cablemedia_1 27/02/2015 15:48 Page 5
MONITOR
ActiveVideo transforms Charter STBs
om Rutledge, president and CEO
of US Cable MSO Charter
Communications, has confirmed
that cloud TV specialist ActiveVideo is
supporting the operator’s network and
device upgrades.
Speaking at an International CES briefing
announcing a technology partnership with
Cisco, Rutledge said that Charter expected to
launch its new fully-featured cloud based user
interface, Spectrum Guide on its new
Worldboxes, as well as on legacy boxes
currently deployed within the Charter
footprint.
“Our new user interface, using technology
provided by ActiveVideo, allows us to
implement this guide on every set-top box. It
uses the VoD infrastructure…which is a stateof-the-art, IP-based guide, in a streamed
capacity using MPEG,” he explained.
“So while the old box doesn’t have a
DOCSIS modem in it, it’s a highly capable
box; it can look at streamed MPEG signals,
which is what VoD is, and ActiveVideo’s
technology changes the guide from an IP
T
Project Lightning
UK broadband cable MSO
Virgin Media is embarking
on 'Project Lightning', which
it describes as the single
largest investment in
broadband digital
infrastructure in the country
for more than a decade.
With the support of parent
company Liberty Global,
Virgin Media will extend its
fibre-rich network beyond its
franchised areas to
approximately four million
If you look at the United States, there are 300
million televisions in the United States, none
of which are really Smart TVs and the reason
and the reason we put set-top boxes on them
is that they don’t work with our two-way
interactive platform unless there is a set-top
box.”
“This makes every box and every television
that’s connected within the Charter footprint
additional premises over the
next five years. This will
increase the number of
homes and businesses to
which Virgin Media can offer
services by almost a third;
from around half of the
country now to nearly 17m
premises by 2020.
Ofcom figures suggest the
UK is the world’s most
Internet-based major
economy. Broadband
infrastructure, and the
services offered over it, will
be increasingly central to the
Cable Europe warns against Net
Neutrality. Continued from page 1
stems from the 1930s, I see early indicators of
a markedly more rational and fruitful solution
in Europe.”
“The European Commission, along with an
increasing number of national governments, is
convinced there is a win-win solution to be
had between upgrading Internet access and
driving the development of innovative,
6 Cable Media
format to streamed MPEG and renders it as
though it were an IP guide.”
“What this technology platform allows us
to do is take advantage of every box deployed.
state of the art. So we’re taking the
intelligence out of the box and putting it into
the network and making the box a thin client
box so that the processing power of the box is
no longer a relevant issue; the processing
power moves to the network. That’s a
breakthrough.”
“And it gives us two things: It gives you
instantaneous capability of deploying a stateof-the-art product on every TV outlet that we
start with, and there are two and a half TV
outlets in every household. And it allows you
to do that without purchase. When you switch
out all the hardware in