VIEWS

Waking up to Espresso

Since the early 1990s and the emergence of digital cable systems, the perennial question permeating across the TV industry has been: ’When do we turn off the analogue signals?’ Well, according to Nagravision, the time to wake up and smell the coffee is here and now. A bold statement, you might think, especially when government mandates give a little more leeway for the switchover. But the transition to digital has been occupying the company’s thoughts for a very long time.

The result is Espresso – a new platform and turnkey solution for a cost-effective but powerful digital-to-analogue converter – a collaboration between Nagravision, chipset provider NEC and set-top-box partner Arion. This small-format converter box comes pre-bundled with Nagra Media Livewire OS 2.5 and can be customised to include on-screen options like electronic programme guides and information browsing.

If you consider most cable operations today, many still contain a fair amount of analogue-only technology inside their bulging channel line-ups. The reasons for this are simple: many customers still subscribe to ‘basic’ cable, which is available without a set-top box when plugged directly into a TV. And from an industry viewpoint, the cost of providing a digital set-top box for every TV in the house was prohibitive. Consumers just weren’t likely to add on many expensive and bulky boxes for TVs in their kitchens, basements and guest bedrooms.

So why now? First, the price point for a digital-to-analogue converter box is low enough to make for an attractive business plan. Second, the technology available today from Nagravision’s chipset partners makes the availability of these boxes, called D2As, much more feasible.

The benefits to cable operators are enormous. For starters, they can recover bandwidth being used for analogue channels. Typically, with savings above 300 MHz when converting 50 to 60 analogue channels to digital, a cable operator can gain enough bandwidth for over 550 new channels. With growing competition in their core pay-TV businesses, the demand for more bandwidth is at the very heart of growth for cable operators.

An added benefit of turning off analogue signals is that the operator will eliminate a large amount of analogue signal piracy. This can either be passive, for example when a family moves into a home where the cable line has not been disconnected, or illegal – from broadband-only subscribers who split the cable line going to the modem.

But perhaps the biggest benefit of all is that by drilling for bandwidth inside a cable company’s own well, they can free up a significant amount of space for extra revenue – for services and content such as broadband data, telephony, VOD, network DVR and HD channels.

D2As are different from set-top-boxes in that they don’t include return paths, hybrid functionality, advanced graphics or front panel displays/controls. An all-digital cable operator will typically deploy D2As for non-primary viewing areas, in conjunction with HD DVRs and HD or SD Zapper set-top boxes with return paths, that can access MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 HD signals in the main media rooms.

D2As are also a cost-saving option for low-tier cable subscriptions. They allow greater market penetration – there’s the opportunity to upgrade these homes with more services at a later date, or for part of a bundle to add low-cost pay TV to broadband-only subscribers.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s a no-brainer. A shot of Espresso is just the wake-up call the TV industry needs to help it prepare for a digital future.