Cable operators at the National Show this week will get the chance to speed delivery of their programming to portable computer users who use Slingbox technology to transfer TV shows to wherever they are.
CableMatrix Technologies of Des Plaines, Ill., will demonstrate a new software product that sits on a cable subscriber’s personal computer and allows the receipt of an improved video signal.
The application allows a cable high-speed Internet access subscriber to request more bandwidth for sending video programs when the remote Slingbox application is activated, said CableMatrix vice president of marketing and sales Barry Hardek. Where the user might normally only receive 256 Kilobits of information per second, the request from the application can triple that to 768 Kbps, Hardek said.
INTRIGUING IDEA
Cable operators are intrigued with what Slingbox allows subscribers to do, and nothing prevents cable companies from eventually offering the same kind of service, said Comcast Corp. executive vice president of programming Matt Bond.
The big issue, however, is whether slinging video content from a fixed location to any location violates copyright laws, he said. “The legality is a question mark,” Bond said, especially for sports leagues. “Watching the San Francisco Giants in Tokyo is a different right than watching in the U.S.”
Nonetheless, CableMatrix’s Hardek said, “a couple [cable operators] want to move forward on this.” But he named none.
A Slingbox is a set-top-like box sold to consumers for $299, and linked both to the cable box and cable modem. It lets consumers view their home cable-television service from anywhere in the world by serving as a bridge to get program channels from the set-top to the modem, then out through the public Internet to wherever the subscriber is located.
The subscriber accesses their home cable-television lineup by calling up the SlingBox software program on their personal computer or laptop.
CableMatrix’s new “client-side software agent” can be downloaded from the headend to a home computer by the operator.
The software sits on the subscriber’s computer, Hardek said, and recognizes when a Slingbox request comes in from an outside broadband connection. The software automatically asks for enough upstream bandwidth to handle whatever channel the subscriber wants to watch.
NO FILE SHARING
A sports channel might require 768 Kilobits per second or a bit more, because of the constant action involved in sports events, Hardek said, while news or even movie channels might only require 512 Kbps.
Hardek said the CableMatrix software is designed to only allow Slingbox television signals to be transmitted. It would prevent, for instance, the extra bandwidth to be used for file sharing applications. “It would stop BitTorrent from sneaking through,” he said.
Vonage Holdings Corp. beat cable operators to the market with its VoIP service and Slingbox has done the same with its new technology, Hardek said. For that reason, Hardek believes cable operators are interested in technology that extends their cable service beyond the home.
While telephone and cable companies battle it on what’s the best “last-mile” technology (cable, fiber or copper wire), Slingbox-type applications require a focus on the first mile, Hardek said. “It’s similar to video on the downstream,” he said, where a poor analog signal won’t get any better as it travels through the amplifiers on coaxial cable. How good a Slingbox signal looks for a New York business traveler in Hong Kong will depend on the quality of the signal coming from the businessman’s New York home. “It (Slingbox) is only as good as the source signal,” Hardek said.
