Tuned-In: Network-based TV Services

For years, Sun Labs quietly nurtured the key technologies for a new era of network-based TV services. Today, Sun finds itself at the center of an exploding global market.

June 6, 2004 - The era of TV Services-interactive television (iTV) and video on demand (VOD)-has had a lot in common with radio: all talk. Promises and projections have been far more plentiful than products. For the vast majority of consumers, the television has remained a single-purpose appliance--an access device for TV channels, not TV services.

Until now.

The obstacles that slowed the delivery of exciting new TV services have been methodically cleared away by a combination of new technologies, open standards, and a new class of powerful video distribution and management systems. Additionally, marketplace dynamics now demand that these new TV services grow revenue or at least maintain market share in the face of increased competition between satellite, cable and broadcast. At the center of these barrier-breaking innovations is a company not known as a media giant but as a titan of innovation: Sun Microsystems.

Thanks in large measure to a project that started years ago at Sun Microsystems Laboratories (Sun Labs), the road is now clear for implementations and deployment of long-promised iTV, VOD, and Web-based TV services. This article examines the enabling technologies conceived and developed at Sun Labs, and Sun's role as a key provider of media-ready infrastructure for total digital distribution systems.

What's On TV? Everything.

As television transitions from the analog era to digitized media streams and broadband networks, many new capabilities become possible. Virtually anything and everything consumers might want to view becomes accessible via the television screen. There are now three emerging categories of TV Services:

• Interactive Services: In this category, input flows both ways-from broadcasters, network operators and advertisers to consumers, and from consumers back to the source. Examples include everything from tele-polling and tele-voting to super teletext and instant messaging.
• On-Demand Services: This category includes services consumers want to access on their own schedule, such as VOD, gaming channels, network-based video recording services, and on-demand guides.
• Video Services: These are specialized, customized services such as highly targeted ad insertion that would allow customers to only receive ads that were directly applicable to them.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Just like the impatient child in the back seat during a long car ride, there is no question about the growing global demand for all three categories of TV Services. The limited number of technology trials have finally given way to service deployment plans. For example:

• More than four million households in the United States already receive VOD, and many analysts expect VOD-capable set-top boxes to be in more than half of U.S. homes by the end of 2005.
• Throughout Europe, the market for interactive TV Services is mushrooming. Currently the most popular early shows are highly interactive game, reality, and talent-based shows with audience members interacting (primarily through their mobile phones).
• In Italy, Germany, Finland, and South Korea, Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) decoders with integrated modems are now available to consumers, enabling them to access more evolved and interactive functions such as requesting in-depth information about specific topics on a talk show or participating in a quiz show in real time. MHP-based set-top boxes and integrated televisions are rapidly rolling out in other markets as well.

Removing the Static: Obstacles to Overcome

Consumers have been ready for the TV Services era for years. What held the market back was a series of "technical difficulties." Just a few years ago, the issues facing broadcasters, cable companies, and content providers were formidable:

• Network bandwidth was insufficient to carry television programming. There's no getting around physics: standard-definition broadcast video programming today requires 3-4 megabits per second (Mbps) bandwidth. Yet most of the video delivery infrastructure was based on Asynchronous Serial Interface (ASI), with a maximum throughput of only 270 Mbps, or 70 simultaneous broadcast streams. At that level of bandwidth, massive deployment of TV Services was not economically practical.
• Multiple, incompatible "industry standards" competed for acceptance. There was no open, standards-based platform; most technology suppliers promoted proprietary solutions that locked customers (broadcasters, network operators and content developers) in and limited innovation.
• Security, identity management, and digital rights management technologies were not fully developed, so content providers could not adequately protect their customers or their investments. Additionally, this technology is highly proprietary and typically offered only as a single source, end-to-end solution.
• No vendor provided an integrated, end-to-end architecture addressing the production, management, and delivery of network-based TV Services.

Sun's Open, End-to-End Approach to TV Services Delivery

Sun Labs and Sun product divisions have been investing consistently in the digital media marketplace for years, developing products and technologies that are "media ready" and able to support the delivery, management, storage, playout, and accounting of digital content. Equally important, Sun's collective experiences along the way have enabled Sun to understand the complex requirements of this marketplace.

Today, Sun's open strategy, partnership-oriented business model, standards expertise, and media-ready products are helping broadcasters and content providers overcome the obstacles and open up the global TV Services market. Here are just a few examples of Sun innovations-rooted in research and development work that started at Sun Labs-that are accelerating the growth and profitability of the TV Services market today.

Economical Bandwidth: Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel

Always a leader in high-performance, high-throughput hardware products, Sun has consistently led the industry in the move toward Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel. The Gigabit Ethernet interface has almost four times the throughput capability of the traditional ASI interface, making video stream delivery on a massive scale economically viable. Virtually all of Sun's server products now include multiple on-board Gigabit Ethernet and/or Fibre Channel interfaces; and the scalability of Sun's computer architectures has proven to cost-effectively accommodate the throughput requirements of any video delivery project. With Sun hardware as a core network infrastructure element, bandwidth is no longer an issue.

