by Peter J. Brown

As the U.S. cable TV industry deploys high-speed, two-way hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) networks, the use of satellite-based distribution is expanding despite the increasing presence of fiber. Satellite technology is still holding the high ground when it comes to meeting and exceeding the expectations of cable TV executives as they convert digital blueprints into digital profits.

“It’s still an incredibly efficient way to deliver broadcast programming to our headends, and may prove a very low-cost way of distributing video-on-demand (VOD) or other cached assets to servers across the country,” says Senior Vice President Jim Chiddix, chief technical officer of Time Warner Cable.

At the end of the HFC pipe sits a new generation of powerful digital cable TV set-top boxes (STBs) which are equipped, in many instances, with triple tuners to handle inbound video, data and out-of-band signals. These devices are designed to open up new revenue streams and access a whole new range of dynamic digital programming, ranging from VOD, interactive TV and video games to Internet Protocol (IP)-based services and software downloads. You can almost see the satellites smiling as they look down on triple tuner town.

No, not every cable TV system is digital today, and achieving even a 60 percent digital penetration rate may seem like a pipe dream to many cable TV service providers and customers alike. However, digital STBs from companies like San Diego-based Motorola Broadband Communications Sector (formerly General Instrument Corp.), and Norcross, GA-based Scientific-Atlanta Inc. (S-A) are driving the cable TV industry forward. Also increasingly active in the U.S. cable STB market are companies like Sony Electronics Corp., U.K.- based Pace Micro Technology Plc, and Israel-based Peach Networks, which Microsoft Corp. is acquiring, to name only a few.

Joan Byrnes, vice president of sales and marketing at Bedminster, NJ-based Loral Skynet, believes that the growing emphasis in the cable TV industry on deploying interactive TV services, the attraction of ever-increasing local and national ad revenues, and a need for more specialized market segmentation will lean heavily in the direction of satellite- based solutions.

“This is an exciting time, an inflection point for the cable TV industry. We are seeing a lot more emphasis on fiber and caching as we move closer to an on-demand environment, but not as a replacement to satellite distribution. Cable operators will use satellites to micro-segment the market with smaller points-of-presence or distributed headends. This is all about wanting to get premiums and ad-based programming out to more specialized segments,” Byrnes says.

Satellite footprints abound, and with the accessibility and flexibility of this space-based infrastructure, cable operators are free to explore a variety of digital cable TV network architectures with a mix of hubs and headends, including so-called super-headends and smaller distributed headends.

“People are very familiar with satellite distribution of cable programming. It is the dominant mode of distribution,” says Len Filomeo, senior sales engineer at Motorola Broadband, who will be demonstrating basic edgeband technology as a way to increase digital programming carriage at the upcoming National Cable Television Association (NCTA) show. Filomeo indicates that edgeband operation permits multiple television services to be carried over an existing satellite transponder by adding a narrow multiplex of MPEG 2 compressed programs at the band edge of the transponder.

“The key to edgeband is that cable programmers are already paying for the transponder, so they have a data pipe in place which is reaching the whole country. With an edgeband carrier, you do not have to lease another transponder or invest in an entire multiplex. With digital compression, you can simply add one or two more programs on the edge,” Filomeo explains.

Guaranteed Reliability

Satellite operators are responding to a variety of signals. At NCTA 2000, for example, Princeton, NJ-based GE American Communications (GE Americom) will roll out its new Digital C service as part of its so-called Cable2 neighborhood. Using dual feed antennas pointed at GE 1 and GE 4, GE Americom believes that this configuration, combined with an emphasis on prepackaged bouquets of programming, will yield positive results.

“For customers who opt for our top tier of service, we are offering full inter-satellite protection. We have the proper level of inventory for guaranteed protection. Our fully protected platform involves no satellite movement for service restoration. With the use of dual-feed antennas, there is no time-consuming and labor-intensive dish repointing,” says Carl J. Capista, GE Americom’s vice president of satellite services.

“Obtaining long-term reliability up the whole chain, including the spacecraft; identifying the best way to undertake the conversion from analog to digital transmission; and figuring out solutions in terms of what they can do with digital technology once they get there, are the three most important things for cable TV operators and programmers,” says David Berman, Panamsat Corp.’s senior vice president for the North American region.

Panamsat’s latest cable neighborhood is quickly taking shape with the deployment of Galaxy 10R to 123 degreesW, where it joins Galaxy 5 at 125 degreesW and Galaxy 9 at 127 degreesW.

“Programming still represents the major cost item, while the overall delivery cost is minimal. Here, our primary responsibility is to guarantee reliability,” he adds.

The modern satellite industry is still relatively young, and one of the most important early chapters in its short history will soon be coming to an end, according to Byrnes.

