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Cisco looking to acquire Inlet Technologies, get even hipper with streaming
We haven't heard a lot about Inlet Technologies over the years, a company that works mostly behind the scenes on advanced encoding technology, but it was right there on the cutting-edge of the Blu-ray bandwagon back in 2008. Now it's looking set to become the latest addition to Cisco, with that company announcing intent to drop $95 million and see the acquisition through. It's not entirely clear what Cisco will do if it picks up this toy, but it certainly sounds like mobility is on the mind of Enrique Rodriguez, Cisco's Service Provider Video Technology Group General Manager: Cisco's Videoscape platform will play a key role in reinventing the TV experience, and the acquisition of Inlet will enable our customers to leverage the network as a platform to deliver innovative video experiences to consumers on any device. If that name sounds familiar, until recently Enrique worked at Microsoft on, among other things, the Zune and Media Center. That might also give another clue to where Cisco is going.
Cisco announces Videoscape IPTV platform and products
As expected, Cisco held a quick CES presser today to launch its connected TV initiative, which it's calling Videoscape. It's pretty ambitious stuff -- Cisco's goal isn't to kick out a single consumer-focused set-top box, but rather to build out an entire video network architecture in conjunction with service providers that allows customers to view any authorized content on any device on any network. That means that in addition to the actual Videoscape set-top box for your TV, there will also be apps for everything from Android and iOS to game consoles and Macs and PCs -- in the end, Cisco thinks your standard premium cable subscription will serve content everywhere, negating the need for supplemental services like Hulu and Netflix. There's also a Videoscape Media Gateway that can serve up local content across all your devices -- the company demoed sharing a quick Flip video with family members just by plugging the camera into the Gateway. Obviously rebuilding entire cable systems around pervasive content delivery won't be easy -- Cisco says "video is the new voice" when it comes to disruptive industry shifts -- and the only partner announced today is Telstra. To really gain momentum the company will have to sell its vision to huge companies like Comcast and Time Warner, who are already working on their own projects. We'll see what happens -- it makes sense for a networking provider like Cisco to take this sort of end-to-end approach, but there's a lot of action in this space right now, and we don't think anyone has the luxury of time. %Gallery-112784% %Gallery-112750%
