adopt solutions such as HDBaseT™ due to a number of factors:

• The desire by consumers to distribute very high-quality video from one consumer electronics platform to another;
• The rise of the connected TV, where Internet capabilities are more prevalent. Risling indicates that HDBaseT will allow televisions to take advantage of Web services as "thinner" clients. In other words, the televisions may not have to account for all of the internal requirements for Web capability (browsers, etc.), but could take advantage of such capabilities provided by one advanced CE platform or perhaps the home computer. HDBaseT would provide the IP backbone to send the Web services to the TVs.
• A desire by television manufacturers to provide for more advanced interfaces.
• A "clean" solution that enables televisions and other consumer electronics to receive Web and other content in the whole-home environment without necessarily being co-located to control devices.

Parks Associates: This looks to be a highly competitive field, as a number of vendors (including other participants on the CONNECTIONS panel) are targeting similar applications. I asked Risling to describe the key differentiators for HDBaseT. Here is his response:

Risling: The main difference is easy to say or should I say measure. We can send the same video quality as HDMI (uncompressed 1080P, 60Hz, 48bits) over much-longer cables. We can do it over a 100m standard Cat5e cable and a standard RJ45 connector where other solutions are limited to few meters using a special cable and a special connector. But it is not just the cable; we are the only technology that enables a friendly installation. We support standard passive connectors and field terminated connectors that enables you to easily install it. This is something that you can’t achieve with the other solutions, and the reason is that both need high quality shielded cables with pre-soldered connectors. The cost of deploying these high-quality cables is by far more expensive then using either an existing CAT5e installation or installing a new cable which is the cheapest cable in the market. And that can be the main essence when comparing the other solutions.

HDBaseT was developed from the first place in such way that it fits the specification of an existing cable/connector and thus it is the most reliable solution with the lowest cost. Other solutions are based on a similar implementation that requires very expensive cable and connector and are limited in terms of distance.

Due to its unique implementation, HDBaseT is better prepared for supporting the future needs of the industry including supporting 2K/4K resolution and 3D. In fact, we can assure that our next generation will be able to support 20Gbps. Although other solutions indicate that they support video and Internet signaling, HDBaseT supports "5Play," which adds control signaling and support for power to source CE devices on top of the distributed video, audio, and Internet the ability of sending controls and more importantly a unique capability of sending enough power to source CE devices .

Parks Associates: What do you see as some of the key advantages to HDBaseT over other solutions?

Risling: Performance, distance, friendly installation, the 5Play convergence at the lowest system cost, standard cable/connector, reliability, future upgradability and power of cable.

Parks Associates: Can you explain more about what special requirements HDBase-T needs in order to extend the protection afforded by HDCP over the whole-home?

Risling: Unfortunately I’m not able to disclose it at the moment. It will be announced once the specification is released.

Next-gen Wireless Home Networking Solutions: A Follow-up

Being the "home network analyst" at Parks Associates for 11 years, I've been involved in a few of these home networking PHY beauty contests that sometimes take on the form of high school hallway debates.

• "The analyst likes so-and-so better than such-and-such!"
• "He like so-and-so, but he doesn't "like-her/like-her!"
• "The analyst took sides with so-and-so and says that such-and-such is [enter in derogatory statement here]!"

I've accepted that this comes with the territory. In the end, what I'm trying to do when I write a report, an article, or lead a moderated discussion among highly competitive players vying for pieces of the same pie is to put myself in the shoes of a home network vendor, a consumer electronics manufacturer, or a service provider and do my best to evaluate technology solutions as consistently as possible. This means that I get to ask a lot of "dumb" questions - often multiple times, and often over a multiple period of briefings over multiple years to the same companies.

To the home networking companies that have endured the questions and shared your perspective, thanks!

The stakes for next-generation wireless networking solutions are really high these days, as silicon companies target the embedded market well beyond the router, access point, and notebook computer space. Our recently-completed Home Networks for Consumer Electronics report forecasts that worldwide sales/shipments of network-connected (and in most cases Web-enabled) consumer electronics products will double between 2009 and 2010. That's a chipset opportunity well north of 100 million units in 2013, so it's no insignificant market. If you add in embedded home networking in devices like residential gateways, home computers, and pay TV set-top boxes, you're adding at least another 50-60 million units each year during the forecast period. So, the pressure is on, and with a reported $300 million in funding having gone into next-generation wireless chipset companies over years, folks want to make sure that they make the right calls.

