With more and more services being delivered via cable and telco networks, it is becoming more important than ever before to ensure the highest reliability possible from all network components. For this reason, RGB Network has introduced the BNP3xr, providing redundant, hot-swappable power supplies and fans for even higher reliability.

And for our growing international customer base, the BNP3xr also supports DVB conditional access SimulCrypt encryption, allowing for the deployment of secure video services.

Since its initial introduction, RGB’s Broadcast Network Processor (BNP) has set an industry standard for density and functionality, and we haven’t rested on our laurels—we continue to make improvements, without compromising on RGB’s proven, industry-leading video quality. Operators throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia rely on the BNP for the delivery of advanced services, including eight of the ten largest cable operators in the U.S.

The BNP product family offers the only digital video solution that can perform grooming, statistical multiplexing, transrating, digital ad and overlay insertion, digital emergency alert system (EAS) notification, operator messaging and program substitution—all in a single, compact device. Combined with its support for both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264, the BNP is the most comprehensive digital video processing solution available on the market today.

Please come learn more about the new BNP3xr at one of our many upcoming trade shows.

CED magazine just released its annual ranking of the 50 biggest trends, deals and technologies in cable and lucky number 13 is the snappily named Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format, better known as EBIF.


It may not sound impressive, but major cable operators like Comcast are counting on EBIF. This standardized data set was defined to support lightweight interactive enhanced TV (ETV) applications for a range of digital set-top boxes. ETV is video programming that has an interactive application bound to it and which executes concurrently with that program. Able to be utilized in legacy set-top boxes, ETV can help to enhance ads with applications such as voting and polling, and offers the ability to access ads stored as on-demand assets.


Few things are as strategic to cable operators as generating new revenues without increasing subscriber costs and EBIF could help dramatically expand their advertising business. Advertising has long been a money-maker for operators and advanced advertising is how they plan to substantially increase the size of this lucrative pie. One of the many promises of EBIF is a new generation of advanced ads that are increasingly interactive for viewers, which in theory should make them more valuable to consumers and hence, more valuable to advertisers.


Advanced advertising is near and dear to RGB as we’ve been working with operators and other equipment vendors to ‘push the edge of the envelope’ in advertising technology since the company was founded. For example, last month we worked with OpenTV and a number of other vendors to jointly demonstrate an EBIF-based advertising solution for operators at CableLabs’ Advanced Advertising Interoperability event – you can read more about the demo here.


We agree with CED’s assessment that EBIF may indeed be the ‘next big thing’ in cable and advanced advertising. Please stay tuned for more from us on this subject.

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.

As the television advertising model evolves, cable operators must keep up with the technology and subscriber habits. Through integration with OpenTV’s campaign management solution, RGB has recently demonstrated several advanced advertising options that operators now have as we move away from the traditional 30-second spot.
With our joint solution, operators can:

For more on recent development of the Advanced Advertising 1.0 specification recently announced as a joint effort of Canoe Ventures and CableLabs, click here.

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.

RGB continues to expand our offering for video service providers around the globe. Today we announced bitmap-based subtitling capabilities for our Simulcast Edge Processor (SEP), which is especially relevant for our growing Latin American customer base. SCTE-27-based subtitles use a bitmap technique that enables support for subtitling in any language. The subtitle author is given complete control over the appearance of the characters and where they will appear on the screen. And with the SEP acting as a decoder, no set-top box is required to support this functionality. Today this capability allows operators to localize their programming by displaying subtitles in any languages available in the programming.

But I wonder what other opportunities this might open up for operators. With the ability to support the bitmap format, there is now the potential to deliver a variety of other images to subscribers, including service announcements, logos/branding and regional advertising.

What do you think? What applications would you like to deliver through your edge decoder?