My first question, which I'll pose to Huw, is that I have been waiting for the connected home for more years than I care to admit to. Is it going to happen? And does IPTV get us any closer to reality? What's your view?
Huw Price-Stephens, Amino
It will happen, although I share your frustration which I'm sure is the case for all of us around this table today. We are all enthusiasts for this technology to move further down the road than we are. Technologists tend to be natural optimists and perhaps take an optimistic view about how quickly new technologies might get taken up and embedded. But I believe there are specific reasons why the connected home has faced some challenges. Amino focuses only on the IPTV environment and we are very much focused on broadband connectivity and this becomes our focal point for making the connected home a reality. Today we have the reality that in many parts of the world the broadband networks themselves are limited in terms of the amount of bandwidth they deliver to the individual consumer. Even when people start thinking of the connected home, capable of delivering multiple services simultaneously into the home, they have a problem with the bandwidth that might be available to them in delivering services to a specific consumer. IP most certainly has an important role to play, but the broadband connections themselves - in most cases today - pose some limitations on what we hope to achieve in the connected home.
Chris Forrester
We'll return to that point in a moment but let me switch to Paul Entwistle from Pace. Pace is involved not only in IPTV but right across the board and it is known that Pace has been working hard towards the connected home. Are we any closer today?
Paul Entwistle, Pace
I think we are a lot closer. What's been the problem with the connected home in the past is a lack of fundamental technology. These problems are largely being addressed. The home networking technologies are now available so that you can actually build a connected home; we have Digital Rights Management technologies available that allow multiple services but these services are much more than just video. Our focus is on television. The ultimate goal for a company like Pace is to ensure that users can have good quality digital television throughout the home and this is much more than just moving video around the home, it must also handle subtitling in high quality. So there is still work to do to get services around the home by using open standards but this is where we want to be and our end customers want this. Especially when you look at things like analogue switch off. Everyone is going to need digital television throughout their homes very soon.
Chris Forrester
José, you do not make boxes, you are a technology company, already potentially in every digital television set. You've recently concluded a very nice agreement with UK commercial broadcaster ITV for an interactive bingo game. What's the interest for you in developing interactivity, and games and gaming for TV sets and Set-Top Boxes?
José Luis Vázquez, Mirada
The main reason for Mirada and our role in digital television is content, and the amount of channels that we have. We seek quality in our interactive services and what this leads to for the consumer. One big thing for us, a major question, is that digital TV itself does not attract consumers by themselves. Our interactivity increases the quality of the content for the consumer. We focus on this when we talk about video. This is important but overall viewers want an engaging experience and our aim is to make this content wholly engaging. This is what we focus on.
Chris Forrester
Ian, when you were at BSkyB and now at Miniweb would it be fair to say that maximising a return on investment was a pretty strong objective for you? José has mentioned interactivity. Indeed, everyone has mentioned interactivity so far but what do you bring to a Set-Top Box that is key for your client - the advertiser?
Ian Valentine, Miniweb
The key part that Miniweb brings is the ability to do interactive services and to be the front end to the protocols and other standards that are emerging. This is right across the board in terms of all types of electronic equipment. The vision for the connected home is to have the same experience on every screen in the house. If you were to take that vision to its logical extent, a consumer could pick up a remote control, point it at a screen, and the screen would know which person was now holding the remote control and would reflect this during the session, perhaps guiding him to what he might want to watch, his interactivity, his playlist, and his favourite media would now be on that screen and would work the same way across all of the screens. A fundamental part of this objective is the interactive front end which is what we bring. But I think to answer your initial question about how long it might take (for connected homes to be a reality) I wholly agree that the building blocks are coming, DRM is important as is DLNA (digital living network alliance) but we still have a long way to go.
I recently met one person, a self-acknowledged ‘geek' who has his house completely wired and I asked him where his Sky boxes were and he told me they were in the cupboard under the stairs. When questioned about how he got the video around the home, he said he used RF. For many people today, this is the reality for video distribution and an RF cable is a useful way of achieving that result. This has to fundamentally change before we have a complete inter-operable system happening. But we'll get there and I'd say the answer to your question is three years, and we will see a completely working system from proprietary manufacturers who are selling everything that is working together and in five years you'll see it working between different manufacturers' platforms.
However, one of the barriers that is worth pointing out is that there are two parts to the industry. The pay-TV industry has a problem in connecting its devices around the home network, because of all the rights management problems that have to be addressed. Yet media generally, including the DLNA stuff like music, photos etc or video that's already sitting on a PC being consumed on another device, do not have rights problems associated with them. Consequently there is a tension between these two groups, especially equipment in a pay-TV environment and equipment in the horizontal market working together. Simply put, it is a question of rights issues which is why DRM is so important and DRM conversion is as important. These elements will hold up the digital home but it will happen.
