The NCTA Makes Quarterly CableCARD Report to the FCC

Posted on Saturday, October 1, 2011 by MegaZone

FCC Logo The NCTA has filed their latest quarterly report on CableCARD Deployment and Support with the FCC. According to the report, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast Corporation, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable have together deployed over 548,000 CableCARDs for use in retail CableCARD devices. Taking the top ten MSOs together raises that number slightly to 585,000. By way of comparison those same ten MSOs have deployed over 30,000,000, that’s thirty million, CableCARDs in MSO provided STBs.

That’s how much of a flop CableCARD has been at retail, less than 2% of the cards deployed are used in retail devices, like TiVo. I don’t blame the retail devices, but rather the pain involved in obtaining CableCARD (self-installs only mandated 8/8/2011) and the artificial limitations on retail CableCARD devices (no OnDemand, for example). tru2way is an even bigger flop, basically being stillborn. And this is why I don’t feel like we can rely on cable industry developed solutions, but rather we need something like a solid AllVid mandate backed by and FCC with some teeth to make sure it happens.

But I digress, let’s get back to this report and look at each of the five MSOs reporting.

Cablevision has 25,303 CableCARD subscribers with 36,692 cards deployed, an average of 1.45 per household. For this reporting period, which spans time before and after the self-install mandate, 43% or 1,395 were professional installs and 57% or 1,851 were self-installs. They charge $2/month per CableCARD. And if the customer elects for a professional installation there is a fee that averages $34.95, but the average number of truck rolls per install is just 1.0, so it seems like they get it right the first time.

Charter Communications had 31,425 CableCARDs in service as of August 31, 2011. They begin allowing self-installs on August 1, before that a professional installation was required. Interestingly Charter says their average number of truck rolls per install is 1.5, which indicates they’re customers probably have some more trouble getting it working. I’m a Charter customer and I have required multiple truck rolls in the past due to installers not having working cards on their truck, etc. Charter also charges and average of $2/month per CableCARD, and there is an average $35.00 fee for professional installs.

Comcast is the big one, with 367,064 CableCARDs in customer homes. In this reporting period they installed 38,403 CableCARDs, split almost exactly 50/50 between professional installs and self-installs. The average truck rolls per install is 1.03, so it seems like they get it right nearly every time. Comcast also has the best pricing, the first card is free and each additional card is $1.50/month. For professional installation, if it is part of a larger install it is an average of just $7.15. For a trip just to install a CableCARD they charge an average of $26.

Cox Communications has 50,791 CableCARDs in the field. Each card costs $1.99/month. For professional installations they charge an average of $24 and it takes an average of 1.1 truck rolls. So not as good as Cablevision and Comcast, but certainly a lot better than Charter.

Time Warner Cable has 74,047 CableCARDs in place with 53,503 customers. Until 8/8/2011 and the FCC mandate they required a professional installation, since they they’ve allowed self-installs. Which helps explain the 87%/13% split for the reporting period. The good news is they seem to get it right with an average of 1.03 truck rolls for professional installs, which cost an average of $26.64. CableCARDs run an average of $2.50/month.

So it seems like Charter is having the most trouble getting CableCARD working right the first time, and Cox is struggling a little, but Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable are doing fairly well in that department.

There’s more interesting information in the full report, if you care to read it.

Posted in Cable, DVR, FCC, TiVo | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Woot! – iRobot Roomba 530 Robotic Vacuum with Virtual Wall Just $159.99

Posted on Saturday, October 1, 2011 by MegaZone

iRobot Roomba 530 Today’s Woot! deal is perhaps the most successful example of personal robotics to date, the iRobot Roomba 530 Robotic Vacuum. The Roomba 530 includes Virtual Wall support which allows you to set boundaries on where it will roam. Woot! is selling these refurbished Roomba 530s for only $159.99 + $5 S&H. New the MSRP was $299.99. and Amazon still lists them for $275.99. So this is a pretty good deal if you’ve got rugs & carpets to keep clean, and you aren’t a fan of vacuuming.

Posted in General Tech | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Is This How TiVo Will Get Place Shifting?

Posted on Saturday, October 1, 2011 by MegaZone

TiVo Premire Elite with remote - front Entropic Communications Inc. has made a $10 million investment in Zenverge Inc., buying their way into the video transcoding segment. So what, you ask? Entropic is the company supplying the MoCA chipsets to TiVo for the TiVo Premiere Elite and the TiVo Preview.

As Light Reading reports:

In addition to giving Entropic an undisclosed stake in privately held Zenverge, the money will go toward the development of products aimed at MSOs and other service providers that convert incoming video signals into formats that can be displayed on PCs, tablets and smartphones that are within reach of a home’s Wi-Fi network — akin to what a Slingbox does today, but without the out-of-home access element.

