Cable Television Laboratories Inc. completed yet another phase of digital
insertion testing this week, with nine vendors putting their products through
the paces.
The Louisville, Colo.-based consortium has already staged three test phases
this year revolving around the Society of Cable and Telecommunications
Engineers' standard '35 2001,' which deals with splicing digital insertion cues,
and SCTE '30 2001,' which deals with splicing digital programs into a video
stream.
The specific tests included targeted ad scenarios, programming overtime and
early-end situations, live network insertion, high-definition TV and centralized
or distributed and zoned advertising
Five companies returned for the fourth round of testing: BigBand Networks
Inc., Harmonic Inc., nCUBE, SeaChange International Inc. and Terayon
Communication Systems Inc.
New companies to the test event included Adtec Inc., Nextream, Sencore Inc.
and Wegener Communications, and they were allowed to participate after they took
the tests from the past phases.
ACTV Inc., Lifetime Movie Network, Scientific-Atlanta Inc., and Visible World
Inc. also provided demonstrations.
'We are finding that conducting these tests at CableLabs greatly promotes
cross-platform interoperability and facilitates faster, more cost-effective
implementations,' said Paul Woidke, vice president of technology for Comcast
Advertising Sales and chairman of the SCTE's DVS Working Group
5.
