With Skype TV, Cable Customers Become Big-Screen TV Stars

Back in 1964, attendees of the New York World’s Fair could go to the AT&T pavilion and play with a futuristic gadget: the Picturephone. A caller could use a rather clunky phone receiver to view another caller on a small, somewhat murky black-and-white screen. (I’m old enough to have attended the fair and witnessed it firsthand.) It was another in a long line of attempts to whet public appetite for a videophone, a concept that has intrigued inventors as far back as Alexander Graham Bell.

Fast-forward to today and the long-held notion of the videophone is taking shape in a unique way. Comcast is rolling out a Skype TV product that uses the popular Internet video service to put callers on their big-screen TV.

Skype on Xfinity is available to Comcast Xfinity triple-play customers for $9.95 per month and a Skype account. It comes with a self-installation kit that includes an adapter, a video camera and a remote with a keyboard, which enables instant messaging while watching TV.

Skype, which launched its Internet service in 2003 and was acquired by Microsoft last year for $8.5 billion, offers retail TV cams for video calling on HDTVs and Blu-ray players, and Skype TV is available through certain smart TV models. Skype offers premium services but its basic Internet video calling service remains free.

Therein lies the marketing challenge. Comcast is promoting its Skype TV offer by playing up the benefits of big-screen video calling for families who want to see each other in life-like HDTV, and friends who can watch a show together remotely. In this age of social media and ubiquitous cameras, perhaps people now are more willing to put their faces on a video screen. Has the videophone finally arrived?

See how Comcast is promoting Skype on Xfinity:

www.comcast.com/skype

Find out why one avowed skeptic likes Skype on cable:

Tech Test Drive: Comcast's Skype on Xfinity offers skeptic much to love

In 1910, a French artist imagined what video telephony would be like in the year 2000 (by Villemard, source: Wikipedia)

Welcome to Bright Ideas 

This blog, edited by Craig Leddy of Interactive TV Works, highlights new video technologies, applications, marketing strategies and other innovations that are keeping cable on the leading edge.

Here you’ll find information – delivered briefly and in plain English – to help inspire your own innovative thinking. Where possible, we’ll include links to resources so you can learn more.

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What's a CDN? (And Why Should I Care?)

It could be the most significant change in cable television delivery since the dawn of satellite programming distribution more than 35 years ago. Cable providers are looking to use content delivery networks (CDNs) to eventually deliver all of their video content.

What’s a CDN? For cable, a CDN is a way to deliver programming through a centralized fiber backbone network that relies upon Internet protocol (IP) technology. CDNs provide the foundation for cable to stream all linear and on-demand programming in IP video formats, which can be encoded and adapted for delivery to any broadband-connected set-top box, tablet, smart TV, smartphone or other device. Network traffic is managed from a centralized network operations center (NOC) and regional data centers.

Comcast and Time Warner Cable already have established CDNs while other multiple system operators are exploring whether to create their own or join together in a so-called federated CDN or CDN Interconnect (CDNI).
   
CDNs could provide another landmark method of cable distribution, one that rivals the advent of satellite-delivered programming that started when HBO beamed the Thrilla in Manila fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in September 1975. Over the ensuing five to ten years, most of today’s major cable network brands launched by using satellite delivery, including CNN, C-SPAN, Discovery, Disney Channel, ESPN, MTV, Playboy, Showtime, and superstation TBS.

CDNs eventually could reduce the industry’s reliance on satellite delivery for programming and provide a launchpad for more Internet video, cloud-based programming guides and interactive applications. By using CDNs, cable can provide customers with more content, better navigation and greater interactivity, anytime and on any device, for a better user experience.
 
Learn more:
The Language of CDNs

Cable Deploys CDNs – and Looks Ahead

Stop Calling it 'Authentication'

When cable customers sign up for new TV Everywhere video services, typically they’re asked to go through a registration process to verify that they subscribe to cable. But calling the process “authentication,” as the industry is prone to do, can be a real turn-off for subscribers, according to Matt Murphy, SVP of digital video distribution for Disney & ESPN Media Networks.

  Matt Murphy, Disney & ESPN 

In focus group research, the programmer found that being asked to “authenticate” themselves could be a barrier to consumers signing up. "When they saw 'authenticate,' they didn't know what that means, and it implies it might be something they have to pay for," said Murphy, speaking at TV in a Multi-Platform World, a New York event presented by Multichannel News, B&C and TV Technology.

Using the word "verify" instead of "authenticate" improved the chances that they would register and use a service, Murphy said. Currently there’s low awareness of TV Everywhere services, he said, and the registration process needs to be easy and “frictionless.” The good news is that the research showed that TV Everywhere services increase subscriber perceptions that a provider is on the cutting edge.

New Hybrid Gateways: It’s Two Mints in One!

Inside more than 40 million cable homes there is a set-top box for television plus a modem for high-speed Internet. Why not take the two devices and turn them into one? That’s the thinking behind a new line of “hybrid gateway” devices that combine the functionality of an HD DVR set-top box and a wideband high-speed modem. Two great services, one awesome device. 

These superboxes act as a media center to provide a converged platform for new, Internet-fueled interactive program guides (IPG) and apps on TV, plus the ability to home network all manner of media around the house. They use ultra-high speed DOCSIS 3.0 capability and some models can be used for digital cable phone service too.

Check out the fun way that WideOpenWest promotes its WOW! Ultra TV gateway, likening it to the inventions of the toaster, Slinky and lava lamp.

Shaw Communications in Canada is promoting its Shaw Gateway as a multi-room DVR, and then it will offer new tiered services.
 
Double your pleasure, double your fun!