“In the years 2003 to 2006, we will see a lot of turnover in contracts as many of the traditional cable satellites reach the end of their lifetime,” Byrnes says.

“The programming providers are searching for total reliability. They are not interested in anything that has not been flight tested, or anything cutting edge. They want a proven track record, high quality and a lot of legacy, both in terms of design and components,” she adds.

Loral Skynet’s Telstar 7 at 129 degreesW is where Tulsa-based Williams Communications’ Vyvx Services will be providing Ibeam Broadcasting Corp. in Santa Clara, CA, with dedicated Ku-band capacity, among other things. Ibeam’s Maxcaster servers lie at the core of Ibeam’s announced plan to build the world’s largest streaming media network. As cable TV headends become more IP-friendly facilities, companies like Ibeam, which uses Skystream Corp.’s DBN-26 media routers, and Viacast Networks’ IP-Companion platform, could become prominent players in this market.

The programmers are eager to promote this ongoing emphasis on reliability. At the same time, many point to the need for far more fundamental changes by satellite operators.

“We see an increasing number of revenue streams facilitated through a single transponder. Statistical multiplexing technology is now available which allows us to do a much better job of amortizing the cost of an extremely expensive asset,” says Jay Schneider, vice president of production, operations and engineering services at Discovery Communications in Bethesda, MD.

“On the flip side, our dependence upon that same transponder is far greater today.This speaks to the need for heightened reliability, both at the time of launch and in flight. Satellite operators need to change the way they market, sell and operate satellite transponders. The sale or lease of a single transponder to a programmer should not be conducted as an ad hoc activity, but should be considered part of the larger relationship with that programmer,” he adds.

Bob Zitter, senior vice president of technology operations at HBO TWE L.P. in New York City, emphasizes that the satellite industry needs to be much more aware of the big picture.

“Today, a digital channel costs what a full transponder cost 10 years ago. The satellite industry should be careful, or else they could very easily price themselves out of existence,” Zitter says. “The economics of the alternatives to satellite in the U.S. market are becoming increasingly competitive and attractive.”

“In addition, the cable TV infrastructure is changing much quicker than the satellite industry realizes. This is due not only to the industry’s ongoing consolidation, but also because of the emergence of new revenue streams. The emphasis on the clustering of systems, and the tying together of headends, is absolutely necessary for the delivery of data and telephony services along with cable programming,” Zitter adds.

Intelligent Content Distribution

Gary Traver, senior vice president of video services at the AT&T National Digital Television Center (NDTC), which uplinks the Headend-In-The-Sky (HITS) service, identifies satellite technology as an essential part of what is fast becoming a server-based enterprise. NDTC is now a five-site complex made up of two sites in Denver, including a 6,800- square-foot post production facility, along with uplinks in New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong. HITS is on Panamsat’s Galaxy 7 and it offers over a dozen clusters of digital programs, known as pods, along with an optional service involving the national authorization of STBs.

The role of satellite distribution will shift as new applications emerge, such as VOD and interactive television, part of what Traver describes as “the new operating paradigm.”

“Intelligent content distribution is the key to interactive TV. Satellites will be used to provide content to the edge as the requirements for local servers grow,” Traver says. “Satellites remain the most efficient means of distributing broadcast services to headends. For these reasons, we are still very bullish on satellite-based redistribution, although other applications are generating the need for us to substantially increase the amount of outbound fiber. All the IP data will remain on the ground, at least for now.”

Among a number of initiatives underway at AT&T NDTC, Traver indicates that the HITS team is currently evaluating a new Digicipher 2 compression card from Motorola Broadband. He also indicates that the full launch of the new “HITS-To-Home” service, which started to emerge under the Primestar banner more than two years ago (Primestar Partners LP was purchased by DirecTV in 1999), will be fully operational once the transition to Panamsat’s Galaxy 11 satellite occurs in late March or early April.

Preparing the material properly prior to distribution is essential, too. With 22 network feeds on its menu, HBO is constantly seeking new ways to improve performance and efficiency. This year, for example, HBO is planning to upgrade its proprietary network management system. While HBO remains tight-lipped about certain details, such as the bit rates it uses for HBO’s HDTV transmissions, there are ample signs that when it comes to encoding, HBO is even willing to be a bit unconventional to do the job right.

“We learned that how we prepared our material or content for distribution, that is, having better pictures even before they got to the encoder, impacted directly on how successfully and how efficiently we operated our digital compression system,” Zitter says. “For example, going totally to a 601 plant yielded something like a 20 percent increase in compression efficiency. How we go about handling such things as pre-processing and noise reduction makes a big difference.”