We had a really great wireless networking panel at our CONNECTIONS™ Summit at CES in January (where panelists from AMIMON, Celeno, ProVision, TZero Technologies, and WirelessHD spoke), and the feedback was positive in terms of the information that was covered. TWICE provided an excellent summary of the panel. As we started planning for CONNECTIONS in June, we decided that it would be well worth it to bring some of the main players in next-generation wireless networking back for a reprise. Besides, I had plenty of dumb questions left to ask! So, we asked six companies to participate on a panel discussion titled Wireless Networking & Video Consumption in the Home.

First, I want to thank the participants - Vijay Desai from Aceurity, Noam Geri from AMIMON, Lior Weiss from Celeno, Ian Walsh from Provision Communications, Andrea Goldsmith from Quantenna Communications, and Sheung Li from SIBEAM - for competing with food and beverages in the Showcase Theater, and generating a lively debate about the respective merits of their solutions! Who knew that one simple question would lead us down the 75-minute road we took?

Several of our panelists have agreed to answer some follow-up questions, so I've captured their responses. My hope is to get some additional perspective from all of the panelists.

Who's Gonna "Win" in Wireless?

To set the stage, the looming question that I think is out there is "Can any wireless solution successfully unseat Wi-Fi® as the wireless choice for delivering high-quality video streams in either one room or multiple rooms of the house?" A lot of folks look at the hype and the eventual downfall of UWB solutions as a cautionary tale to those who want to work outside the boundaries of Wi-Fi to deliver high-performance. They argue that Wi-Fi's performance-to-price ratio is more than adequate for most connected CE use cases.

Wi-Fi's clear success to date has been on the enterprise and consumer router side of the business, but its CE business is no slouch. Both stationary (gaming consoles, digital televisions, set-top boxes, and printers) and mobile/portable (handheld games, cameras, and portable music players) consumer electronics rather than PCs provided the fastest growth for Wi-Fi chipsets in 2008, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Among the more than 4,000 Wi-Fi certified products, consumer electronics products – and those particularly aimed at entertainment – represent a very low percentage of the total (less than ten percent), but are a growing percentage of annual shipments, according to the Alliance.

But is Wi-Fi (and specifically 802.11n) sufficient for the needs of consumer electronics manufacturers and service providers that are seeking to facilitate the movement of several high-definition streams of content around the home? Upstarts like AMIMON and SiBEAM developed their own solutions to address this issue, and they've had some success. Noam Geri at AMIMON reminds me that they sold more than 100,000 chipsets in 2008, and their customers include:

• Hisense wireless HDTVs.
• SONY shipped TVs in Europe and in Japan embedded with AMIMON’s chipset, including the world’s thinnest LCD TV – The SONY ZX1 which does not have any connectors on the thin panel – only wireless.
• In the U.S., SONY is shipping the SONY BRAVIA Wireless link based on AMIMON’s technology. This is a wireless video accessory for BRAVIA TVs (you can get it on Amazon.com).
• Sharp is selling a wireless kit based on AMIMON chipset in Japan, and Mitsubishi is selling a wireless TV with embedded AMIMON chipset.
• In the U.S., Gefen is selling dongles based on AMIMON’s chipset, and most recently Philips announced a wireless dongle based on AMIMON.
• There are also customers in the professional and Medical spec like Stryker and IDX (professional wireless HD camera system).

On the SiBEAM side, products include:

• Panasonic Z1 Series - NeoPDP HDTV;
• Toshiba REGZA LINK;
• LG LHX and LH85 LCD TVs; and
• GefenTV Wireless for HDMI 60Ghz Extender

At the same time, companies like Celeno and ProVision have their own design wins. Celeno's announced customers include a Cavium Networks reference design; Comtrend Wireless Video Adapters for distribution of multiple HD IPTV content from any Ethernet-equipped home gateway or DVR to IP set top boxes; and SerComm Corp. IP902CL, a Wireless HD IPTV networking solution.

ProVision's announced customers include the AXAR Media AXAR 1000, a Sender and Receiver kit that enables HD video, from set-top boxes, DVRs or Blu-ray players, to be securely distributed over Wi-Fi.

The Compressed/Uncompressed Debate

During the panel, SiBEAM's Sheung Li was ... how shall we put this ... forceful ... in his argument that a 60 GHz uncompressed solution was the only way to provide consumer electronics manufacturers and content owners with assurances that the quality of their 1080p high-def video wouldn't be compromised. We had just started digging into this subject during the CES panel, so I wanted to better understand the sentiments of the other companies in this regard.