Open Standards: JSA, MHP, OCAP

Sun has been instrumental in guiding the development of key industry standards through the Java Community Process (JCP^(SM)). For example:

• For years, Sun has been developing and refining an end-to-end, open architecture for media delivery-an architecture that can be deployed rapidly, that can greatly reduce the per-stream cost of delivery, and that will simplify the process of bringing new TV Services online. Java Stream Assembly (JSA) has been standardized through the Java Community Process (JSR-158)
• Sun was a major contributor to the development of the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) client-side standard, and has built up considerable MHP expertise along the way. The MHP standard defines a generic interface between interactive digital applications and the terminals on which those applications execute. It enables digital content providers to address all types of terminals ranging from low-end to high-end set top boxes, integrated digital TV sets and multimedia PCs.
• Sun was also instrumental in the development of the OpenCable Applications Platform (OCAP) standard, a Java-based middleware software specification that enables developers of interactive TV Services and applications to design products that will run on any cable television system in North America-independently of the set-top box or TV receiver hardware or operating system being used. OCAP is based on MHP, so there is broad compatibility between the standards.

Secure Asset Management: Liberty Alliance and Java Security

Two years ago, the Napster imbroglio illustrated the importance of digital rights management (DRM)-to the music industry in particular but to content providers in general. Today, all computer users and service providers alike are keenly aware of the pressing need for tight security, access controls, and identity management solutions.

DRM services protect the property of content owners, such as broadcasters, because they give the content owner control over who can access the content, at what times, and under what circumstances. Yet DRM technology is more than simply a policing" mechanism; it can also be an enabling technology for new services and business models. For example, using DRM, a broadcaster could make its entire library of TV programs or specific types of shows available on demand to consumers via subscription. Or it could use DRM to offer personalized services such as custom news clips, or anytime/anywhere access to tailored news items from any device.

Through the Liberty Alliance project, Sun is actively working with a broad spectrum of companies to develop open network identity, network authentication, and network authorization standards. The Liberty Alliance standards will allow business to:

• maintain customer information securely
• understand customer preferences and buying habits more precisely
• build customer relationships and loyalty
• create single sign-on services with decentralized authentication and open authorization from multiple providers
• reduce fraud from online transactions
• reduce integration costs with external vendors, partners, and customers.

Architecture: Sun Media Appliance Platform and Java Stream Assembly APIs

The Sun Media Appliance Platform heralds a major shift in the video delivery paradigm. It is a set of channel-ready software/hardware configurations featuring Sun and third-party iForce partner solutions, all based on multi-vendor, open interfaces for iTV, VOD, and broadband video networking services.

The key innovation behind the Sun Media Appliance Platform is the Java Stream Assembly API. It is a set of Java APIs defined for the creation, processing, and management of broadcast, VOD, and interactive media streams in real time. By bringing the cross-platform benefits of Java technology to media stream multiplexes, the Java Stream Assembly API enables hardware and software partners to integrate components of digital media solutions, providing interoperability, application portability, and platform independence. This is a critical advantage for the Sun Media Appliance Platform and for Sun's best-of-breed partners.

Sun's goal in creating the Java Stream Assembly API is to provide open APIs that enable the ecosystem of integrable suppliers to implement on heterogeneous Java enabled platforms. Vendors can then deploy services with confidence that multiple suppliers can provide interchangeable components without locking them into single-source, proprietary architectures. Resulting deployments are less costly and innovation in this arena can be focussed on product improvement.

Specifically, the Java Stream Assembly API meets core requirements such as:

• Discovering and configuring the multiplexes
• Assembling streams, starting/stopping, adding/dropping streams, etc.
• Supporting traditional MPEG-2 TS and IP interfaces
• Providing stream events information
• Providing the ability to modify tables

A key element of Sun's TV Services strategy is a partnership approach to building complete, customized solutions. Sun is working with dozens of best-in-class partners who bring specific expertise and products to the total solution, including:

• Kasenna: provider of video delivery solutions that enable network operators, content providers, and enterprises to build and deploy on-demand service featuring entertainment-quality video.
• Strategy & Technology: a pioneer in the development and use of standardized systems in digital TV, especially for interactive services.
• Video Propulsion:
high-performance, open standards-based software and hardware addressing iTV, broadcast, and on-demand solutions for digital television and video transport networks.

More information on Sun TV Services and partners is available at http://www.sun.com/tvservices and http://www.sun.com/tvservicesnetwork.

The Advantages of Sun's Open Approach

Sun has embraced an open, standards-based approach to TV Services delivery for many years. What's the open advantage? "Without choice, there is no competition," says Sun's Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy. "Without competition, there is no innovation. And without innovation, you are left with very little." Specifically, Sun's advantages include:

• Vendor independence: Sun's architecture and infrastructure are based on freely available industry standards-from J2EE(TM), the Java Stream Assembly API, MHP and OCAP--so customers avoid vendor lock-in.
• Industry knowledge: In the process of developing standards, products and technologies for the TV Services market, Sun-unlike other infrastructure vendors--has gained an in-depth understanding of the technological and business challenges in the media services marketplace.
• Completeness: Sun is uniquely capable of delivering an end-to-end architectural solution and best-of-breed third-party applications that enable VOD, iTV, broadband video networking, back-office business applications, and next-generation Web services-all from a common architecture.
• Massively scalable solutions: Customers can deploy for today's requirements and scale up on demand with no painful operating system transitions or application re-writes.
• Low cost of deployment: Sun solutions can be deployed quickly and cost-efficiently because of the integrability of the Sun Media Appliance Platform and the low TCO of Sun server and storage hardware.
• Low risk: Sun's global proof-of-concept capabilities at the iForceTM Solution Centers enable customers to see the solution working before they invest, greatly reducing risk while speeding deployment timeframes.

Stay Tuned. The steady stream of innovation from Sun Labs and Sun product divisions has helped move the global marketplace for TV Services from promise and potential to profits. Yet the market for TV Services is still in its infancy, and Sun still has much to contribute to its growth and expansion. Stay tuned for further innovations and announcements from Sun as the market continues to mature. We're committed to being a prime-time player.