Media Service Delivery - Quality Assurance

Examination of Watchtower Flux and CheetahXD

When we look at monitoring in CATV, it is a very unique network and proposition.  First, in exploring monitoring, we understand that it is a very different application than monitoring a telecommunications network or a commercial power network or a water utility network or a cellular network.

When characterizing the networks, the most important aspect of CATV monitoring is that communications is monitored in the same network path as the service delivery.  Because of this; whether network, performance or CPE monitoring occurs, an outage renders all monitoring out of service.  This is an important distinction because it suggested different values are placed. For instance, in telecom, power and cellular, the monitoring information is on a different circuit or network path relative to service delivery.  In this case, outage and root cause analysis are very important.  Telecom and Cellular can keep talking with their equipment, and in doing so; can actually start to make service restoral decisions without rolling a truck.

Water utilities are flying blind.  Unless there is a geyser of water spewing from the ground, it is a hunt and search methodology that serves the day.  It is perhaps the crudest way of monitoring.

CATV is in the middle.  Because monitoring goes down when service goes down, monitoring has a completely different value. CATV monitoring is mostly used to identify preventive maintenance and to identify not-out-of-service conditions.  CATV monitoring can detect power supply battery discharge problems or degradation of optical signal.  Used properly, both metrics can foretell a future outage and a need for preventative maintenance.  CATV monitoring can detect not-out-of-service conditions.  Performance monitoring can look at the entire spectrum and detect slight changes in signal or carrier levels.  By doing so, an individual channel problem (needle in a haystack) or a suck out (RF spectral defect) can be detected.  Status monitoring can detect, for instance, an open cabinet or enclosure.   This will ultimately lead to a catastrophic event, but does not directly impact service.  CPE monitoring can use micro-reflections to predict structure integrity issues with connectors, cables or enclosures.  The point here is that CATV monitoring, if managed properly can provide profound information that prevents out of service conditions.

Understanding the differences in status, performance and CPE monitoring is important.  None are better than the other, and all provide very valuable information.  CPE monitoring is an incredible tool because it uses a device (DOCSIS RF Modem) that is already in use.  No additional equipment is required.  Second, in even a moderately sized system, it provides 10,000’s of date points.  The goal is to look at the active data stream and extrapolate qualitative measurements to root cause events anywhere upstream for the residential modem.  Armed with this data, and using complex event rules, a deductive process “suggests” a root cause problem with high accuracy.

Status monitoring is different.  It is attached to power supplies, optical nodes or stand alone devices (end of line monitoring). It is oriented towards the detailed condition of a network element or network point.  The metrics monitored are very detailed and oriented towards the health of the device.  Second, in even a moderately sized system, it provides 100’s of data points. The goal is to identify a specific device that is in distress or is degrading in its performance.  These devices (transponders) are purpose built, industrially designed, and engineered to perform in harsh environments.

Performance monitoring is perhaps a hybrid of the first two.  It is placement of a “probe” in a mission critical network point. This mission critical network point could be an end of line, a critical location, a neighborhood, a crime district, the bosses house or any other decision based point in the network.  The sole purpose of performance monitoring is to analyze the entire RF spectrum and then deconstruct it to analyze the underlying carrier quality and then to deconstruct it to analyze the underlying video, data or voice service quality.  Second, in even a moderately sized system, it provides 10’s of data points. The goal is to create a spectral compliance test for FCC reporting, for technical knowledge or for ensuring quality of service. These devices (transponders) are purpose built, industrially designed, and engineered to perform in harsh environments. More importantly, they replace very expensive test equipment and procedures.  So they also promise to save money.

Finally, with this said, what are the limitations of these three approaches to network reliability and quality of service.

CPE Monitoring

• CPE monitoring typically is not capable of full spectral analysis, and is more specifically only tuned to the DOCIS channels that are active.  Therefor, it could miss issues outside this spectrum.
• CPE monitoring traverses the most problematic element of service delivery, the in-home service drop and passive network.  therefor, projections deep into outside plant are always at risk.
• CPE monitoring is a consumer issue.  It borrows bandwidth that the consumer technically has paid for and expects.  Furthermore, the term Watchtower also has many consumers wary of privacy issues.
• CPE monitoring is not looking at the downstream pathway at all.  It is basically using the equalization coefficient settings from the CMTS to interpret upstream signal characteristics and micro-reflections.
• CPE monitoring projects a distance to the problem in the outside plant.  What it does not do is define that problem or identify the device that problem exists in.
• CPE monitoring provides an incomplete picture.  It does not look at anything but the DOCSIS channel health.
  • It does not look at video channels.
  • It does not look at the condition of AC power.
  • It does not look at physical defects (open door, fan failure, battery defects, etc.)
• CPE monitoring is subject to inherent inaccuracies as it originates in an uncontrolled environment, the customer home. Consumer can unplug it, can introduce noise, can move it, can damage it.  Status monitoring transponders are in controlled environments.