Lior Weiss, Celeno: Indicates that H.264 encoding is sufficient for what he calls "perceived lossless compression," where the human mind cannot distinguish the video quality of an uncompressed versus a compressed stream. He notes that encoding companies and video experts have indicated that a solution that facilitiates the distribution of 720p60 quality video at 12 Mbps or 1080p60 at 30Mbps can be considered "lossless" according to the companies with whom he's speaking. He gives credit to the 60 GHz solution providers for developing a true uncompressed solution, but questions the robustness of the 60 GHz link to provide a consistent high-quality experience. Weiss notes that an examination of the quality of the radio link is a critical factor in evaluating a solution's effectiveness, noting that compression that is otherwise not detectable by the human eye allows for a solution that can operate at a lower bitrate and enjoy higher robustness overall.

Noam Geri, AMIMON: Noam appears to agree with Lior in the sense that the design of the radio link itself is a critical factor in determining the type of quality of experience a wireless networking solution can deliver.

"Trying to deliver all the information in a brute-force approach will actually result in very poor quality because when the channel degrades the link will break and picture will be lost, and even occasional breaks in the link are very annoying," he notes. "A better approach is to design a solution that is tolerant to errors and loss due to degradation in channel conditions."

Cost Considerations

I asked our panelists to provide some perspective on the costs for implementing their solutions, and received some interesting responses.

Lior Weiss, Celeno: The Celeno solution is based on a Transmitter chipset (i.e. Access Point) and a Receiver chipset (i.e. client). The uniqueness of the Celeno technology (vs. other Wi-Fi solutions) that our powerful “sauce” can yield HD performance even if the receiver chipset is not Celeno’s. That helps us with the price curve of the solution.

Weiss notes that the Celeno solution is receiver-agnostics, so as long as the transmitter used their solution, then connected CE devices could use other Wi-Fi chipsets. The transmitter side could be an over-the-top STB bundled with the TV, it could be a Tuner in case of a “two-piece” TV model, etc.

"On the transmitter side, Weiss notes,"the Celeno chip has about 25% premium over plain-vanilla Wi-Fi. “By working on the client side with Wi-Fi price leaders we achieve end to end attractive price points, especially when multiple clients are involved." Weiss notes, however, that this wouldn't preclude Celeno from working with other Wi-Fi chipset vendors. "In fact, he notes, "keeping open architecture is a great advantage and is perceived well with the tier 1 OEM’s."

For example, a big TV manufacturer who is bundling USB Wi-Fi adaptors on the TV side with Media server device for DVR functionality complained about the performance and the reach of the solution between rooms for video streaming. After plunking in a Celeno CL1300 into the Media server side (and still with the same USB Wi-Fi adaptor) performance was improved dramatically and became a true multi-room solution. Lastly, The Celeno solution is standard Wi-Fi based. We are interoperating with other 802.11n chipsets. I would call it a 'novel' implementation of Wi-Fi."

Noam Geri, AMIMON: WHDI uses 5GHz, OFDM, MIMO – basically 80% of the WHDI solution is similar to 802.11n so the inherent costs of WHDI is about the same as 802.11n. Current offering of WHDI is more expensive than wi-fi, because of the volumes and the many cost reduction iterations that wi-fi underwent. Overtime WHDI should converge to the same price-points of wi-fi since it has similar complexity and uses the same RF technology.

It is worth noting that WHDI and Wi-Fi have different functionality so this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. WHDI can deliver uncompressed video and wi-fi chipset can deliver IP data (or compressed video). In order to build a solution based on wi-fi to deliver raw video, one would need to add a real time compression engine (e.g H.264 encoder). The compression engine not only degrades quality and adds latency, but also adds complexity and costs, so a solution to deliver uncompressed video based on wi-fi is actually be more expensive than WHDI.

In fact, the synergies between 802.11 and WHDI will lead within 2-3 years to single chip solutions that implement both WHDI and 802.11. Many systems need both. For example: a TV will need WHDI to connect to all the video sources in the home and 802.11 to connect to the Internet. With a single chip device the TV will get both for the price of one.

Power Considerations

A good deal of the analysis that focus on the wireless space target price and power as two major constraints to growth. I wanted to ask our panelists their take on the power consumption/output issues, with a specific eye on any potential regulatory concerns or the use of their solutions on more power-sensitive consumer electronics devices, such as mobile phones or portable multimedia players.