For SDTV traffic on Panamsat’s Galaxy 1R, for example, HBO operates its Digicipher 2 encoders in the so-called IQ mode, which stands for “in phase and quadrature,” two components of QPSK modulation. This allows the IQ mode to bring about, in effect, the splitting of a 36 MHz transponder into two virtual halves.

According to Craig Cuttner, HBO’s vice president of technology, HBO chose the IQ mode because it allows HBO to broadcast at 47.2 Mbps per transponder, while the mode that matches a single cable channel only carries about 27 Mbps. For HBO, this provides what Cuttner describes as “a logical split” between East and West feeds, with East in one half, and West in the other half. This is based on how cable affiliates load their 6 MHz channels, although many carry both East and West, according to Cuttner.

“Like many of the parameters of digital compression, there are options for the transmitted data rate and how it relates to the loading of the transponder and its link budget,” says Cuttner. “Using 7/8 forward error correction (FEC), the Digicipher 2 throughput at 47.2 Mbps per transponder is far in excess of what a 6 MHz cable channel can accommodate.”

“A 64 QAM cable channel’s capacity is roughly equal to 23.6 Mbps, or half of 47.2 Mbps, whereas for 256 QAM, it is 38.8 Mbps. So, IQ is a very elegant way to have two cable channels carried in one transponder without requiring a high-data rate receiver. Instead, we are able to use one receiver for one cable channel, or we also have the option of using two receivers for both halves of the transponder, running at slower speeds,” Cuttner adds.

Just Passing Through

Beaming programming to headends on a pass-through basis to feed expanding digital tiers has been a top priority for programmers and cable system operators alike. The process began with HITS, and recently Time Warner Cable introduced its Digital Cable service–often referred to as “Athena”–which delivers more than 30 digital channels to its systems around the country using 4 transponders on Telstar 7. It is one of many programming services powered by Scientific-Atlanta’s Powervu Plus encoding technology.

“Athena uses several leased transponders to deliver compressed multiplexes of signals to digital headends in a mix which fits our programming strategy and our 256 QAM–38 Mbps- -modulation scheme as we roll out millions of digital set-top boxes,” Time Warner’s Chiddix says.

David Alsobrook, marketing director for S-A’s Powervu products, explains the different ways of organizing content. On the MCPC side of the satellite distribution the two dominant players are multiplexes and condos, short for condominiums, also known as prepackaged bouquets. A condo or bouquet is made up of diverse TV content from different content providers, assembled into a package on a single transponder, whereas a multiplex means multiple channels or multiple time zone feeds from a single content provider.

Alsobrook indicates that IP-enabled STBs enable programmers and cable operators to proceed rapidly with the merging of the dot.com side with the video side. Synchronized data can now flow to the second tuner as the primary tuner receives the video. An excellent example of the watch-and-surf-type applications is what took place during the Super Bowl, when an estimated 750,000 fans watched the game on their TVs, while watching their PCs at the same time.

S-A’s Multiple Decryption Receiver (MDR) can descramble up to 16 channels, to better meet the needs of operators who can now receive condos, pass them through untouched, or extract only a certain selection of channels which are then delivered as part of the primary or secondary digital tier. It also handles all the ancillary data.

One important dimension here is what Alsobrook describes as pipe-matching. Again, as was mentioned a moment ago, a 64 QAM cable TV plant operates at 27 Mbps, while in a 256 QAM plant, the bit rate increases by 30 percent, up to 38 Mbps.

“Cable operators want programmers to be able to deliver programming from one transponder which can fill either the 64 or 256 QAM plant. To address the growing competition from DBS, cable systems operators are adding digital basics in addition to digital premiums and pay-per-view content. No recoding at the headend is required, and the take-up rate for digital basics is growing fast,” says S-A’s Alsobrook.

“The vast majority of STBs receive analog in the clear, but not scrambled analog. For operators, the answer is dual carriage of a digital signal,” says Bill Wall, S-A’s technical director of subscriber networks. “Very few operators do any signal grooming. Most prefer to simply pass it through. It is simple and much less expensive than grooming the signal.”

Wall points out that all the emphasis on the future and the rapid growth of enhanced and interactive services has drawn attention away from one sticky issue. While fairly universal standards are emerging in the form of DOCSIS, OpenCable and OpenCAS, there are still a lot of legacy devices out there.

“For this reason, vendors and satellite operators also have to remain aware of the need for backwards compatibility,” Wall says.

How To Better Serve Programmers

The enlargement of a video file server-based origination system is seen as one way to better serve cable programmers and content providers, according to Group W Network Services (GWNS) in Stamford, CT, a subsidiary of CBS Corp. Besides integrating Media Cluster Broadcast servers from MA-based Seachange International, GWNS has created two versions of its proprietary Traffic Master: Realtime Control system (TM:RT) to address the separate and different requirements of the cable and broadcast TV industries. GWNS also operates a facility in Singapore.

