Comcast Touts Affinity to Standards in Future Hybrid Set-Top Box Deployments
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Comcast’s vision of delivering high-quality video services to multiple devices in the home, among them its new hybrid IP-QAM device in field trials, includes HTML5 as an application platform, said Senior Vice President Steve Reynolds. At the TVNext conference Tuesday, he said the emergence of idiosyncratic application platforms has been a step in the wrong direction.
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"HTML really drove adoption of the Internet and made it as ubiquitous as it is,” Reynolds said. “We've decided to focus our efforts around HTML,” he said. “We're going to make a truly concerted effort to work through the standards bodies to create affordable and ubiquitous HTML5 that will include video as an intrinsic feature.” Comcast’s goal is to make HMTL5 the principal platform it supports on IP devices connected to its network, Reynolds said. For now, the dynamics of the marketplace demand that the cable company support other application platforms. HTML5 is just one of the standards Comcast plans to use in its hybrid IP set-top box deployment, Reynolds said: Comcast is also looking at solutions that rely heavily on standards such as H.264 for video, DCTP/IP for content protection, MoCA for home networking and DLNA for the control plane.
Comcast projects its customers will connect 234 million IP devices to its network by the end of 2013, Reynolds said. Some will be leased by Comcast but most will be purchased and managed by the consumer, he said. To assure Comcast can deliver a high quality of service to each of them, it will need to continue deploying set-tops and use home networking such as MoCA, Reynolds said. Wi-Fi isn’t a “carrier grade” connectivity option, he said. Set-tops will also ensure Comcast can continue delivering its services to all customers. “There is a need for the device we will call the IP set-top box,” Reynolds said. “It’s the equivalent of the DTA for the IPTV world."
Pay-TV customers demand consistency across all their devices, said Eric Freund, director of business innovation and development at SureWest Communications. “For the customers who are paying for our service today, one of the key value propositions for them is having the ability to turn on the television and have the experience be the same,” he said. “If we can solve that problem without a set-top box, we're certainly open to looking at it.” Consumers need set-tops, said Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 Networks. “There are going to be a lot of people out there who are going to have TVs that are not ’smart’ for a long time.”