Lior Weiss, Celeno: We are fully compliant to ETSI and FCC regulations for 5GHZ radio transmission as far as power output, DFS, etc. No issue there. We are using standard power amplifier , the same as any other WiFi chipsets and transmit as per the regulated output power in the specific radio channel. Our OEM and ODM partners certify their Celeno based devices per ETSI and FCC regulations.

Noam Geri, AMIMON: WHDI is very suitable for portable applications. Current implementations of WHDI can be as lower than 2W which makes WHDI suitable for notebook computers. Granted, this is still too high for ultra-portable devices, but we can expect future versions of WHDI to enable modes of less than 1W enabling applications such as wireless portable gaming consoles and even WHDI in cell phones. This is one of the major advantages of using the 5GHz band as opposed to 60GHz which requires much higher output power levels because of the poor propagation qualities of the wireless channel.

The Fit for Wi-Fi

I received some input from Vijay Desai, the founder and CEO of ACEurity, regarding how Wi-Fi may be best positioned to support very high-quality video distribution for the home. Desai says that the use of so-called "4x4" MIMO configurations will increase coverage range and throughput. 4x4 MIMO configurations rely on four transmitting antennas and four receiving antennas that allow for four "spacial streams." Desai says that a focus on low latency will place emphasis on such enhancements as dynamic bandwidth adaption, recovery mechanisms for packet loss, and H.264 compression.

ACEurity's solution, Desai notes, is a HDQ™ (HD-ViMAC/XCoder), capable of handling real-time video at 4.5 Gbps and adapting bandwidth between 10 and 130 Mbps, even with 3 x 3 Spatial Multiplex MIMO configuration. This solution, he notes, is very resilient, capable of of withstanding greater than 50% packet loss in transit and rendering "visually losless" video with an extremly low latency (approximately one millisecond).

Desai also provided some helpful information in terms of the bill of material cost expectations for consumer electronics vendors considering a high-quality wireless video solution. He says that the desired pricing for a two-pair dongle would be $149, but with a clear path to $99. This means that the cost for the wireless solution itself should be no more than $20-$25, which he believes is achievable with volume production in 2010.

How Cisco is Marrying Online Video to Consumer Electronics

A key theme that we explored at CONNECTIONS™ two weeks ago was how online video is going to impact both the consumer electronics and the service provider industries. We wanted to explore the technologies that are bringing Web and Web-like content and services to devices like the TV, the Blu-ray player, and the set-top box and discuss the business implications. So, we dedicated a significant portion of our panels to such topics. Our panels included:

• The Marriage of Online Video to CE (with panelists from Cisco Systems, Qualcomm, TiVo, and YouTube);
• Connected TV Strategies (with panelists from AnySource Media, IBM, VIZIO, and Yahoo!
• The Future of the Set-top Box (with panelists from Exceptional Innovation, Irdeto, Microsoft, NDS, and NXP Semiconductors);
• WebTV: Extreme TV Makeover? (with panelists from ActiveVideo Networks, Boxee, Cisco Systems, Intel, and Paramount Digital Entertainment); and
• Bringing “Cloud Media” to Consumer Electronics Devices (with panelists from Accedo Broadband, Allegro Software Development Corp., Clearleap, Eyecon Technologies Inc., and Syabas).

In The Marriage of Online Video to CE, we unfortunately ran short of time, and we had a number of really interesting questions queued up for our speakers. So, I'm following up with them to get some additional perspective on what they're seeing in the connected CE space.

Ken Wirt, Cisco Systems' Vice President Consumer Marketing, was kind enough to respond to some questions. Here's a transcript of the Q&A:

Parks Associates: As Cisco looks at marrying online content to a variety of consumer electronics devices, what are the main tenets of your solution? Can you describe the work that Cisco has done/is doing to deliver these kind of content experiences to a growing number of devices?

Ken Wirt: Cisco sees the consumer market growing thru three phases:

1. Connected Home — This phase is nearing maturity. In this phase people get wireless routers in order to connect one (or several) computers to the Internet.
2. Media-Enabled Home — We’re in the early stages of this phase. This is about having multiple connected devices in the home and wanting to move media around among the devices and access the media from outside the home. Examples would be viewing photos stored on a computer on the TV, or viewing video on a PC, or streaming music to your mobile phone.
3. Visual Networking — This phase is on the (not too) distant horizon. In this phase there’s a combination of the social networking connections with video. Video is a huge step up from the text we use today because of the immediacy and the ability to communicate emotions (a real smile vs. an emoticon). An example of this type of product is consumer telepresence.