Status Monitoring

• Status monitoring specifically examines a network element, and does not look at the quality of service across the RF spectrum, in depth.
• Status monitoring can only identify problems that are occurring at the monitoring location or upstream from it.
• Status monitoring are individually and purpose-built sensors, that are not distributed at the same volume as CPE monitoring.
• Status monitoring can often be misleading, from an application perspective, if the network topology is not known.  For instance, an outage is reported in 10 devices, but it is only the 2nd device that has a problem.  It is simply impacting all of the other 9.
• Status monitoring does not provide a complete picture.  By this, it is not located in the residence.  Because of this, it is not typically at the ultimate end of line.
• Status monitoring is dependent upon equipment manufactures licensing, acquiring or building universally accepted (HMS/DOCSIS) transponders form a company like Cheetah.  Many devices or manufactures do not have transponders available.
• Status monitoring is a purchasing decision not tied to revenue.  As a cost, it is difficult to budget it in any universal MSO monitoring program.  On the other hand, residential modems are tied to revenue and therefore universally available.

Performance Monitoring

• Performance monitoring is relatively expensive and a complex examination of the RF spectrum.  In many cases analog and digital.  While it is very detailed, it is relatively expensive.
• Performance monitoring provides a detailed snapshot at a location, but it is not a fault isolation tool.  Unlike CPE and status monitoring it does not isolate the problem to a location or network element.
• Performance monitoring is time consuming.  Because of its detailed nature, it takes a relatively long time to scan through 100s of channels.

Bit Error Rate (BER) is a metric that represents the number of bit errors relating to receive bits of data stream over a communications channel that has been impacted by noise, interference or synchronization errors (Wiki).  It can always be impacted by a series of trade offs.  Lower bit rate improves BER, but reduces capacity.  Increased signal strength of the bit stream improves BER, but may not be practical.  Slower and robust modulation also improves BER.

BER = (number of bits) \ (total number of bits)

While the basics are simplistic, it is not a trivial measurement.  It requires a referenced measurement setup, where a known data stream is sent through a system (transmitter and receiver).  This is accomplished over a long period of time.  See an example below from Agilent Technologies that reflects BER testing times at a 95% confidence level.

A table of test times at 95% confidence level is given for standard data rates and bit error ratios:

(click graphic to enlarge)

A typical CATV DOCSIS data stream test can take from 3 to 9 seconds.  In the test world, this is significantly long.  JDSU states that "BER is an age old technique of characterizing the digital transmission system." For QAM 64 Annex B the symbol rate is 5.0569 Msps and each symbol has 6 bits.  A technician who wants to complete a BER 1E-8 (1 error per 100,000,000 bits) would have to wait for the receiver (STB, test set, modem) to receive 100 million bits.  At a transmission rate of 30 Mb/s it is a 3.3 second wait.  Additionally, testing 256 QAM over IE-9 is a 33 second wait.  Just on the argument of time alone, we see that it would be impractical to have a $1,000 field device that tests 100's of channels at the push of a button.

Secondly, we have to understand the process involved in FEC (forward error correction) coding.

(click graphic to enlarge)

With this understanding, we can begin to see how CER replaces BER testing in field test units and in network monitoring.  Pre-FEC BER is measured before the RS encoder.  Post FEC BER is measured after the RS encoder. So lets fast forward to the real world. A DOCSIS Cable Modem possesses a RS decoder. Any three bit errors (BER of 3 x 10-6 or 3E-6) can be easily fixed by the RS decoder. What is the math? RS symbol is a group of seven bits. A RS codeword is a block of 128 RS symbols (122 are data). Six are parity symbols allowing for error correction. From a codeword perspective, if it registers a bit error, it registers a symbol error. The codeword looks at a bit error as anywhere from 1 to seven bits.  Doesn't matter how many in the symbol are in error. A RS decoder rated at t=3 can fix three symbols in any codeword. So, RS decoder (t=8 – most common) is able to correct up to 8 symbols and 56 bits errors per codeword.

