Set Top Box 2008 Session Topics

Innovative and Emerging Applications for Set Top Boxes

Deploying advanced applications deliver a major competitive advantage to manufacturers and operators in the highly competitive television markets.  This session will examine emerging applications such as surveillance and security, karaoke, creation of video mashups, social networking and other compelling apps.  Understand how developers are working with OEMs and operators to enable and accelerate the pace of innovation and deliver more compelling products. 

Deploying Whole Home Entertainment Networks

Rather than coalescing around a single standard, the market seems more fragmented than ever.  Ongoing battles between powerline, various wireless standards, coax, and other wireline technologies have left consumers confused and operators and equipment manufactures mired in indecision.  Is it time for the industry to adopt a single whole home entertainment networking standard?  Sessions on entertainment networks will focus on the technologies, business models and economics of the competing standards. Examine the technical requirements for future-proofing entertainment networks and the tradeoffs between various competing technologies.

Beyond the Entertainment Network: The Lifestyle Package

Deploying increasingly complex and powerful networks in the home provides network service providers, equipment vendors consumer electronics and device manufacturers with new challenges and opportunities.  Beyond the entertainment network, connected home solutions have the opportunity to greatly enhance consumers’ lifestyles by managing multiple facets of day-to-day experiences.  From gaming, social networking, home security, energy management to home automation, new services can be deployed which will provide additional revenue opportunities for operators which greatly enhancing the customer’s lifestyle.  This session will discuss the technical requirements, customer premises equipment needs and outlook for deploying a whole new suite of lifestyle services.

Set-Top Box Evolution: Gateway, Command Center and Entertainment Server

As the proliferation of digital media and penetration of home networks converge, more opportunities than ever exist for operators to place themselves squarely in the center of consumers’ digital lifestyle. However, the consumer’s home is potentially filled with multiple devices such as gaming consoles, PCs and IP-connected CE platforms that support a range of services, capabilities, content types of digital rights management schemes. Is the Set Top Box really up to the task of becoming the central controlling device?

Developing the next generation of intelligent set-top boxes that can store, search, manage, transcode and distribute media throughout the home as well as act as the command and control center is the next major step in enabling operators to deploy services which can reduce churn and generate additional revenues.  This session will examine how the convergence of technologies and platforms that have traditionally operated in isolation will impact future STB developments.

The Future Box: Deploying the Truly Future-Proof STB

The rapid pace of innovation in digital entertainment, interactive services, personalization and consumer expectations poses both challenges and opportunities to the service provider.  Converged entertainment platforms are complex and sophisticated. They evolve quickly, and service providers are challenged with ensuring their technology strategies keep pace. Evolving codecs, delivery mechanisms, quality of service schemes, remote management, DRM, device support and security are all constantly evolving.  Perpetually redeploying set-top boxes is not an economical option.  This series of sessions will examine solutions from silicon providers, software vendors and platform OEMs which will help operators meet CPE cost requirements today while ensuring that the STB can scale with future consumer expectations and constantly evolving services.

Multi-Screen, Multi-Device Content Delivery

The three-screen world is a reality that cannot be ignored by operators, device manufacturers and content providers.   Finding the right symmetry between wireline and wireless platforms remains challenging – but full of possibility. Understand the technical requirements and demands which will be placed on the Set Top Box as operators flesh out their multi-screen, multi-device strategies. 

Set Top Technology Sessions

In order to meet future demands, enable the next generation of services and provide a future-proof platform, STB architects must place their bets now on a number of technologies and standards from processors, decoders, networking technologies, middleware, platform OS and a host of other considerations.  These sessions will provide STB manufacturers with critical insights from leading silicon and software suppliers that they need in order to develop and deploy winning STB platforms for cable, satellite, telco and consumer VOD services. 

Set Top Boxes for the Masses

It seems that every content aggregator / distributor is looking to deploy their own consumer set top box in order to deliver content directly to the consumer’s home.  Do these standalone set top boxes and the accompanying services really stand a chance at making a major impact on the market?  What is the right mix of feature sets, form factors, technologies, applications…and cost, that will drive more competition and volume in the retail standalone STB market? 

Set-top Boxes for the YouTube Generation

The YouTube generation is trained to expect virtually limitless amounts of video, audio and social networking experiences at their fingertips and on-demand.  Service providers have not been blind to this trend and are beginning to integrate broadband internet connectivity to exploit synergies between traditional services and the vast world of online entertainment.  This will have a profound impact on future set-top box design.  Understand how connected Set Top Boxes will fundamentally alter tomorrow’s TV experiences.  Examine the technologies that will be needed to exploit the Internet to enable a whole host of entertainment and communications services.

Interface 2008 Session Topics

Enabling the UI Revolution

This session will examine technology solutions for STBs to enable the next generation of rich, advanced user interface experiences using enhanced graphics, 3D navigation, immersive video and a host of other technologies.  See first- hand how to develop and deploy the next generation of user interfaces on STBs.