What Cisco is doing is becoming what we view as a new kind of CE company — where CE no longer stands for “consumer electronics,” but “consumer experience.” Historically, CE has been about silo’d devices which don’t interact with each other. What differentiates “consumer experience” is that it’s about the triumvirate of device+software+cloud services. A good example is Flip Video. While most people look at this as the device, it’s also the FlipShare software that runs on your computer that lets you edit and share the video, and FlipShare.com that provides a private “channel” for others (example family members) to stream your videos that are stored in the cloud.

Parks Associates: What work is Cisco doing to ensure a good quality video experience on the consumer electronics device? Does Cisco do any work in the backend to groom video for optimal viewing?

Ken Wirt: Cisco has a variety of technologies within the network that we refer to collectively as medianet. These technologies optimize the experience of all media (but especially video) for the capabilities of the network (bandwidth, traffic), the nature of the content (resolution, media type, etc.) as well as the endpoint (screen resolution, speed of connectivity, buffer size, etc). Within the home network, we also support technologies like VQE (video quality of experience). Finally, we are offering no cost licenses to our HNAP protocol that helps consumer electronics devices connect to the network, tell the network about their capabilities, and provide network administration for managed services.

Parks Associates: Will Cisco implement one solution for delivering Web content (or Web-like content) for both set-top boxes (Scientific-Atlanta) and retail-based products (like a connected TV)? Is Cisco's goal to develop a one-size-fits-all kind of solution for everyone?

Ken Wirt: Cisco already offers a solution that can work with STB’s, PC’s, mobile devices, and CE devices — it’s our combination of our MXE and CDS products. MXE can reformat any type of video for a desired frame rate and resolution – this let’s it adjust to different types of devices and bandwidth. The CDS can then distribute that content to different types of devices as well as insert ads.

Parks Associates: What kind of efforts is Cisco putting forth to help content owners, service providers, and CE vendors make money off the content? I would imagine that Eos is part of this, but what kind of advertising work is Cisco doing?

Ken Wirt: Cisco is working closely with all of these groups. Cisco works with content owners through its Eos service platform that combines social networking capabilities with short-form video distribution to create a network of content sites for media companies that will let them better manage the sites and better know their customers. This reduces costs and through targeted advertising, better monetizes those sites. Cisco works with service providers to both improve the quality of their networks, and through managed services to reduce costs and increase revenue. And finally, we are helping CE vendors to develop more connected products by offering no-cost licenses to the HNAP protocol (see above).

Following up with Icron after CONNECTIONS

In reflecting on some of the highlights of an outstanding CONNECTIONS™ 2009 event June 2-June 4, the introduction of new solutions to enhance the way in which entertainment content is enjoyed was a significant theme. I moderated a panel titled Extending the Reach of Wired Networks and Interfaces that showcased recent efforts in powerline networking, developing extensions to HDMI over twisted-pair, and Icron’s PC-on-TV solution. Rick Merritt at EE Times attended that session and wrote an article discussing the potential fit for the solutions offered by Icron Technologies, Silicon Image, Synerchip, and Valens Semiconductor.

When I was introduced to the Icron solution last September, I was intrigued by the solution that can basically extend a home computer desktop onto a high-definition TV using different types of standard networking solutions (be they Ethernet, “no-new-wires,” or wireless). I think that there’s good potential for products that allow consumers to access Web content on their TVs without going through devices like the digital media adapter or expensive solutions that don’t seem to work quite right.

Brian Donnelly, Icron’s vice president of sales and marketing, who walked me through a demonstration at CONNECTIONS last week, followed up on that article with some notes he wanted to clarify. Brian notes that Icron would be complementary to Valens or Synerchip, as their customers might implement Icron’s solution for whole-home video+USB-type of extensions. He also notes that Icron uses other company’s video chipsets (uncompressed and H.264 encoders/decoders) as part of their solution. So, they’re not looking to create a new video compression chip, but rather work with the solutions that are out there already and add remote USB functionality to enable a true PC on TV experience.

