HD Encoding Poses Problem For Next-Gen IPTV Schedules

Uncertainties surrounding the availability of next-generation HDTV encoding technology are dogging telcos’ IPTV rollout plans with some suppliers suggesting the timing could stretch into the third quarter of 2006.

These concerns contrast with assurances from other vendors that everything is on track to support distribution of MPEG-4, H.264-capable HDTV set-tops by the end of the first quarter. The short time difference between these two versions of HDTV availability to bandwidth-constrained providers of video services over DSL raises the question of whether it makes sense to roll out services if there’s a risk of being identified in the market as a provider that can’t deliver HDTV. The core IPTV message is that it’s “way better TV,” as SBC Communications senior vice president of programming Amy Friedlander describes her company’s IPTV offering.

Set for “controlled launch” around the turn of the year, SBC’s service will offer a minimum per-user network capacity to support simultaneous delivery of switched digital TV service to up to four TV sets in the home, including one running a program in HDTV. At an average of 2mbps each for three channels in standard DTV and 10mbps for an HDTV channel, 16mbps out of the minimum 25mbps of bandwidth over SBC’s VDSL2 plant would be consumed for video transmission, not counting the traffic management overhead intrinsic to Ethernet, IP and MPEG transport and the bandwidth requirements of high-speed Internet access and multiple-line VoIP services.

Achieving acceptable quality performance for HDTV signals squeezed to 10mbps or lower entails implementation of software extensions tied to H.264 compression in the Part 10 version of MPEG-4. Single-chip solutions for next-generation IPTV terminals are slated to come on line for commercial deployments by late first or early second quarter. Some suppliers had indicated these set-tops would be in mass distribution by the third quarter of this year.

Where the set-top side of the deployment equation was a delaying factor for initial expectations involving next-gen IPTV rollouts, today it’s HDTV concerns that cloud the timing picture. “We as an industry hyped MPEG-4 too early,” says Jim Olson, CEO of SkyStream Networks, a leading supplier of IPTV headend encoders. “Everybody thought it was right around the corner when we first started showing MPEG-4 compression two years ago, but telcos only ordered MPEG-2 encoders through that period. We’ll have MPEG-4 HD when the industry needs it.”

Olson says it looks like availability of encoders that accomplish what the market is looking for is probably at least a year away. “We’re working on it, but I don’t think you’ll see a whole lot of deployments before 2007,” he says.

SkyStream, like other encoding suppliers, was showing HDTV in MPEG-4 mode at the TelcoTV show. Such displays have been commonplace since last January’s Consumer Electronics Show. But Olson makes clear there’s a long way between exhibit hall demos and field deployments when a technology implementation involves complex balancing of quality-related video parameters in the context of an across-the-board bit-rate squeeze. Software solutions designed to assist in this balancing act are difficult to implement, he notes.

Motorola will have MPEG-4 set-tops with HD capabilities in the market in the first half of next year, but encoding for HD in MPEG-4 is “10 to 11 months away from prime time,” says Floyd Wagoner, who manages marketing for Motorola’s IPTV operations. “One of our people is chairman of the MPEG-4 committee that oversees AVC (the Advanced Video Coding process in MPEG-4), so we’re up to speed on all the vendors’ progress,” he adds. “We know what the truth is, and Jim (Olson) is on track with where things stand.”

This contrasts with the picture presented by Motorola rival Scientific-Atlanta, whose officials say encoding availability for HDTV in MPEG-4 will not be a gating factor to SBC’s or other telcos’ general rollouts of IPTV services. While SBC in its controlled rollout phase will be providing HDTV via multichip MPEG-4 set-tops in its field trials, the carrier is slated to begin deploying single-chip IPTV set-tops when it goes to full commercial rollout next summer.

“Having HD out of the gate is extremely important,” says Todd Waters, director for business development in the IP subscriber networks sector of Scientific-Atlanta, which, along with Motorola, is supplying set-tops to SBC and other IPTV providers. “Our people are working on encoding in parallel with the availability of single-chip solutions that have been delivered for testing purposes. The encoders will be available when the set-tops come on line.”

Clearly, notwithstanding different views of vendors, service providers don’t have a clear picture of what to expect. “We’ll move forward with HDTV over our DSL infrastructure just as soon as we can, but we don’t know when that will be at this point,” says Bill DeMuth, CTO at SureWest Communications. SureWest by its own officials’ accounts has been less-than-aggressive with the DSL portion of its IPTV rollout in Central California, largely because it wants to offer HDTV as part of the package in the context of achieving a much larger footprint for IPTV-capable DSL lines.

“There are quality differences that are significant to professionals which the average viewer would never notice,” DeMuth says. “But we have to meet those higher standards.”

An official at Thomson Consumer Electronics’ set-top unit, speaking on background, says Thomson’s encoding unit, Grass Valley, won’t have a viable encoder for HDTV-over-DSL rollouts until October or November of next year. “I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the market to move forward without a solid HDTV solution, and we don’t see that happening until late ‘06,” he says.

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