Search, Browse and Discover

As the diversity of content types, sources and options become a reality, consumers need new methods in order to search, browse and discover content across multiple devices.  While search works for consumers who know what they want, discovery means experiencing content the consumer may not have known existed.  Interface 2.0 sessions will help operators, device makers and content owners understand the differences between search, browse and content discovery. A particular emphasis will be placed on the technology requirements from a hardware and software perspective that will enable compelling user experiences in a world of almost infinite content choices.

Navigation Technologies – Going Beyond the Button Remote

TV navigation has been stuck with the same old remote control for years.  The PC has the mouse and keyboard and mobile phones are emerging with touch screens.  This session will examine the latest innovations in navigation technologies which will make it easier for consumers to quickly search, discover and select the content they want to consumer.  Understand the key innovations which will propel the industry beyond the current generation of legacy navigation technologies.

What Industry Standards are Impacting Search and Navigation?

Can the industry broadly deploy advanced search, navigation and personalization features based on proprietary implementations, or will standardization need to take place across numerous device types, diverse content and unique services?  Understand which standards are currently in place, what is being proposed and how all this will impact interoperability and speed deployment.

What’s the Right Way to Personalize Digital Media Experiences?

Personalization has different meanings depending on the perspective of the content owner, operator or CE manufacturer.  This session will discuss the various approaches to personalization and how approaches differ depending on the platform, digital media type, etc.

Bringing the Best of Web Interactivity and Web Video to the TV

Some operators and CE companies are already delivering limited web video and interactivity to the TV.  However, the video selection is largely constrained to the videos that are parsed and chosen by the operator and search and navigation features are either cumbersome or too limited. This session will talk about how to bring the best of web interactivity and content to the living room. 

Bringing Search and Navigation to Mobile Platforms

As content increasingly goes mobile, consumers require more ways to search, discover and navigate to the content they want to consume.  With the prospect of integrating both wireline and wireless service looming on the horizon, MSOs are rapidly closing ranks with telecom operators who can bridge the gap between digital home and mobile services.  The integration of mobility requires operators to fundamentally rethink search and navigation.  Mobile search can be contextual, dynamic and location-based, adding a unique element to the portfolio of services, applications and content which can be delivered to customers.  The sessions on mobile search and navigation will discuss how to integrate the mobile phone into digital home entertainment services as well as the unique aspects of mobile search and content discovery.

Overcoming the Challenges of Creating New User Experiences

Creating new user experiences presents all members of the content, service provider and device ecosystems with numerous challenges.  Companies are largely working without the benefit of established standards and often with still nascent technologies and emerging platforms.  In addition, new platforms and services must often be overlaid onto legacy systems and across diverse platforms.  These sessions will discuss the challenges of working across multiple platforms, currently deployed  CPE and diverse content delivery pipes.

The Future of Digital Content Discovery

Even with extensive metadata, searching for a particular video, image or digital music file can often feel the proverbial needle-in-the-haystack problem.  Session on the future of digital content discovery will examine how companies are addressing the problems of finding content more effectively and what the future may hold.

Advancing Interactive TV Technologies

Passive viewing is out. Interactivity is in. Unfortunately its easier said than done in many cases.  With the YouTube generation poised to become the next wave of influential buyers, TV and digital media platforms must change to include interactivity, social networking, information and video snacking, UGC, etc.  Sessions on interactivity will cover critical technologies which need to be deployed to enable interactivity as well as the economic impact of emerging services and applications centered around interactivity.

Reinventing the TV’s Role: The TV as Entertainment Portal

The TV is at the center of digital home convergence.  The Internet and Television are merging. Not only as a delivery pipe (IPTV) but also providing interactive gaming, social networking, advertising and access to additional broadband video and user generated content.  The TV is poised to become the entertainment portal where all sources of media can converge.  To realize this vision, operators will need to change the way they deploy services and CPE.  Consumer electronics manufacturers also have a huge stake in building products which can harness the power of convergence in the home. 

Personalizing the TV Experience

With hundreds of linear channels, recorded videos and other media sources available, finding the right content is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers.  The TV experience must be personalized to help operators, content owners and CE suppliers increase revenues and customer satisfaction.  Wizards, peer recommendations, intelligent engines, are just some of the ways TV is being personalized.  These sessions will examine various approaches to personalizing the TV and digital media experience.

The Next Gen EPG: Linking TV, Digital Media, Broadband, Mobile

Current Electronic Program Guides being deployed are out of date and do not represent the way consumers want to search and discover content, nor do they scale to include other sources of media.  The EPG needs to become a more intuitive content search engine.  There are numerous approaches being explored for the next generation EPGs.  Sessions on Next Gen EPGs will examine the various approaches, features, technologies, and capabilities which will define the next generation of EPGs.  These sessions will also examine not only the technology aspects, but the business and market impact these will have on CE platform and operator revenues.

Integrating the Social Network Experience: Fad or Reality?

How important is the integration of social networking with operator-deployed video services?  What form will it take?  How will set top boxes, user interfaces and navigation devices evolve to enable social networking?