Icron’s “special sauce” – in wonky parlance – they multiplex all the data channels together (video, audio, USB) and perform various QoS and flow control optimizations as well as overall system optimization – this means that Icron has figured out how to ensure priority of the different data types so that your keyboard and mouse (and other USB I/O devices) are immediately recognized and processed as well as ensuring that video/audio are delivered in a very high quality format.

Brian says that products using the Icron PC-on-TV solution will be available in Q1 of 2010. I’ll look forward to seeing how the solution gets implemented.

Connected consumer electronics sales to exceed 100 million units annually by 2013

Consumer demand for digital media and online content will push worldwide annual sales of connected CE to more than 100 million units by 2013, according to the new Parks Associates report Home Networks for Consumer Electronics.

The market for connected CE includes networked TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, home media servers, and set-top boxes. Through network and Internet connections, these devices can access and display home network content such as photos and music and retrieve online content such as widgets, games, and video from Hulu and YouTube.

Diverse user scenarios create multiple challenges for technology developers, according to Scherf, including interface design as well as connectivity.

Home Networks for Consumer Electronics covers consumer and technology trends in the connected CE market and provides forecasts for multiple connected CE product categories. For more information, visit http://www.parksassociates.com/, or contact 972-490-1113, sales@parksassociates.com.

The CONNECTIONS™ conference, June 2-4, features a Connected CE track, including the panels Extending the Reach of Wired Networks and Interfaces and Bringing “Cloud Media” to Consumer Electronics Devices. For registration, or to request a press pass, visit http://www.connectionsconference.com/.

To view the full press release, click here.

Connected CE Interview with Allegro's Loren Shade

Thank you Loren Shade for participating at the CONNECTIONS Summit at CES held on January 8-9, 2009.

What do you see as key limitations to UPnP and DLNA? How does the work of your companies address additional needs on top of these standards?

DLNA 1.5 standards do not currently address content synchronzation between portable media players and house-based media servers. While DLNA 2.0 guidelines will address these issues, we work with key customers to solve these issues ahead of guideline release. Similarly, we have a number of set top box customers who will want to resolve Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) and Scheduled Recording Service (SRS) issues prior to the release of the corresponding DLNA 2.0 guidelines.

Is your “Remote UI” work compatible with the CEA 2014 standard?

DLNA 2.0 guidelines are still not frozen, but it appears that CEA-2014 will the primary interface standard for Remote UI. Allegro will provide CEA-2014 support, if another interface standard is chosen as the primary, we will provide CEA-2014 support as a secondary item.

For more information about Allegro, visit: www.allegrosoft.com .

Babelgum Mobile launches FREE TV services with Vodafone Customers

A free Web TV service, Babelgum Mobile combines the full-screen video quality of traditional television with the interactive and social networking capabilities of the Internet.

Immediately launching a 6 month trial, Babelgum Mobile, a new Internet Mobile TV service allows Vodafone UK contract customers with mobile internet bundles to enjoy a wide range of video clips including film, music, comedy, animation, nature, travel and sports FREE of charge.

This mobile application is available to download from Vodafone live!, initially for contract customers with data bundles for the popular Nokia N96, N95 and 6210.

Known for its innovative, original programming, Babelgum Mobile's customers can access content that’s clearly Webinspired with the accent on interactive entertainment. Clips are short, fun, and unconventional and include viral videos.

Integrated with social networks and streaming via Vodafone's 3G Network, Babelgum Mobile allows users to share videos, vote for favorites, and participate in competitions.

For more information, visit http://www.babelgum.com/ .

U.S. consumer interest in home networking migrates to mobile and portable devices

Parks Associates survey identifies features driving demand for new digital cameras and mobile phones...

A new study from international research firm Parks Associates finds consumer demand for networking features will drive the next wave of consumer electronics purchasing, particularly for imaging and mobile devices such as digital cameras, photo frames, and mobile phones. Digital Media Evolution, a new survey from Parks Associates, finds nearly 50% of U.S. broadband households want a digital camera with networking capabilities, with nearly 40% similarly interested in a networked digital photo frame.

Digital Media Evolution is a nationwide survey of U.S. consumers in broadband households and focuses on 2008 consumer electronics purchases, including planned and completed holiday purchases. It also examines consumer interest in networked consumer electronics and willingness to pay a premium for connected devices.

Parks Associates will present research from this and other projects at CONNECTIONS™ Summit at CES, January 8-9, 2009. Visit http://www.connectionssummit.com/ for information. During CES, visit Parks Associates at Booth #25556, South Hall 2, Ground Floor.