Cheetah has substituted CER for BER as a way to report this qualitative character of errors in a data stream. In our transponder design, we don’t have to add a RS decoder. We use the output of the DOCSIS modem. We are monitoring codeword errors, we change the magnitude and speed of measurement. 1,000,000 bits = 142,857 symbols = 1,171 codewords.

"All this makes BER more complicated than it needs to be when Reed Solomon decoders are involved.  Indeed, some prefer codeword error rate (CER) detection over BER in DOCSIS high speed data."

Ron Hranac, 2007

What Ron has stated has been backed up in our own study. We have seen comments from Sunrise and JDSU stating that BER is impractical for field testing. While BER monitoring in the office with $200,000 devices is real, it is very unrealistic to expect a $3,000 field analyzer to do this same calculation. Coupling MER with CER becomes a superior way to do low cost qualitative monitoring of a DOCSIS data channel. Regardless of the cost, there is also the impracticality of time.

There is also a companion study that compares MER to BER. It is a parallel argument whereas MER is superior to BER with respect to complexity, cost and time. Cheetah does both MER and CER. In hindsight, we should correct our literature to reflect that we do not do a BER test. Honestly, about 80% of all field devices claiming BER testing would fall into the same trap.

Network Reliability is a very specific and scientific term.  It means that your network is 99.999% reliable, or the "five 9s."  You are out of service at any point by less than 1.725 minutes per year.  Cheetah provides monitoring of optical nodes, power supplies, and any mission critical point in the network (with our Network Tracker unit).

I am often puzzled why the Network Tracker is not installed everywhere.  For less than $1,000, this device provides a complete measurement of RF performance (both analog and digital).  If I have a node serving 500  homes, that means that I conceptually have 525.6 minutes (assuming 60% service penetration).  Tick it off.

• Customer calls - 15 minutes
• Dispatch schedules an installer - 120 minutes
• Installer diagnosis a network problem - 60 minutes
• Dispatch schedules a service technician - 240 minutes
• Service technician finds a defective Power Supply inverter - 90 minutes
• Service is restored in 525 minutes.  Five 9s in jeopardy

If a Network Tracker were installed:

• Customer calls - 15 minutes
• Dispatch schedules Network Tracker test in node - 5 minutes minutes
• Dispatch schedules a service technician - 240 minutes
• Service technician finds a defective Power Supply inverter - 45 minutes
• Service is restored in 305 minutes.  Within the window.

As with any year, we are in the last minutes of setting up our trade show booth and the culmination of months of planning for the SCTE Expo.  In Cable Television, this is Cheetah's biggest and best opportunity to reach our customers.  We always enjoy the opportunity to meet our customers, to hear how they are using our monitoring products, and to understand what we can do better.

At the same time, it is also a great way to meet new people, and to introduce our technology to them for the first time.  This year, we are promoting three things at the show:

• CheetahXD 5.0 status and network performance monitoring solution that has an entirely new presentation layer that we think our customers will be very excited about.
• Cheetah CloudXD 2.0 is our game changing, cloud delivery platform that will be introduced for the first time.  It brings status monitoring to a whole new group of customers.  Pseudo Plug N Play, lower cost, and a virtual NOC service.  Very cool.
• V-Factor SP-QAM edge monitoring solution with greater density, new software features and cable card ready.

So the punchline.  If you would like to schedule a 30 minute personal introduction to these platforms, we have a conference room in the booth to afford you this opportunity.  Please call or email Tonya Karaczun for a scheduled SCTE Expo meeting.  She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 412-759-3250.  See you soon.

If you are a CATV operator, customer service manager or executive; it is worth your time to understand this chart.  Recently, I met with two Customer Service Managers (in our Industry, people do not let you use their name) from a major MSO.  I asked a simple question.  What happens when a customer calls your center to complain about a specific video channel? They laughed about it for a moment, and their commentary indicated it happens allot.

With a video problem, they call the video headend/office/engineer and ask if there is a problem on channel XYZ.  They said that nine times out of ten, the answer is no.  I asked what they do next?  They said that they then dispatch a installer.  The installer visits the customer and the problem is resolved.

This issue is illustrated below.  Lets visualize it as a video ingest problem with a duration of 15 minutes, and the six steps to customer resolution.

1.  Ingest video problems inevitably our picture blockiness, bluriness, jerkiness, color issues and audio issues.

2.  Most operators do not monitor the ingest with a tool that actually measures the quality of the video.  They don't do this, because they have presumed the video from the programmer is good (or is the programmer's responsibility).

