Reading through various news reports and, dare it be said, this very blog(!) – it’s quite clear that there is growing consumer appetite for services such as video-on-demand (VOD). Indeed, Informa has predicted that by 2012 some 909 million homes worldwide will have access to VOD. That equates to almost 4/5 of the world’s TV households!

With ANGA Cable just around the corner, this is a topic that is inevitably going to rear its head again. However, while there’s most certainly a huge market opportunity there for operators, there are also some hurdles that need to be overcome before this can be realized. Namely, how can operators relieve network pressure to cost effectively deliver premium video content with pristine quality?

The answer to that is simple—optimize your bandwidth!

Node splitting, switched digital video (SDV), digital terminal adapters (DTAs), MPEG-4/H.264—all are used to reclaim valuable bandwidth. There is one approach, however, which offers a future-proof route to capacity expansion that requires little maintenance or outward expenditure—transrating. This technology provides the quickest and most economical means for operators to achieve significant capacity expansion to support bandwidth hungry services, such as VOD, without affecting the quality of the picture transmitted. For more information, read this article from the December ‘09 issue of the Broadband Journal or watch our demonstration.

RGB employs patented transrating technology in our products today, which you can see in action at ANGA next week. Come on over to stand B50 and we’d be happy to show you our before/after VOD transrating demo so you can see the technology for yourself and the quality of the output that it provides.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Here at RGB Networks we’re currently gearing up to exhibit at the IPTV World Forum, taking place in London March 23 to 25. The show will center on the theme of ‘enriching the personal TV experience,’ but having talked with customers and prospects, it might be appropriate to append this tagline with the phrase ‘without breaking the bank.’

There’s no question that today’s consumers have developed a ravenous appetite for personalized TV services. Informa (the company organizing the Forum) predicts that, by 2012, 78% of the world’s TV households will be able to access video-on-demand (VOD) services. However, viewers don’t just want to take charge of their own TV schedules, they also want to watch video content on their device of choice, whether it be a TV, PC or mobile.

The challenge for service providers (whether they be cable operators, satellite providers or telcos) is how to offer these on-demand and three-screen services over legacy infrastructures, which were designed to simply broadcast content to a single type of device (most likely a large format TV). For some, the cost and disruption of overhauling their existing networks to support truly personalized services will be too much to swallow.

The good news is technologies are emerging that enable providers to deliver next-generation TV services over their current infrastructures. Looking at VOD, we’re now seeing transrating technology (originally developed to augment the efficiency of broadcast transmissions) applied to specific VOD environments. The December edition of Broadband, the quarterly journal of the UK-headquartered Society of Cable Telecommunication Engineers (SCTE), includes an article from our very own Nabil Kanaan, RGB’s head of product marketing, explaining how these latest transrating solutions can be dropped into existing network infrastructures to instantly extend VOD capacity by as much as 50%. Take a look.

In parallel, we’re of course seeing the development of next-generation transcoding solutions that can take video content in any format and repurpose it so it can be simultaneously delivered to multiple types of device. Indeed, we’ll be showcasing our award-winning content repurposing solution, the Video Multiprocessing Gateway (VMG) at the IPTV World Forum later this month, which provides an ideal transition path to three-screen delivery.

So stop by stand 5 at the Forum to see how it’s possible to enrich the personal TV experience without the need for expensive network upgrades.

The latest upgrade to RGB’s Dynamic Bandwidth Manager (DBM) addresses three growing trends in the video delivery business—more HD, more VOD and now the growing use of MPEG-4/H.264.

To learn more about how the DBM can help your network to keep up with bandwidth constraints brought on by the proliferation of advanced video service, click here to watch a Flash demonstration and read up on this bandwidth-saving device.