The SCTE Autumn Lecture Meeting, 2006.

	Are we ready to support the future of TV? The SCTE held its 2006 Autumn Lecture Meeting on Thursday 5th October at the IET in Savoy Place, London. In a new innovation intended to make the lecture meetings available to all members regardless of their location you can view the presentations online. This facility is available to members only. Follow the link to view the webcast. This page is password protected so you will need your username and password to gain access. Alternatively, you can download pdfs of the slide presentations. Again, these are exclusively available to members.


Report on the day Graeme Young reports on the day's proceedings.

Graham Plumb, Head of Distribution Technology BBC Strategy	'Digital Terrestrial Television in the UK' Graham Plumb, Head of Distribution Technology BBC Strategy Graham Plumb, Head of Distribution Technology at the BBC Strategy Department, began the lectures with an insight into what the Corporation was doing in respect of digital switchover and the introduction of HDTV. He explained that DTT was a difficult subject because of restricted spectrum availability. The concept of Freeview was simplicity, and the service got off to a bad start with the failure of ITV Digital for myriad reasons, including the discovery that adding the set-top box was not quite 'plug and play'. The re-introduction of DTT under the Freeview banner, however, has been remarkably popular with present coverage running at over 75% . The BBC is not leading switchover but its participation in it is critical to its success. Spectrum planning in conjunction with OFCOM, National Grid Wireless and Arquiva is on-going, the BBC has 1154 analogue transmitting stations of which 81 are also transmitting the digital multiplexes at present. The digital transmitter contract has been signed with Arquiva, and the BBC has a 56% stake in Switchco, a company owned by the Public Service Broadcasters and formed to aid digital switchover. Over 72% of TV homes are fully digital, but this figure will have to rise substantially before analogue switch-off can be contemplated. As switchover progresses on a regional basis services will be allocated to channels previously used by analogue transmissions, however channels 31 to 40 and 63 to 68 will be auctioned by the Government eventually. The challenge presented by HDTV is one of acquiring adequate bandwidth. The BBC is committed to 100 HD production by 2010. Currently there is an extended trial of HD on all transmission platforms, but their on-going commitment to HD will depend on an acceptable level of licence fee in the future. Early MPEG-4 encoders require a bit-rate exceeding 20Mb/s, and under current conditions a pilot test of 'Trickle Downloads' that use a low bit-rate to transmit HD to a PVR over-night could serve large areas of population eventually. There is a challenge in finding suitable channels within the existing plan and the necessity of utilising highly directional aerials may have to be considered. Better MPEG-4 encoding and a return to 64QAM hierarchical modulation will enable a total of six HD services per multiplex. DTT HD needs to happen on a regular basis now, driven by the increasing supply of 'HD ready' displays and the current transmissions on satellite TV.

'IPTV, Myth or Reality' Nick Fielibert, CTO & Chief Architect Europe & Asia Scientific Atlanta, a Cisco Company Next on the platform was Nick Fielibert, the CTO and Chief Architect - Europe and Asia at Scientific Atlanta, a Cisco Company. 'IPTV, Myth or Reality?' was his theme. Television is evolving, no longer is the viewer fixed in one place in front of the receiver, it has moved out of the home too and is widely available on mobiles. Is IPTV really happening? YES, but... There are differences between countries and two business strategies emerge also. Triple play will not be profitable for Telcos for another 5 years and no 'killer' application exists to add revenue. Moreover the TV quality is not of the same standard as that from Cable FTTH and Satellite, and the incumbent service providers are new to the content game. By way of contrast, triple play will reduce the cable operators' churn rate though it may not significantly improve revenue, however with not one single major killer application but a host of smaller ones instead, and with experience of acquiring content the Cable TV operator will have an advantage over the Telco. Its all about consumer experience! Experience is consumer defined and driven, the business of 'When, What, Where and How they want it'. An ISP can offer many services to many screens and video is a key experience with HD, Videophone, Streaming, Managed Video, Gaming, interactivity and communication with other devices. The video challenge is that it is not easy to deliver though DOCSIS 3.0 could drive down costs, and IP can make its mark in 'Long Tail Content' i.e. from broadcasting from one source to many consumers, via 'one to a few to 'everybody to a few'. With the exception of broadcasting, Long tail Content is fairly unique to IP-like technology. The keys to IP success are in ensuring a quality experience for the consumer and creating an experience that is different from broadcast TV. For the consumer the service should be reliable and simple to use, offer high quality at an advantageous price and compare favourably with any previous experience. In fact the offerings must be better overall with more quality content and some of this should be exclusive. From the Telco viewpoint the network should be a proven end-to-end scalable solution, the deployment of the service should be timely and done in association with an experienced partner. The Telco needs to gain an understanding of the consumer, create a 'Differentiation Arsenal' with a partner and use customer needs to advantage. The 'Connected Home' should integrate all devices such as set-top box and TV, the PC and mobile 'phone to the IP platform, and the network itself should be based on open standards architecture. From this follows support for multiple services to enable triple and quad play integration and support for rich and interactive yet customisable user interfaces. IPTV can only be successful when the DSL bandwidth limitation is overcome to permit a competitive multi-stream service. With the use of H.264 encoding the best picture quality for SD streams can be under 2Mb/s and under 8 Mb/s for HD streams. Furthermore, IPTV can only be successful in an application-aware network.		Nick Fielibert, CTO & Chief Architect Europe & Asia Scientific Atlanta, a Cisco Company