3.  Customer service representatives first line of action is to verify the picture quality by calling the video office.

4.  Video office operators have two choices in most settings.  They look at DPI (deep packet inspection) probes that check the integrity of the MPEG transport or the network, and they look at a video monitor in the headend.

5.  They report back that they don't see the problem.  If your approach is similar to #4, you commonly will not see the problem.

6.  The customer service person sends an installer, and typically the video channel problem is cleared up by the time the installer gets to the customer's home.  The installer, having to demonstrate good faith; promptly meters the service, replaces suspect drop cables, fittings or passives.  The installer leaves the customer with a good impression, AND often reports "no trouble found" or "bad service drop."

Three things that the Customer Service Managers both agreed upon.

1. Video channel quality problems are a real big deal to operations.
2. When they call the video headend/office/engineers; they continually are told there is nothing wrong.
3. That answer causes them to dispatch an installer.

I actually did a non-technical presentation of our own DCI (deep content inspection) tool, and they were amazed that you could actually quantify video defects in that manner.  They asked if they could get the data on channels available to them at their customer service terminals.  I told them that this might be a good idea.  They said if they could understand what the customer problem was, they could most definitely eliminate installer dispatches.  Until then, they feel no choice but to work through the progression above.

NOTE:  Why don't technical people in video headends/offices catch all video defects.  First, what they see on a video monitor is not time sensitive.  This means that it is a real time view of the channel, while the customer may be complaining about the channels behavior from any time (past or present).  This is why a DCI monitoring solution is so important.  It allows for an operator to analyze quality over time, identify a problem that may have occurred an hour ago, and discover quality cycles that predict new problems.

Second, most video offices look at egress with low cost DPI probes.  This means that they look at the encoder, the MPEG transport stream and the network.  They are oriented towards, "Did I do anything in this office to screw up the video?"  These probes do not look an the ENTIRE picture of video pixels, digital video, encoding, transport and network.  They don't look at the total picture, and therefore miss 33% of the problems.  Without 360 vision, there is always a hole in your quality assurance program.

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This plays out every day costing CATV companies $100 MM in operating expenses.  Because video ingest is experienced by EVERY customer, even if CATV System A catches a video ingest problem, there is no assurance that CATV System B will not repeat the behavior above.  When you own 100 systems with one central ingest point, this impact is 10,000's of customers.  This is where 360 vision and DCI ingest monitoring becomes so important.

If the customer service representative was able to use a web service browser and look at the history of a channel over the last 12 hours, what would change?  If there is a problem, the customer can be informed ... appropriately:

• Customer, I am looking at Channel A, and I do see that it degraded in quality from about 2 hours ago to 15 minutes ago.  It is not our equipment or network problem.  It appears to be originating on the programmers feed.  There is not much I can do about that, but I will flag it for our technical team to resolve.
• Customer, the international channel that you are complaining about is always degraded when we receive it.  We do our best to maintain its quality in delivering it to you.  We will again lodge a complaint with the international source, but it is very difficult to get them to improve.
• Customer, I am looking at Channel A, and it did have a problem about an hour ago.  I show that it is now improved.  Can you check it again for me?

I can go on, but that one ingest defect potentially causes this interaction to happen every day.  Most importantly, ingest DCI monitoring stops a dispatch and extra costs.  Ingest DCI monitoring also provides the customer immediate resolution or information to DEFUSE customer complaints.

If the video headend/office/engineer was able to use a monitoring solution to do video DPI and video defect discovery, what would change?  The video engineer could accomplish a great deal more than just identifying an issue:

• East feed is bad, but West feed is good ... switch ingest to the West feed.
• Video quality of a program is dropping off ... change handling of the video channel to a low stress outcome.
• International channel is always of poor quality ... use a text notifier to inform customers proactively of the problem.
• Channel goes into significant distress ... call customer service proactively and let them know of the problem.

Again, this is something I can go on about, but you get the point.  Monitoring ingest is the single most effective strategy in video monitoring because ALL of the customers experience it.  Monitoring only encoding, transport and network may or may not discover the problem.  Customer Service Managers are telling me that this is a real problem.  DCI monitoring the video ingest improves customer service relations, stops truck rolls, stops unnecessary repairs and stops no trouble found resolutions.

Video ingest monitoring with a DCI tool is vital to a 360 vision on quality assurance!

