Update Logic, CableLabs Do TV Repair

Agreement could increase cable-ready TV-set use

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/23/2006

In this story:
USING THE MPEG-2 STREAM
FIELD TRIALS COMMENCE

Sidebars:
Slingbox a Game Saver

Update Logic, a Southborough, Mass.-based firm that can fix problems in digital TV sets by sending software patches over the airwaves, has reached a sweeping agreement with the cable industry to support its technology over cable wires. After a successful field trial with several major cable operators and TV-set manufacturers, last week Update Logic signed a nonexclusive agreement with cable tech consortium CableLabs to enable its “in-band” distribution of software updates over cable networks.

The agreement could help spur adoption of digital cable-ready TV sets, which allow subscribers to enjoy premium and on-demand programming without a set-top box, by enabling manufacturers to remotely update their software to fix problems or support new applications.

Update Logic’s UpdateTV product is designed to use the digital broadcast spectrum to deliver software patches from set makers, eliminating the cost of sending a technician to a viewer’s home or mailing an update on a USB drive or flash-memory card.

USING THE MPEG-2 STREAM

The system is based on the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s (ATSC) A/97 standard, the Software Data Download Service, which defines specifications for downloading software to terminal devices using an MPEG-2 transport stream.

Since it’s based on A/97, UpdateTV is also compatible with CableLab’s OpenCable Common Download (OCAP) spec and can deliver updates to OCAP-compliant devices that hook directly to a cable connection.

Update Logic aims to license its system to set manufacturers, which would install a small software client during manufacture to allow their sets to receive updates.

The company is currently negotiating with several major manufacturers, says Patrick Sansonetti, Update Logic VP of sales and marketing, and expects the service to be available in mid 2007, when that year’s TV-set models start to ship.

To deliver the software fixes over the air, the company has secured a slice of DTV spectrum from roughly 200 PBS stations through National Datacast, a PBS subsidiary that aggregates spectrum for datacasting applications.

A DTV set receiving over-the-air signals will automatically get the updates. Through the CableLabs agreement, says Sansonetti, cable operators will now also pass through UpdateTV’s program- identifier data (PID) without stripping it out. That may require some operators to make a 15-minute modification to their digital cherry-picking devices.

FIELD TRIALS COMMENCE

According to Sansonetti, Update Logic tested the system with Insight in Indianapolis, Cox and Time Warner in San Diego, and Comcast in Denver and Boston, all markets where Update Logic has functional data servers at PBS stations. Four manufacturers—Sony, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung—participated in the field trial.

“They integrated our technology into their devices,” Sansonetti says, “and most went to two or three markets.”

Jud Cary, deputy general counsel for CableLabs, says the field trials were successful and the UpdateTV system “very easy to implement” by cable operators. “For them,” he says, “there’s not a whole lot to do, as most of the bits are passed through anyway.”

Dallas Clement, senior VP of strategy and development for Cox, concurs, noting that UpdateTV provides consumer-electronics manufacturers with a path to the TV that doesn’t rely on cable or require cable operators to add anything to their existing data carousels.

The company is still working on technology that will allow its updates to be passed through a digital set-top box to a DTV set. That is how the majority of such sets are used, although digital-cable-ready sets that use a removable “CableCARD” PCM/CIA card for conditional-access functionality are expected to grow in popularity. So far, fewer than 200,000 CableCARDs have been deployed.

Update Logic may also be getting some competition in the software-patch market. In a preview of Gemstar-TV Guide’s latest electronic program guides in New York, Gemstar-TV Guide On Screen President Thomas Carson said his company, which also leases spectrum from PBS stations, is interested in providing set makers with “firmware” update capabilities alongside its core business of licensing electronic program guide software.

E-mail comments to glen.dickson@reedbusiness.com

Slingbox a Game Saver

Local fans of the University of California, Berkeley’s football team were able to see all the action on Oct. 14 as their Golden Bears defeated Washington State University’s Cougars in Pullman, Wash., even though no station or cable network televised the game.

That’s because the school used Sling Media’s Slingbox device to stream the scoreboard feed from WSU’s Martin Stadium over the Internet back to Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, where an estimated 4,000-6,000 fans watched the game on the scoreboard, free of charge. The event, segments of which can be viewed on YouTube, is described by Sling Media as the first public “Slingcast.”

“In terms of a public forum, this is the first,” says Sling Media VP of Business Development and co-founder Jason Krikorian, who is a Berkeley alum and avid Golden Bears fan.

Using a Slingbox, which sells for less than $200, viewers can route their home television signal to a portable device anywhere in the world using a broadband connection. Since its mid-2005 introduction, the Slingbox has gained admirers among the high-tech set but has also raised complaints from some broadcasters that its “placeshifting” technology violates copyright laws. Those complaints seem to have been lost in the shadow cast by larger copyright issues facing programmers, such as YouTube, and so far, no programmer has sued the upstart firm.

Cal officials found out the Monday before the WSU game that it wouldn’t be televised due to a conflict with another Pacific 10 Conference game between UCLA and Oregon, which was being broadcast by ABC. Cal tried to work out an arrangement with Washington State and cable operator Comcast to televise the game, says Cal Athletics spokesman John Sudsbury, but Pac-10 contractual rules prevented the game from being shown.

A previous contest against Oregon State wasn’t televised for the same reason, he says: “It’s disappointing to us, when there’s a game on the road, and fans can’t watch the game. Enter Sling Media. The San Rafael, Calif.-based company was already a sponsor of Cal football, advertising on the Golden Bear Radio Network, buying in-stadium advertisements and running a demonstration tent outside home games. When Krikorian learned of the problem with the Washington State game, he suggested the Slingbox as a solution.

Washington State agreed to provide Cal with access to the raw feed of its scoreboard video, and Cal placed a Slingbox in the Golden Bear Radio Network’s booth at Martin Stadium. The Slingbox took in the video from the in-stadium feed; for play-by-play audio, it took the audio feed from the radio broadcast. It then streamed the coverage over the Internet to Memorial Stadium, where it was received by a computer in the press box and relayed to the stadium scoreboard and PA system.

Cal hasn’t fielded any complaints from the Pac-10, says Sudsbury, who notes that arranging closed-circuit video feeds is an accepted practice when there isn’t formal TV coverage. No one had used the Internet as the transmission path before, however.

Next time, Cal will get the word out earlier, says Sudsbury, “so we can get an even bigger crowd.”