Ron Hranac, BCT, BCE, BDS, BTS, BTCS, Technical Leader Cisco Systems, Inc	'Troubleshooting Digitally Modulated Signals with a QAM Analyzer' Ron Hranac, BCT, BCE, BDS, BTS, BTCS, Technical Leader Cisco Systems, Inc The afternoon session got off to a sparkling start with 'Troubleshooting Digitally-Modulated Signals with a QAM Analyser', presented by Ron Hranac, Technical Leader at Cisco Systems Inc. We all know that gradual deterioration of picture quality with worsening carrier to noise ratios and other disturbances does not occur with digital transmissions in contrast to our experience with analogue signals. With digital signals the TV picture remains good until we hit 'the digital cliff', and the screen goes blank. Of course, some disruption to the picture in the form of blocking may occur before it disappears altogether. A QAM analyser can perform useful diagnostic tests on a digital signal. These include analogue signal level, digital channel average power, constellation, MER, pre- and post-FEC BER and an adaptive equaliser graph. Unequalised MER readings are always lower than equalised ones, by the way. Not all technicians know how to use the equipment or interpret the readings. By learning to interpret correctly what the QAM analyser shows us we can diagnose numerous faults on a network and its head-end. Sometimes one can obtain a good MER reading but the pre- and post-FEC BER readings are suspiciously different. Something is not right and often this disparity is due to laser clipping or interference form an active sweep generator at the head-end. Interpretation of the constellation display will reveal some important faults in the digital signal that originate from external sources or from the QAM modulator. Mr Hranac displayed several distorted constellation patterns and described the problems that cause them, amongst them the more familiar doughnut-shaped end-points that indicate an interfering signal that could be due to ingress or the result of a beat product. Micro-reflections are revealed by the use of the Adaptive Equaliser Graph. They have a devastating effect on digital signals and the graph can give a simple TDR type display that, properly interpreted, can give a clue as to where the mismatches are occurring. Constellation problems are harder to see on 256QAM signals and yet it is important to see problems since it has a lower headroom than 64QAM. Technicians troubleshooting on a network need to break it into halves beginning at the customer and working backwards.

