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Integrated Digital Cable TV Market Report

This concise 9 page report explains the market potential of the integrated Digital Cable TV proposition in the West European market and the key success factors for CE manufacturers. This report is of interest to any party interested in the opportunity offered by integrated digital receiver function in TVs. It helps to understand the background of today's market developments in the TV market and Cable TV market and why both markets are about to become entangled. This report can be complemented with the country market reports to address the specificities of each of the European Countries and the specific cable operators active in that market.

• Table of content
  • Introduction
  • History in iDTV
  • Trends in iDTV
  • The Cable TV Arena from a TV Perspective
  • State of the European Cable Industry
  • TV services on Cable Networks
  • Standardization in the Euopean Cable Industry
  • Technical Receiver Specifications
  • Market Appeal of iDCTV
  • Resolving the iDCTV Obstacles
  • Common Interface Plus
  • Operator Support
  • Technology Dilemma's in Video On Demand
  • Deployed Technologies Today
  • VOD Solutions for iDCTV
  • Conclusions and Recommendations
• Introduction

  This report presents an overview of an emerging opportunity in the TV market in Europe to offer new functionality: the functionality to directly support Digital Cable TV services in TV sets, i.e. removing the need for an external settop box. These iDTVs (integrated Digital TVs) addressing the cable market will quickly gain popularity. All CE companies should be aware of this trend that will affect the appeal of the product portfolio and should prepare for it.

• History in iDTV

  Digital TV functionality found it's way into TV sets in Europe as early as 1998, when Digital Terrestrial Transmission launched in the UK. Until recently the large majority of TV sets has addressed only free to air terrestrial TV reception. Common Interface, a EC regulated mandatory function on Digital TVs above 30 cm screen diagonal, has been occasionally used to address (scarce) pay services on terrestrial, e.g. Boxer-TV in Sweden.

  The main advantages of an integrated Digital TV over a settop box are the lack of obtrusive boxes in the living room and a single remote control. These advantages match with the general trend in the CE market to integrated propositions, addressing convenience and unobtrusiveness of electronics in the living room.

  From 2005 onwards, with the rise of Flatscreen TVs, integrated terrestrial TV quickly became a norm in the market, and in many terrestrially oriented countries it is not possible to sell TVs without an integrated digital terrestrial decoder (with exception of the lowest TV segments).

• Standardization in the Euopean Cable Industry

  The cable industry in Europe has a somewhat troubled history of technical collaboration, and has been divided mostly through differences of insight in what is the best technology choice for each specific network. I.e. the forces to collaborate and globally optimise and choose joint solutions are weaker than the forces to locally optimize / select the most competitive (proprietary) technology supplier. But there is a common underlying technology base formed by DVB standards and discussions in Cable Europe.

  The joint choice for Euro-DOCSIS cable modem technology has been an exception (this is a minor adaptation from the US Cablelabs DOCSIS technology). CEL (Cable European Labs) offers certification services for cable modems that can be deployed across Europe.

  Cable Operators in Europe have a common meeting ground in the following organizations:

  • Cable Europe: www.cableeurope.eu; an organization mainly aimed at lobbying (regulators) and addressing other issues of common interest. It's track record in setting technical standards is weak/non-existent. It holds a yearly congress in March.
  • CTAM Europe (Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing): www.ctameurope.com; an organization aimed at joint marketing initiatives in the cable operator world.
  • DVB: www.dvb.org; DVB technology is still at the basis of most cable network technology in Europe. DVB is currently working on DVB-C2, a successor for DVB-C which will allow a substantial increase in the digital capacity on cable network for new services (e.g. VOD). Also, there are some discussions starting on a security-related standard interface between smartcards and receivers. Such a standard may allow more easy replacement of embedded Conditional Access in receivers in the future.

   

• Technical Receiver Specifications

  There is no standard detailed cable receiver specification for Cable TV in Europe, not even for "basic zappers", despite two attempts in the past: the ECCA Euro-box specification (late 1990's) and the EICTA C-book initiative (around 2004). Some of the key differentiating receiver requirements between networks are:

  • Service installation and service list maintenance
  • EPG acquisition & EPG presentation
  • Software Update
  • Conditional Access (zapper related): all major European CAS systems are deployed: Nagra, NDS, Conax, Viaccess and Irdeto. CA technology also heavily impacts PVRs, since each CA system has a different way of managing the protection of recorded content.
  • Interactive TV technology: typically a proprietary API is deployed; OpenTV (Kudelski), MediaHighway (NDS) , XTV (NDS), MHP (Osmosys) at least for VOD and other functions to promote add-on services sales. Few networks deploy interactivity on a broader basis.
  • VOD content delivery. Today most networks deliver VOD content as part of a transport stream. But increasingly DOCSIS based IP delivery is considered as a cheap and unifying option for point-to-point broadband.

  Having indicated the major differences, there are also many commonalities: in fact 95% of DTV related functionality for a receiver of basic Audio Video services (zapper) is identical. Video codec's, Audio codec's channel modulation and system layers are all identical. i.e. the technology base is the same, differentiation is made in more advanced software parts of the system (CA System and interactive TV middleware).

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Temporary introductory pricing of Euro 250.-. Buying this report will include email correspondance on any questions remainning and any updates of the report made available during 2009 (4 monthly updates are planned).

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About the author:

The author of this report has a strong background in the Consumer Electronics industry and a track record of achievements in aligning Consumer Electronics and TV distribution parties.

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