“The economics of this business have changed dramatically. While keeping overall operating and origination costs as low as possible have always been important goals, it is now mandatory, given all the new channel offerings and new programmers,” says Altan Stalker, president of GWNS. “This is a challenging time to be in this business, and I mean this in a positive sense.

“At the same time, we are making sure that we are set with products and systems to address the emerging IP distribution methods, such as streaming,” he adds.

Stalker believes that most programmers have no immediate plans to abandon their primary analog feeds. The launching of secondary and even tertiary digital feeds along with the emergence of new programmers such as Oxygen are changing the landscape considerably, according to Stalker.

“While we still have programs delivered to us on videotape, we see the shift to server-based origination as providing our customers with considerable flexibility and content enhancement,” Stalker says. “The new file server system has almost an MIS-type functionality.”

At GWNS, server-based operations have imposed a whole new emphasis on higher level training, among other things. The need for increased skills, according to Stalker, stems in large part from the fact that all the traffic management-related activities such as quality control and schedule generation, and the sequence of events prior to the actual transmission via satellite off the server, has taken on more of the character of a master control operation. All the added training requirements revolve around the need to maintain the most reliable, glitch-free level of service.

“Even with Raid 5 redundancy, we still treat each channel on the Media Cluster as two separate and independent channels with the final outbound feed actually selected at the output of the file server,” Stalker says. “Furthermore, a Tektronix Profile server sits on each channel so that we can continuously load all the programming three hours in advance of airtime. This gives us an additional layer of redundancy and guarantees a fault-free transmission.”

Efficiency and cost-effectiveness are extremely important, according to Stalker, but the top priority is a seamless, clean feed going out with no switching transients or chunks of black. While the MSO is ultimately responsible for the reception quality at the designated receive sites, GWNS maintains its own identical on-site downlink as well.

Stalker indicates that the demand for IP services, as well as captioning, translation and sub-titling as a subset of GWNS’ broader competency in all related post-production activities, has soared. In response, GWNS has launched two new services called Globaltraffic.net and Globalcaptions.com.

“The emphasis today is on repurposing content. Our system does not care if the content in question is IP-based or conventional video, or if it is delivered directly to the viewer or stored somewhere out on the fringe of the network. As interactivity becomes a more significant component in the programming stream, the design of our system will reflect and accommodate this expanding marketplace,” Stalker says.

Multiple Satellite Options For Cable Tv

Beyond the major urban markets, the cable TV industry continues to reach out, adding new customers and new services in small towns. David Price, vice president at Harmonic Data Systems Inc. in San Diego, sees the satellite industry as providing solutions that are not just more attractive for the smaller MSOs from the standpoint of cost-effectiveness. Another big plus is how easily additional services can be accessed and then implemented quickly.

“There are lots of niches out there for us to fill. I would be keeping my eye on the deployment of smaller arrays of dishes by cable operators for the purpose of downlinking specialized services. These dishes represent a major shift that is underway as streaming video using IP, a key element in broadband, becomes a growing presence in the digital marketplace,” Price says.

Price emphasizes that as the number of IP-based satellite-delivered services grows, not only does the satellite industry continue to demonstrate that it can meet the cable TV industry’s content broadcast requirements, but IP also gives the cable operators addressability and greater control over the entire network.

“A lot of strategies fall over to the satellite side, and at the same time, the days of deploying a $50,000 headend are over,” says John Sciberras, vice president of marketing for Tripoint Global Communications in Gastonia, NC, which includes the VertexRSI group. “As cable TV executives are forced to confront the critical question of when to pull the trigger and upgrade, they also face the fact that business models are changing dramatically. Not only has TV become a commodity, but thanks to DTH and DBS, consumers now expect sophisticated products for next to nothing.”

For cable TV systems operators, the billions of dollars spent on upgrades, the conversion from analog to digital, and the rollout of cable modems and telephony services are not easy to justify unless the corresponding revenue streams materialize quickly, hold firm, and grow steadily.

A quick scan of all the C-band transponders brimming with TV programming speaks volumes. Services such as HITS and Athena demonstrate that the cable TV industry remains open to existing as well as innovative satellite-based solutions because the satellite industry has worked hard to produce a mix of affordable, efficient and flexible products and services. And then there is the matter of the satellite industry’s agility and proven ability to blanket the entire planet with digital feeds. With spotbeams starting to proliferate, and with new players like ISky coming into view, you can bet that these satellite attributes are well recognized, and well understood, too.

As Via Satellite’s senior multimedia writer, Peter J. Brown tracks the global satellite industry’s multimedia and Internet applications. He lives on Mount Desert Island, Maine.

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