[opendtv] News: Atop TV Sets, Basic Black Boxes Face Competition
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 07:14:00 -0500
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/technology/17settop.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
January 17, 2007
Atop TV Sets, Basic Black Boxes Face Competition
By BRAD STONE
Adam Gillitt does not hate what is on his TV as much as he dislikes
what is attached to it.
Mr. Gillitt, a graphic designer from Alameda, Calif., is exasperated
by his high-definition cable box, made by the technology giant
Motorola and leased to him by his local cable provider, Comcast. The
$10-a-month device, he says, has a poorly designed electronic program
guide and responds slowly, or not at all, to commands from the remote
control.
"Paying for something this awful hurts," Mr. Gillitt said.
For many Americans, the cable box - still commonly called the set-top
box, though it is now too big to balance on top of increasingly thin
TVs - may be the most disappointing piece of technology in their
homes. As inventions like TiVo and YouTube alter the way people
watch and control video, the traditional box has largely failed to
keep up.
Now that is beginning to change.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, makers of
set-top boxes exhibited devices with a host of new features: more
hard-disk space for storing digitally recorded TV shows,
easier-to-navigate program guides, connections to Web sites, DVD
burners and video games.
The box manufacturers and the cable operators like Comcast, Cox and
Time Warner Cable that they sell to, have an age-old motivation for
improving their products: fear. New competitors are flooding into the
TV business, including the industry's rivals in the telephone
business, and the computer kingpins Microsoft and Apple.
Consumers can buy those alternatives at regular retail outlets,
including the newest high-definition version of TiVo. It sells for
$800 (with a $20 monthly fee) and can replace the box that cable and
satellite providers lease to customers, instead of merely sitting on
top of it and adding to living room clutter.
Cable operators are being forced to play nice with these new
entrants. The Federal Communications Commission has set a deadline of
July 1 for all cable operators to make their services work with boxes
from all third-party manufacturers, and last week it rejected a
request from Comcast to extend the deadline.
"Set-top boxes are becoming the central piece of equipment in the
home for accessing entertainment and information," said Joshua
Goldman, chief executive of Akimbo, a Silicon Valley start-up trying
to bring programming to the TV over the Internet. "Consumers will buy
their own device if they feel like they are not getting the services
they want from their television operators."
For decades, the cable industry did not worry much about introducing
new features into their typically black set-top boxes. They faced
little competition in their local markets and bought their equipment
from one of two companies: General Instruments, which was purchased
by Motorola in 2000, and Scientific Atlanta, acquired by Cisco
Systems in 2005.
Both companies build TV boxes according to the specifications of
cable companies, who lease them to customers and then make their
money on monthly subscriptions. Because they are essentially giving
the boxes away, the industry's focus, not surprisingly, is on keeping
the cost of the equipment low.
But now new players are offering more sophisticated alternatives to
cable boxes. Over the last two years, 30 million personal computers
have been sold with Media Center software from Microsoft, which
enhances video viewing on the PC, making it more like a television.
The computers come with a remote control and can pause and
fast-forward through video.
Many of those PCs can now replace set-top boxes, thanks to a federal
law passed over a decade ago that requires cable operators to sell
credit-card-size devices called CableCards. These cards can plug into
a Media Center PC, or other consumer electronics appliances like DVD
players, allowing them to receive regular cable channels.
Last week, Apple also joined the fray with Apple TV, a slick silver
box that connects to the television and displays programs and movies
that have been downloaded from iTunes. It goes on sale next month for
$299.
The message to cable companies and their equipment vendors is clear:
if they want to keep up, they must build a better cable box.
They appear to be listening. At the Las Vegas show, just as many
visitors swarmed around Motorola's new set-top boxes as its latest
mobile phones. The company showed a line of new boxes compatible with
high-definition TV, with one-third more hard-disk space than its
previous models, like the clumsy device Mr. Gillitt has under his TV.
The new boxes are designed to offer greater control over the
television. For example, one new feature Motorola is promoting is
called "program restart." If cable customers miss a show by a few
minutes and do not record it, they can click a button and get the
cable company to retransmit it directly to them, instantly. Time
Warner Cable is currently testing the service in San Antonio.
Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology officer of Motorola, said
consumers now demand more from their televisions, largely thanks to
TiVo, which has forced the cable companies to ask suppliers for more
innovative set-top boxes. "Enough people are experienced with
time-shifting that there's a demand that the industry dynamics
change," Ms. Warrior said.
Across the showroom floor, Scientific Atlanta executives agreed that
the old featureless TV tuner was quickly becoming a relic. Among its
new boxes, the company showed off one called the MCP-100: a silver
set-top box with a digital video recorder and one surprising new
feature: a slot for DVDs. In addition to getting live TV, the device
can play movies and burn programs and movies onto discs. It is now
being tested by cable companies.
Scientific Atlanta is also building Internet connections into all its
boxes, so consumers can get programming from the Web in addition to
the traditional ways, by cable or satellite.
"There's a growing need for high-quality video that goes right to
where it's supposed to, the television, and not to the PC, where only
college kids are looking at it," said Robert C. McIntryre, Scientific
Atlanta's chief technology officer.
The cable companies and their equipment vendors must adapt to the
Internet age quickly, because soon customers will have more choices
than ever. Telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon are investing
heavily to bury fiber optic cables in most major cities and roll out
their own TV offerings.
Because the telephone companies deliver television using Internet
standards and typically package it with telephone and Internet
service, they say they can offer consumers more choices and control
over the viewing experience. AT&T, for example, showed off a set-top
box at the Las Vegas show that received four different streams of
programming (compared with most new digital cable boxes, which
receive only two). That allows a customer to watch a program live
while simultaneously recording three others.
One new feature that AT&T was showing, called picture-in-picture
browsing, or PIP, lets a TV viewer channel surf on a small screen
while continuing to watch another program on the rest of the screen.
AT&T hopes to have its TV service, called uVerse, accessible to 19
million homes by the end of next year. If it can pull it off, it
would position AT&T as a serious rival to cable and satellite
television providers.
All of these established companies also have to watch out for smaller
rivals with their own set-top box innovations. TiVo's Series3 HD
Digital Media Recorder, which went on sale last fall at electronics
stores like Best Buy, is CableCard-ready, which means buyers can
plug in a card from their local cable operator and use it as a
substitute for a cable box.
Another technology start-up at the show, Digeo, exhibited its new
Moxi service, a set-top box with digital video recorder that it plans
to start selling in the latter half of this year. The Moxi also works
with a CableCard and comes with smaller optional "Moxi mates," which
buyers can connect to the other TVs in their homes. Those televisions
will then have access to the programming received by and recorded on
the primary set-top box.
Digeo's chief executive, Mike Fidler, said increased competition was
ushering in a renaissance in set-top-box design. "Companies can now
come in with innovative products that change the consumer experience
and bring a whole new level of enjoyment to television," Mr. Fidler
said.
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