As [itvt] reported yesterday, Evolution Broadband, a reseller of digital equipment to independent cable operators, has abandoned a strategy based on tru2way headends and set-top boxes because the economics "simply don't add up" for tier-two and tier-three operators, according to an article by Jeff Baumgartner of Cable Digital News. In a follow-up article, published Tuesday, Baumgartner reports that regional cable operator, Buckeye CableSystem "will consider moving to an IPTV-based architecture before even considering an upgrade to tru2way, offering more evidence that only the nation's largest MSO's will likely adopt the CableLabs-specified platform in a significant way in the near term."
Buckeye CTO, Joseph Jensen, told Baumgartner that the operator's reservations about tru2way stem not only from the cost of implementing it, but from the fact that it is "single-threaded"--i.e. it can only run one application at a time. "For example," Baumgartner writes, "if a TV-based caller ID application pops up on the screen, the viewer must exit that app if she wants to pause the DVR before answering the call." While Buckeye "is interested in supporting next-generation interactivity," such as social networking on TV and viewer-customized multiscreen mosaics, Jensen stated, the operator is concerned "that tru2way might not be able to fulfil it."
Baumgartner also reports that he was told by executives at a number of smaller cable operators that "tru2way has not entered their planning discussions for several months." The full text of Baumgartner's article can be found here.
Comments
Tru2way is not inherently single-threaded. Perhaps the DVR Buckeye was looking at wasn't designed in a way to support popups and multiple applications, but this isn't a limitation of tru2way itself.
Bill