BigBand to Unveil Solution to Help Cable MSO's Expand Broadcast TV and VOD to iPads, PC's, Consoles

Digital video networking specialist, BigBand Networks, says that it will use next week's CableLabs Winter Conference (February 27th-March 2nd) to unveil a "hybrid approach" to managing HTTP adaptive streaming traffic which it claims will help cable MSO's to expand their broadcast TV and VOD services to their subscribers' IP-connected consumer electronics devices, such as iPads and other tablets, netbooks, PC's and gaming consoles. According to the company, the solution is designed to efficiently manage and leverage the existing resources of a video delivery network and to enhance viewing experiences. In addition, the company says, it improves bandwidth utilization and equalizes video quality across all services by leveraging a technique called "quality-based bandwidth allocation."

According to BigBand, a significant portion of the network traffic to reach a subscriber's unmanaged IP-connected devices is expected to be in the form of standard adaptive streaming over HTTP. However, the company argues, this method does not allow efficient utilization of the resources of the video delivery network, since a standard adaptive streaming session has no visibility to the other sessions sharing the same bandwidth. Alternatively, the company says, managing all video services together and adopting a hybrid view for adaptive streaming would incorporate video-oriented aspects of session management and dynamic network resources allocation. This, it claims, allows MSO's to monetize both their legacy video traffic and the traffic being consumed by IP-connected devices with new IP-targeted services. "Managing HTTP adaptive streaming traffic results in significantly better results for bandwidth utilization and video quality as compared to other IP video transport alternatives," Amit Eshet, BigBand's senior director of media processing, said in a prepared statement. "The spectrum dedicated to the delivery of video to set-top boxes can also be used for the delivery of video to IP devices in a 'bandwidth-free' manner that doesn't degrade the legacy service or require massive CAPEX investments upfront. The net benefit to the cable operator is a smoother and more cost-effective migration to IPTV."

According to BigBand, its CableLabs Winter Conference demo will show how managed adaptive streaming outperforms standard adaptive streaming, in terms of bandwidth utilization and video quality, for various connected CE devices. The company says it also plans to demo the latest advances in its ultra-dense QAM for its BigBand Media Services Platform, the BigBand MSP QAM (it claims that this "platform-based approach combines high density with high availability and offers the ability to quickly add new applications and share bandwidth efficiently across multiple applications"), and to showcase new services, capabilities and revenue opportunities that can be enabled by its IP video solution.