'Delivering Video: IP or Not IP, That is the Question' Dr Fred Coppinger, Staff Optical System Engineer Harmonic Inc Following Mr Hranac was Dr Fred Coppinger, Staff Optical System Engineer at Harmonic Inc. His presentation was 'Delivering Video, IP or not IP, That is the Question.' Telcos are losing out on fixed line phone business and on triple play. Technical advances in Cable TV have delivered a superior full service to customers. What is the best way to deliver video? There is the Broadband PON (BPON) approach requiring active devices deep into the network, is adapted to DSL in a fibre to the kerb approach, and is used in Japan (Yahoo BB) , USA (AT&T with ATM) and in The Netherlands. This is the most popular PON deployment that defines multiple interfaces such as ATM, T1, E1 and Ethernet. The specification is focused on interoperability, security concerns are addressed, and the system reserves the band of wavelengths between 1550 and 1560nm for an RF Video overlay. A later development of BPON is GPON, a faster version that can operate at bit rates up to 2.448 Gb/s. The EPON operates at 1Gb/s using a Fabry-Perot Laser on 1490nm downstream and another FP laser at 1310nm upstream. EPON was developed to take advantage of the lower cost of 1Gb/s optics. The In-band Video delivery approach needs a high bandwidth, therefore encoding is important. In a peer-to-peer network video is passed via the edge router into a Gigabit Ethernet transmitter receiver and thence to the Hub where another GigE Tx/Rx feeds a switch. From the switch 100baseFX signals are passed to the Tx/Rx in the customer's premises. For a peer-to-multipoint network video is passed via a switch to a PON laser transmitter using a downstream wavelength of 1490nm. A passive splitter feeds a number of customers having PON Tx/Rxs in their premises. The advantage of the Peer-to-Multipoint networks is that there are no active devices in the field. The In-Band IP Video approach places importance on encoding also. HD encoding can now lower the bit-rate using MPEG-4 (H.264) to under 8Mb/s. The advantages of this approach are that it delivers a converged network, is seen as being more interactive, delivers excellent video quality and will support HDTV. The disadvantages are that video consumes a high bandwidth, requires a higher bandwidth access network in supporting all services, requires an IP set-top box, does not scale too well, needs an EPG or IMPG for channel surfing, and in-home distribution could require re-wiring or data over co-ax technology. Finally the Hybrid RF/IP approach has several merits. As long as analogue TV remains the most common residential gateway worldwide, with its ability to serve several analogue TVs without extra set-top boxes, the hybrid network is a good solution to distribution. It has the advantage of technical maturity, offering high bandwidth efficiency with enough for 240 HDTV channels. IP is also excellent in providing a narrowcast service.		Dr Fred Coppinger, Staff Optical System Engineer Harmonic Inc

Dr Paul Entwistle, Chief Technologist - Intellectual Property Pace Micro Technology plc	'SERVING-UP HDTV around the WHOLE Home' Dr Paul Entwistle, Chief Technologist - Intellectual Property Pace Micro Technology plc Following a welcome tea break, the final speaker of the day was Dr Paul Entwhistle, Chief Technologist at Pace Micro Technology plc. Paul spoke about 'Serving-Up HDTV around the WHOLE Home'. There are technical challenges to render HDTV available throughout the whole house, plus the desirability of accessing a PVR from every room. The demand for a media server PVR is arising to replace the simple stand-alone PVR, already the market is equivalent to the demand for PCs and approaches 50 million. The implementation of the total Home Network depends upon sorting out interoperability issues, the product is in an evolution stage that will replace the living-room PVR with the Media Server PVR. Some of the issues are software, core silicon, what shape does the home network take and the vitally important one of content protection. We are starting to sort out the software and interoperability issues, and there is a degree of 'educating the customer' into recognising the desirability of the PVR. Meanwhile there are a score of additional issues that come with the move to a Media Server PVR, for it has to route signals to a number of set-top boxes on demand, cope with different requirements such as gaming, radio, fast-forwarding issues, navigation through programme guides. The provision of multiple tuners is another issue, as are smart cards for de-cryption for with multiple programme handling the card will have to work much faster. The dense traffic that has to be handled by a media server PVR could well rise to 100Mb/s, in fact 20Mb/s are needed just to handle four TV programmes that are being recorded and replayed on a hard drive simultaneously. Deciding on what type of home network requires a choice of wired or wireless technology, and for wired technology should the choice be powerline or co-ax? Dr Entwhistle discussed the merits of the available types, describing co-ax as 'powerful technology' that achieves over 90Mb/s, pushing signals backwards through splitters sometimes, with poor low-quality cable. Cat5e must not be forgotten either, it delivers high bandwidth and excellent quality of service. Wireless systems can deliver 80Mb/s using standard 2.4GHz technology, but universal wideband technology is aiming at over 100Mb/s. Wireless suffers, however, from metallised surfaces used in building for insulation. Content protection ensures that your purchase of content does not leak out to other users, at present interopability problems are being addressed. Pace is a member of the SVP Alliance as a licensee. SVP is based on some hardware placed inside the video circuitry of a DVD-player or PVR. The switch to digital is a tremendous opportunity to capture the imagination of the consumer. Once analogue switch-off is achieved the consumer will have to upgrade and the desirability of the home network will be apparent. Here is a huge opportunity to supply whole home HD Pay-TV.

Ian Jackson, SCTE Member of the Year	Member of the Year Award The President took the opportunity to present the Member of the Year Award, announced at the annual dinner in March to Ian Jackson who had not been at the event.




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