The companies initially will focus on a video-transcoding “sidecar” product that will connect to set-top boxes. Future implementations will be baked into network-attached storage (NAS) devices and set-tops or video gateways, says Vinay Gokhale, Entropic’s SVP of marketing and business development.

Place shifting is perhaps the key feature still missing in TiVo’s products. I think it is becoming increasingly important as MVPDs introduce direct streaming services that bypass the STB, delivering their content directly to PCs, tablets, and smartphones. There is also competitive pressure from Echostar’s SlingLoaded efforts and other products like DirecTV’s upcoming Nomad and Comcast’s Televation box, both of which use Entropic’s silicon for MoCA, but ViXS chips for the transcoding. I think TiVo needs to provide a way to stream content to remain competitive, both in retail and for their MSO partners.

The inability to stream video from a TiVo to a portable device is most painfully evident in TiVo’s iPad and iPhone apps. You can fling content from the app to view on your TiVo, and you can setup recordings, see what is on the TiVo, and manage them – pretty much everything except watch them. The real issue is that TiVo recordings are high-bandwidth MPEG-2, that’s what digital cable and ATSC OTA broadcasts both use. But the high bandwidth makes it less than ideal for streaming to mobile devices. And, even if that weren’t an issue, most mobile devices aren’t designed to handle MPEG-2. The standard for mobile devices is MPEG-4/H.264, and maybe support for other modern codecs like VC-1, DivX, and/or WebM. To stream content to an iPad, for example, TiVo really needs hardware to transcode it to H.264 first, just like a Slingbox.

One possibility is a solution along the lines of the Sling Adapter for the Dish Network ViP 722 DVR. It is a simple USB hardware dongle which handles the transcoding. The video signal is fed to the box via USB, transcoded to the proper codec, resolution, framerate, etc., for the destination device, and then fed back over the USB to the DVR. All of the network communication is handled by the DVR, as is the real intelligence. TiVo could create a transcoding dongle like this for their hardware. Now that EchoStar, Sling’s parent company, and TiVo are no longer beating on each other in court, perhaps they could even license the Sling Adapter wholesale and simply implement the required support in the TiVo software. The advantage is that Sling is the place shifting market leader and they have clients for a number of platforms. It wouldn’t be hard for TiVo to build support into their apps either.

The Nomad and Televation boxes take a different approach, the same one Entropic is apparently pursuing with Zenverge. Instead of a USB sidecar dedicated to one DVR, these are network sidecars, kind of like network attached storage. They live on the MoCA network and thus can theoretically be shared by multiple DVRs in the home. Just like the Sling Adapter does via USB, these units take a data stream of the encoded video in over MoCA, do the necessary transcoding, and feed the data back to the DVR via MoCA. The DVR then handles the intelligence for routing the transcoded video to the client device over whichever network connection is appropriate. Since the new TiVo Premiere Q and Premiere Elite will have MoCA, this would also be a viable solution for them. Older TiVo units, like the Premiere, could use the devices via Ethernet as long as there was an ECB (Ethernet Coaxial Bridge) into the MoCA network.

Given the existing supplier relationship between Entropic and TiVo, and the competitive pressure on TiVo to add place shifting, this could possibly be how TiVo gets there. This is all speculation, of course.

As for the statement that it is for streaming within the home only, that may be true for the initial plans. However, once you have the transcoding working and a solid client, extending it to streaming outside of the home is the easy part. That’s all basic network routing. If you can ever everything else working, adding that is a snap.

Via Light Reading.

Posted in Broadband, DVR, Place Shifting, TiVo | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

RCN Expands TiVo Distribution to Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley; TiVo Premiere Q Due in November

Posted on Saturday, October 1, 2011 by MegaZone

TiVo Premiere RCN, one of the MSOs distributing TiVo HW to their customers, has expanded their TiVo distribution to include Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley, PA. Philadelphia is one of the largest markets they’ve entered with TiVo, and it is Comcast’s back yard, so this should be interesting. The units are up on RCN’s Philadephia and Lehigh Valley sites.

RCN supplied TiVo Premiere units are the same hardware as the retail units, running software that is mostly the same. They share all of the same features with one major addition and two subtractions. The addition is support for RCN’s OnDemand library. Retail units can’t access RCN OnDemand, but their boxes can. The subtractions are Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, both not present on the RCN TiVo. We know Netflix is missing due to Netflix’s licensing with the studios forbidding them from streaming to MSO-provided STBs. It is believe Amazon is missing for the same reason. The RCN units do still have Blockbuster OnDemand and YouTube, however.

And while I’m speaking of RCN and the TiVo Premiere, we have a bit of an update as to when they expect to supply the new quad-tuner TiVo Premiere Q to customers. In a post on the DSL Reports forums, RCN’s Jason Nealis states:

Yes, There is news and the packaging and such are being put together. We are getting close… I’m hopeful that we can launch right around very early NOV.

