This is certainly the most dynamic time in the history of the video delivery business—so much is happening in the industry, making it both exciting and challenging.


I’m with customers every week and I see several key trends playing out. Currently, operators’ biggest focus continues to be around the addition of more services, with HD and VOD at the top of the list. With these bandwidth hogs eating up precious network resources, operators are pushing hard to deploy 3:1 HD statmuxing solutions, enabling them to continue to grow their offerings without major capital and operational investments.


Another interesting thing to mention is that we’re getting close to fully open systems for SDV and VOD. With the standardization efforts that have been going on recently in these areas, as well as around advanced advertising, deployment of new solutions and services is getting easier, allowing for new revenue opportunities.


The move to full-digital systems continues as well. The drivers are simple: the need for more bandwidth and the ability to continually launch new digital services in competitive markets. The MTA all-digital efforts of U.S. MSOs has been well publicized and is well on its way to rapid deployment. We are also seeing this trend in Latin America. Additionally, many Latin American systems, as well as smaller systems in the North American market, have been contemplating DVB systems to satisfy their need for a continual source of low-cost set-top solutions. We have seen recent deployments of DVB systems in Mexico and the Midwest as well as potential systems in South America. DVB set-tops will eventually outnumber their NTSC counterparts due to rapid growth of digital in Asia and Europe – this growth fuels an extremely competitive set-top supply chain that is now firmly entrenched in the Americas.


The last trend that I’d like to mention is IPTV. Discussions are heating up amongst all of the players, with much debate on how this will play out. We at RGB certainly plan to keep our eyes and ears open as we continue to evolve our delivery platform for a ‘video anywhere’ world.


No matter where this revolution in video takes us, all of us at RGB will continue to be here working with you through the excitement and the challenges. Read our recent newsletter for some of our latest developments and stay tuned for much more.

With Congress pushing off the DTV transition date until June 12, US cable operators have a little extra time to make sure their networks are really ready. North American broadcasters are migrating to SCTE-21 Closed Caption services. An immediate issue that operators may not be aware of is that several legacy set-top boxes are not able to support SCTE-21. The migration of those set-tops could lead to the need for a very costly mass replacement of devices currently in service. Alternatively, a network-based video processing solution can be employed that supports SCTE-21 to SCTE-20 conversion. Fortunately, RGB Networks offers such a solution through our Broadcast Network Processor (BNP).

Currently, the BNP offers the industry’s most advanced video processing platform with very high scalability for key applications such as grooming, statistical multiplexing, transrating and digital ad insertion. A critical new feature is the ability to convert SCTE-21 Closed Caption formatting into SCTE-20 formatting. This will enable cable operators in delivering Closed Caption services on older set-top boxes that don’t support SCTE-21.

Since new digital TVs support SCTE-21, while high definition set-top boxes and new standard definition set-top boxes can handle both SCTE-21 and SCTE-20, both SCTE-20 and SCTE-21 services will need to be supported in the cable network for some time to come. With support for both standards and the addition of SCTE-21 to SCTE-20 conversion, RGB’s BNP enables operators to continue Closed Captioning through the DTV transition without the massive cost of upgrading legacy set-top boxes or the loss of service to Closed Caption subscribers.

If you have questions, please contact us.