No matter which corner of the world you live in, RGB Networks will have a presence at a trade show near you very soon. If you’re attending any of these shows, please stop by for a demonstration of RGB’s latest video processing innovations:

Convergence India – March 18-20 – New Delhi, India

• Speaker: Sanjay Dhar, Director, Product Marketing, Addressable TV Advertising Opportunity and Network Architecture – March 19

CCBN – March 21-23 – Beijing, China – Booth #2305

IPTV World Forum – March 25-27 – London, England – Stand #40

• Speaker: Ramin Farassat, VP, Product Marketing, The Business Case for Targeted Advertising: Measurement & ROI – March 25 at 5:30 p.m.

CANITEC Expo – March 25-27 – Mexico City, Mexico – Booth #113

• Speaker: Adam S. Tom, Co-founder & Executive Vice President, Maximizing VOD Bandwidth Efficiency – March 26 at 3:30 p.m.

The Cable Show/NCTA - April 1-3 – Washington, DC – CableNET

I’ll be attending three of the five shows as I travel around the globe from California to Beijing to London, with a final stop in Washington, DC. Please stop by and say hi!

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.

As I promised in my previous post, RGB is taking a strong stance towards a proactive integration of our platforms with partner devices, with the initial goal of easing the headaches of deployment for all involved and the eventual goal of providing “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” equation for our customers. Evidence of this activity can be seen in a recent solution brief jointly authored with SeaChange which you can obtain from your sales representative for each company (or contact us). This brief, entitled “Managing Bandwidth and Video Quality Issues While Transitioning to an On-Demand Architecture” focuses on trends in the video distribution marketplace which impact service providers. It goes on to detail some of the ways which we’re working on integrating our solutions to provide the best solutions for those providers. The delivery of on-demand services is one area in which we see a tremendous growth curve over the coming years. The type of proactive integration undertaken by RGB and SeaChange is something we expect to be doing much more of as we progress down the path towards a ‘stream-per-set’ video delivery architecture. Further evidence of RGB’s partnership with SeaChange will be seen in an upcoming CED webinar – Time Shifting: Optimizing Bandwidth for New On-Demand TV Applications. Register for the March 12 event (or view it on-demand after the fact) and learn much more about this topic. In addition to narrowcast service delivery, RGB sees increasing needs for partnerships in areas such as targeted advertising. As you may have seen in blogs from my fellow RGB’ers, this is an area of intense interest to the industry as service providers battle the Web for advertising eyeballs. More to come on that topic in future posts.

I just read the results of Telephony’s recent Executive Insider Report survey , which lists video/IPTV as one of the top three most promising service areas for operators during the current downturn. It is encouraging to see that rather than pulling back during these tough times, service providers recognize the opportunity to implement advanced IPTV technology to generate revenue growth and facilitate a turnaround. Between the network efficiencies offered by advanced video technology and the new revenue potential from advanced advertising, video service providers are in a good position to weather the storm and come out strong on the other side.