Ofcom UK Communications Report

Ofcom issued a 334 page Communications Report that discusses TV, Radio, Telecommunications, and convergence.

It has a lot of interesting information. Three points that stuck out were:

• More than a quarter of consumers (27%) claimed to use a DVR at the end of Q1
  2009, equivalent to 7 million homes, according to Ofcom research. This rose to
  nearly a third of consumers (31%) in multichannel television homes. These figures
  are a little lower than those from operator and sales data, which suggest that nearly 9
  million DVRs had been sold in the UK at the end of Q1 2009.
• High-definition television gained traction over the past 12 months, as new HD
  channels launched and more platforms developed their HD propositions. By the end
  of the first quarter of 2009, 2.3 million homes (9%) had reception equipment capable
  of accessing linear or on-demand HD content. Thirty-three per cent of UK homes
  claimed to have HD-ready television sets at the end of 2008, according to its
  research.
• Online catch-up TV began to enter the mainstream in 2008, largely thanks to the
  growing popularity of the BBC iPlayer. Twenty-three per cent of households claim to
  watch programmes online, rising to 33% among 15-24s. But 10% of people aged 65+
  reported that someone in their household watched catch-up TV online.

We should all thank Ofcom for continuing to publish these comprehensive reports that shed light on important trends.

Verizon Adds Internet Capabilities to FiOS TV

Verizon has added the ability to access certain Internet applications and websites on its FiOS TV IPTV service. It added what it calls its Widget Bazaar applications marketplace, located within FiOS TV's Interactive Media Guide, with free Facebook, Twitter and ESPN Fantasy Football Widgets.

With the Twitter Widget, FiOS TV subscribers can follow Tweets related specifically to the program, movie or sporting event they are watching. They also can select from a list of top topics to view Tweets associated with today's hottest topics and trends, search for specific Tweets, and create and save a favorite-topics list.

FiOS TV subscribers with Facebook accounts can log in to Facebook through the FiOS TV Widget to update their Facebook status with messages about what they're watching, view their own photos, and view their friends' photos and status updates.

The ESPN Fantasy Football Widget provides on-screen access to personalized ESPN Fantasy Football points and football statistics, including rosters, box scores, scoring leaders and player information. All the information is available, at no additional charge, for FiOS TV customers who are registered ESPN Fantasy Football players.

Verizon will add to the FiOS TV Widget Bazaar additional free and transactional applications developed by the company and others. It will publish its Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable open development. The open development platform will enable developers to publish applications to the more than 7 million interactive set-top devices in FiOS TV homes.

Later this month, customers who subscribe to the Home Media DVR service will be able to search and view on FiOS TV user generated online videos from video-sharing sites blip.tv, Dailymotion, and Veoh. In addition, a new My Videos feature will let these subscribers view via FiOS TV personal videos stored on their PCs.

Verizon has put a page on its website that contains more information about these features.

This is a good start at providing access to Internet applications by Verizon. It is starting to make good use of the IP capabilities of its FiOS TV service. Verizon was able to move in this new direction because it now has taken over the development and maintenance of its middleware software. Other IPTV providers will follow Verizon's example.

Survey Shows Preference for FTTH

The U.S. FTTH Council has published a survey of U.S. broadband users that shows that there is a strong preference for FTTH over cable modem broadband services. DSL had the least favorable rating for broadband services. FTTH had an even stronger preference for HD TV over FTTH compared to satellite and cable services.

The survey is well worth reading. The results are no surprised but do underscore the technical superiority of FTTH technologies.

ATT Enhances U-verse IPTV Service

ATT has introduced new features to its U-verse IPTV service to make it more competitive with cable and satellite companies:

• The ability to set or delete recording as well as watch recorded programs from any of up to eight TVs in the home.
• An increase of speed from 10 to 12 Mbps for those subscribed to this level of service.
• A video on demand recommendation service based on the viewers ratings of past selections.
• An improved interface for web connected PCs for controlling the recording function on the set-top box.
• Improved navigation in using U-verse from the TV.

ATT is strongly promoting its remote DVR capability in its TV ads. It has found a unique feature that seems to be gaining traction.

U.S. Analog Sunset

I got through the conversion to all digital over the air TV in the U.S. over the weekend. As of Saturday morning all analog TV had ceased. Actually, there was one station that I could pick up here that still broadcast an analog signal - a text screen saying that you need a digital converter or a digital TV to receive service. All of the rest of the analog signals here went blank.

I live in San Francisco and stopped my cable service more than five years ago. I did not have a cable connection in the room where we moved the TV and did not want Comcast to hack up our 80 year old house any more than it had already.

We were well prepared for the digital conversion. We now have the HD/digital sets with good Terk indoor antennas that were already receiving over the air digital signals. We have gotten rid of our analog sets over the last year. We are now only left with a couple of radios with analog TV audio receivers that no longer work.

Everything went as scheduled. We seemed to lose one channel Friday evening. I guess it made its changes earlier than midnight. Many stations were reassigning their digital signals to new frequencies as part of the conversion.

Saturday morning we rescanned two of the TVs. We had some trouble getting all of the channels we had before. We had to reorient the antennas to a position and were able to find all of the channels we had before. We scanned the third set that afternoon. One set is not able to find the NBC outlet, but this was nothing new. This set has a more compact and less powerful Terk antenna, which has not been able to pick up this channel. The more sensitive set picked up a channel that we have not been able to receive before.

The only frustration with all of this is that the channel scanning is an all or nothing operation. Every time we scan channels, it clears all channels and adds those that it finds. This means that the antenna has to be positioned carefully to get them all. I would like to see an "add channel" function that keeps the channels that have already been found and adds any new ones that it finds. This would let me point the antenna in another direction and pick up the channels that it can find in that direction. I think I would be able to pick up more channels this way.

The U.S. analog sunset is a much easier transition than will be experienced in other countries. Only 10 to 15 percent of U.S. homes use over the air broadcasting as their only source for TV programming. The rest have cable or satellite subscription. A prominent survey said last week that only 2 million households were not prepared for the change. This is less than 2 percent of the total households in the U.S. Countries with a higher dependence on analog TV broadcasting will have a more difficult transition.

Cisco Traffic Forecast

I have posted an article on Cisco's latest IP traffic forecast on my Telco 2020 blog. Cisco's forecast highlights the growing importance of video traffic on IP networks.

Cisco IPTV Video Delivery Test

Light Reading published an 18 screen article describing a test performed by EANTC of the ability of a Cisco infrastructure to deliver high quality IPTV service. The conclusion was that the Cisco network performed very well.

This is a very interesting effort. It does a good job of characterizing the performance of this network delivering broadcast/multicast service with a modest amount of video on demand. This are realistic assumptions for most of today's IPTV networks.

However, I am aware of IPTV networks that support network DVR services that are experiencing 80 percent penetration of video on demand services during peak periods. This puts the network into an entirely new dimension. It would have been much more interesting if such a heavy video on demand load was tested as well. This is where IPTV networks are going.