Broadlogic unveils TeraPIX, cable's "secret weapon"

While we all wait for fiber optics to start pouring gigabytes of data out of everybody's wall jacks for thirty bucks a month, there's always cable, and lucky for us there's peeps like Broadlogic working out fancy new ways to squeeze megabytes out of that ubiquitous coax. Broadlogic's new TeraPIX processor works by compressing those 80 legacy analog television channels -- which currently hog 500MHz of the available 750MHz in a coax cable -- down to a mere 50MHz, freeing up a whole lotta' bandwidth in the process. The compressed 80 channels are then decoded at the residential gateway and served up in tradition analog fashion to subscribers, along with a good bit more bandwidth for digital content and internets. The minimal infrastructure cost of all this could mean we see this solution sooner rather than later, and the chips are available now at $300 a pop for quantity purchases, but there's no actual word yet when our bandwidth salvation will arrive.

[Via GigaOM]

[Canuck @ Nov 6th 2006 9:16PM]

"Better spend $100 million today to convert your networks, than $10 billion tomorrow."

$100 million, ya right. It cost the industry $60 billion (that�s with a 'B') to upgrade to broadband copper, and you think it will only take 100mill to upgrade the networks to fiber, HA!

Fiber will only go to large metropolitan areas, business first then residential. Out lying areas will prob never see fiber due to the cost ($1,000 per mile in the city vs. $10,000 rural). I would expect to see wireless access to the out lying areas, although considerably slower, over fiber or even copper.

[Big Sam @ Nov 6th 2006 8:48PM]

I've been waiting for them to develop something like this for a long time. What's the holdup? Instead of trying to switch everyone to using a cable box on every TV (will never happen), this residential gateway approach has been the obviously logical answer. But the stodgy old cable cos will never go for it.

[Chris @ Nov 6th 2006 8:50PM]

What does this do for digital cable subscribers? Or is this already in effect for digital cable subscribers?

[CyBeR @ Nov 6th 2006 8:53PM]

I don't trust that illustration. The 'upstream bandwidth' part seems to have been increased, which we all know isn't something the cable companies are after.

[Sam @ Nov 6th 2006 9:01PM]

But this would allow them to add more channels. That's really the biggest reason for this.

[... @ Nov 6th 2006 9:02PM]

The reason that cable companies aren't switching over to cable is just that, they are CABLE companies. The put in the cable, and they are going to use it. They cannot afford fiber, as most all phone companies already have fiber ran on the poles (left over from the .com boom) that they just need to hook up to lasers. Luckily the cost of lasers is dropping like a rock (a laser we used to sell for several thousand dollars is now sold for under $10) so the phone companies have a chance.

DIE CABLE DIE!!

[Tony Rayo @ Nov 6th 2006 10:54PM]

Earlier this year Comcast started switching to an all-digital lineup (well they technically started beta testing late last year). I don't know if they used this same technology (probably not, this seems newer), but as of a couple months ago, all of our channels have been converted to digital (no digital > analog > digital either, it comes from the local office in a digital yet still SD source, new cable boxes reflected this although previous digital channels still look better so maybe there is some converting going on - however all previous analog channels have higher resolution + AC3 sound now). Of course HD still looks better, and I found it interesting that recently they removed a digital channel (Sundance West) in order to add a new HD channel (MTV HD) and a new VOD channel (FearNet... which strangely enough is the only VOD channel besides Channel 1 which shows up in the Guide on the channel Sundance West used to exist).

I've been getting getting crazy with digital recording via firewire (in a good way, even have custom scripts setup to capture, crop, resize and encode into xvid for proper archiving) out of my box (the only channels I cannot record via firewire are CBS HD and FOX HD, although I can record them locally to DVR... it doesn't matter if they are playing a football game or showing infomercials though, so it might be an issue on my end) and since I like to archive Adult Swim and documentaries until they come out on DVD it's great having the bump up from analog recording I was dealing with before (I just wish I could freely share my captures, damn you MPAA!). Cable companies may be money grubbing whores but they really know how to work that pipe (OOL is ready to launch a 50mbit/50mbit cable internet plan if they haven't already... they already have 30/5 and some other options but if they manage that much upstream it'd be amazing... they have a smaller service area to focus on so they can do these things easier).

- Tony R.

[gxti @ Nov 7th 2006 2:25AM]

So would the residential gateway decode all 80 channels and mux them back onto the local cable loop? That sounds like a waste of power to me. It would be neat if it could detect what channels people were actually watching and only send to those.

[GhostDoggy @ Nov 7th 2006 5:16AM]

How would this affect those households using CATV for broadband solutions and just adding their analog locals which currently do not require a STB? If they go 100% digital, it sounds like this forces set-top boxes in the remaining households.

Also, I thought that the transmission of data (cable modem broadband) was conducted over a modulated analog channel. If this is true, then how would that affect their industry (installed customer base)? Finally, the currently brow-beat telco solution of pushing fiber to within 5000 feet of the home is based on fiber backhauling.

For instance, an Alcatel 7330 DSLAM (SBC, BST, etc.) is connected to a Gigabit Ethernet core by one or more fibers. The new core itself is being based on 10GigE because the 100GigE hasn't been ratified yet. So, how does freeing up sub-Gig bandwidth help CATV 'compete'?

[Leslie J. Hartley @ Nov 7th 2006 2:59PM]

The Analog switchover is currently scheduled for 1st quarter 2009. $300 per chip, plus tech training for installs for the residential gateways, plus deployment costs for the roll-out of the parallel delivery system, plus the costs of running redundant delivery systems - all obsolete in 24 months, when all 500 MHz of room will empty out, overnight.

[Glenn @ Nov 8th 2006 6:36PM]

This is sort of what Verizon is doing as I understand it--a little box outside your house that makes it look like you still have plain old analog (6MHz per channel) cable channels that your existing TV's can receive without any extra equipment.

It would allow a cable company to go all digital and convert the analog channels to digital (at a 10:1 gain for the 70+ channels they probably have), without their customers noticing.

As I understand it from reading other sites coverage of this, the issue is that cable MSO's can buy digital STBs for less than this, i.e. $150 or so per household (though that might be per TV). Whereas this will cost $300+. So do you give everybody a new free digital only STB (like the little Morotola DCT 700) for every TV or do you put in a gateway like this. All to get your analog spectrum back so you can either increase the number of channels or have more unicast stuff like VOD or NPVR or whatever.

Deciding which digital channels to send to a neighbourhood based on what is being watched is also being done. It is called Switched Digital Video (SDV), and Time Warner is deploying it quite a lot. The bad news is that since you need a two-way conversation to figure out where a channel you want to watch is, it isn't compatible with CableCard 1.0, which is all there is right now. But it works with any STB you might have. Its a different way of allowing you to increase the number of (theoretical) channels on your system without using more bandwidth.

[Glenn @ Nov 9th 2006 12:50PM]

Oh, BTW, Comcast isn't disabling the analog channels just yet, they're just simulcasting all the analog channels on digital. Then if your STB dies, they give you a new cheaper all digital one (a MOT DCT 700). Avoids having to deal with signal quality problems with the analog channels, at least in your house. Over time this could get them closer to being able to get rid of analog without gateways like this, at least in your house. But I don't think thats the point.