Lots of moving pieces here, looking to get the billing codes corrected so we can get our sweepstakes winners installed by the end of the week.

The solution is awesome… If the Q can not be hardwired we will be using ActionTEC ECB’s do deliver MOCA Signal as well.

I should have a lot more info at the end of next week.

He goes on to say:

Hey Everyone, I’m actually at TiVo this week, but wanted to post this :

Quad MUST be hard-wired, if it physically can not be hardwired then a Actiontec ECB will be installed to light moca thru the house.

MOCA is really really nice, it lights up about a 100M link thru the RF. To prevent MOCA from leaving your home the TECH will install a POE Filter (point of entry filter) this will stop your MOCA signal from leaving the home.

It’s really plug and play as well, no wep keys , no SSID’s no signal strength.. IT’s REALLY nice. I’m a big fan of the ActionTec Solution.

Since the MSO TiVo Premiere Q and the retail TiVo Premiere Elite are basically the same unit with different size hard drives (500GB and 2TB respectively), that could also indicate the time frame when we’ll see the Elite available to consumers. We know TiVo’s original plan was to ship units in mid-September to have them on shelves in mid-October, and it later looked like we might see them October 7th, but TiVo would still be OK getting them out around the start of November. What they really want is to have them on the market for the heart of the holiday shopping season.

Posted in DVR, Press Release, TiVo | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SpaceX Looks to Develop Reusable Launch Vehicles

Posted on Saturday, October 1, 2011 by MegaZone

SpaceX Logo SpaceX is nothing if not ambitious. They’ve always said that their long term intentions are to make their boosters, the Falcon 1 & Falcon 9, reusable. But they’ve never really detailed just how they intend to do so. I think most people presumed they’d use parachutes and either splashdowns and water recovery or a land recovery with airbags or something similar.

But that’s not ambitious enough for SpaceX, oh no. They want to use powered recovery. They plan to use aerodynamic lift and the rockets to fly the boosters back to the launch site and make a vertical landing. They’ve released the following video of a simulation of the process.

The rocket in the video looks like an updated version of the Falcon 9 with three larger main stage engines instead of the nine on the current design. Since the first stage never leaves the atmosphere, and is travelling at a much lower speed when its job is complete, it doesn’t need much thermal protection.

The first stage flips end for end and uses thrust to arrest the motion and then fly back to the launch point. That’s similar to the Return To Lauch Site abort profile for the Space Shuttle, which would’ve used the main engines to return to the cape once the solid rocket boosters burned out. There have also been similar concepts such as fly back boosters using wings and jets, but that adds a lot of weight.

The second stage does continue to orbit with the payload. So it continues around the earth and performs a de-orbit burn to reenter. The nose of the stage is a heat shield, I’d guess based on the one they’re using on the Dragon capsule. The stage decelerates using aerobraking and flies back to the launch site primary as a lifting body. Once most of the way there it uses the engine thrust for the final braking and controlled flight to a vertical landing.

The Dragon capsule discards its service stage in orbit, leaving it to burn up on reentry as the one major expendable component. Then it reenters and lands much like the second stage. The thrusters used for landing double as the emergency abort system for launch.

Yes, this means carrying more fuel to launch a given payload than you need with an expendable booster because you need a reserve used for landing. It also means that for a given thrust level you have a lower throw weight, or payload to orbit, because you’re carrying the extra fuel mass. Conversely to place the same payload in orbit you need a larger booster.

So, that’s bad right? Not really. Rockets are expensive. Very, very expensive. A Falcon 9, which is one of the least expensive rockets in its class, costs $50-60 million dollars. Fuel is cheap. The cost of RP1 (basically kerosene) and LOX or a Falcon 9 launch is approximately $200,000. (Figures from the C-Span video below, about 21 minutes in.) $200,000 may not sound ‘cheap’, but compared to the hardware it is nothing. If you can reuse the hardware repeatedly the savings add up and justify the increased fuel costs.

It might sound like a crazy idea, but remember that vertical powered landings have been used many times for landing on other bodies. A number of planetary and lunar probes have used a powered landing, and, of course, all of the moon missions used a lunar lander that made a powered descent and landing. On Earth the McDonnell Douglas DC-X developed the vertical launch & landing concept before it was cancelled. The concept lives in and vertical launch & landing designs have been created and flown by Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, and others.

It is certainly possible to do. It isn’t simple, but it isn’t unfeasible. And if anyone can pull it off, it is probably SpaceX. I think they’ve the most exciting company to watch in the rocket industry at the moment.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks a bit about their plans in the following C-Span video, starting around 20 minutes in. Note that he says the video above is not a completely accurate representation of their concept. This is partly due to the concept evolving and the video not representing the latest evolution, and partly due to deliberately hiding some of their technical points for competitive reasons. So take it as an example of the concept and not an exactly depiction.

Picked up via Gizmodo.

Posted in Aerospace, Blogs | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment