Cable Show 2009
Cisco Advances Medianets with New Explorer IP STB Offerings
| Apr 3, 2009 | Digital Media Infrastructure | Show Update
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Analyst: Ron Westfall
Current Perspective: Very Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: High |
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Event Summary
April 1, 2009 -- Cisco announced that it is partnering with cable service providers to deliver the Connected Life at Home, by transforming their networks into medianets. A medianet is a network optimized for rich-media. Medianets are end-point aware, media aware and network aware to ensure an optimal quality of the total experience while automating many aspects of configuration and optimization.
Analytical Summary
• Current Perspective: Very positive on Cisco leveraging The Cable Show to advance the medianets concept and its Connected at Home offering with announcements that include its new Explorer 8600 HDC DVR Set-Top Series. The Explorer 8600 Series enables cable operators to extend medianet capabilities deeper into the home including HD Whole-Home DVR services, personal content sharing across the Internet and HDTV, as well as content access on mobile devices. Such flexible IP-enabled capabilities significantly improve the ability of cable operators to counter the mounting threat of telco IPTV services as well as satellite and DTT TV services.
• Vendor Importance: High to Cisco since the company needed to introduce the Explorer 8600 Series to headline and propel its medianets-centric sales and marketing efforts further into the multiple services operator (MSO) space. This includes introducing the Explorer 8650HDC/8640 DVR models and the Explorer 4650HDC/4640HDC/1640HDC/1540C Digital Interactive models to extend a wider range of medianet-savvy capabilities such as dual MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264 support and DLNA/DTCP/MoCA, and IP video decoding features to meet burgeoning consumer demand for services that support enhanced interactive/personalized options.
• Market Impact: High on the content delivery system (CDS) segment since Cisco commands market share leadership in the overall cable infrastructure space and strong presence in the STB segment, such as market share leadership in the IP STB segment, to compel cable/digital media infrastructure rivals to respond to Cisco’s cable-centric medianets marketing initiative and the new Explorer models, including the Explorer 8600 series. Rivals will increasingly need to address the medianets concept as well as fine tune product development and marketing efforts to counter Cisco-supported capabilities such as HD Whole-Home DVR services.
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Current Perspective
Competitive Positives and Concerns
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