75% of on line advertisers will expect to see a documented quality of service rating before advertising with a on line video provider.  This article on the subject is extremely interesting.  Go figure.  For a long time, we have been writing about the importance of CATV video quality.  We have been writing about the importance of network quality of service.  Many times, we find that there is a tremendous visionary in the CATV MSO that gets it and understands how important that this will become.  Why?

1. Consumers are conditioned by CATV and TelcoTV to have a specific expectation for quality associated with video.
2. Advertisers are saying in this article that quality will be a per-condition of their advertising spend.
3. MSO visionaries know that quality just doesn't happen over night.  That it takes years to move the line, and there is no time like today to get started ... stand-by power ... monitoring nodes and power supplies ... monitoring end of line ... monitoring video ingest quality ... monitoring QAM output video quality ... and many other aspects.
4. Quality assurance is a four step evolution;  Monitoring to root cause analysis to workforce automation to quality assurance.

OTT video boomerang

Keep in mind that as video saturates broadband internet connections, the quality will start to erode.  It doesn't matter what the architecture, there is simply not enough bandwidth.  The math is easy to do.  As this occurs, there will be a quality boomerang.  People that are saying OTT is just as good as CATV, will retract from that statement as CATV video quality improves while OTT degrades due to latency and congestion.  Anyone who has tried to scale up an HFC or FTTH network knows that the real challenge isn't one customer's service, but 1 million customer's services.

Advertising Revenue

In 2010, Nielsen reported that over 55% of people own more than three television sets.  That represents an enormous advertising billboard in each home.  With that said, advertisers will be looking to continue to grow television advertising.  This is not a real hard message ... 3 televisions, 8 hours a day, 24 hours of advertising potential.  What is missing?  Verification.  Did the ad play?  Check  Where did the ad play?  Check  What was the quality?  Don't know.  This is how advertising revenue will be viewed.

CATV and TelcoTV

OTT will certainly be a big part of the television world, but consuming best effort TV versus connected TV is still going to be a central decision ... in advertising spend.  Why would an advertiser spend money on OTT without an ability to control key variables.  Quality of video is one.  But also geographic coverage is another.  Demographic analysis is another.  Confirmation of delivery is another.  The list goes on to the advantages that a connected TV subscription service has relative to ad revenue.

Business2Community wrote about the top 10 trends facing business, consumers and the evolution of technology.  This post focused on one of the trends being the growing role of video as the dominate form of communications.  At Cheetah Technologies, we have been very focused on the idea that video quality is incredibly important as business and consumers rely more heavily on video for information transfer.

Video everywhere is certainly a thematic idea over the next 10 years.  Today, what we do with text messaging, voice calls, power point presentations, audio conferencing and other forms of communications will all be video based.  What is the major catalyst for this trend?  Broadband connectivity and MPEG4 video streaming.  These two technologies now enable anyone, business or consumer, to stream/view video with high definition or multi-screen functionality.  Finally, a very real thought.  Everyone's life can be a reality show.  In other words, why would you give a presentation to a set of 10 clients at a customer when you can video it, and provide it to 1,000 customers?

As we all know, email is an inefficient form of communications because the text is often taken out of context.  Anger is mistaken for confusion.  Questions are mistaken for proclamations.  Commonly, I think everyone experiences this mis-interpretation risk, or at least understands it.  With video, there is a similar issue related to quality of video.  If blockiness, bluriness or jerkiness distorts an expression on someone's face, it is the equivalent of email mis-interpretation.  A smile could be interpreted as a frown.  V-Factor video monitoring around perceptual quality metrics is a key tool in ensuring video stream quality is protected.

New York Times reported upon the announcement that Intel is investing in chipsets that will specifically be designed for OTT video (Internet video services).  In reading the Intel announcement, it is very exciting to our V-Factor product line.  As V-Factor is one of the premiere tools for deep content inspection of video, and holds several patents within our applied science, the idea of video everywhere is now of mutual interest ... between a technology giant such as Intel and our own company.

In a world where video is delivered via the Internet, there are many options that are not trivial considerations.  More importantly, many of these considerations are directly related to video quality.  Video encode settings.  Video format.  Display format.  Video fidelity.  Network implications. All of these impact quality.  Deep content inspection is a means to validate that the right decisions have been made, for the right consumer experience.  It is also the basis of executing quality control which may be a characteristic that is enforceable from the digital rights owner to the consumer.

With V-Factor SM-150, we have proven that HD and SD video can be monitored near real time AND meaningful root cause analysis can be highly valuable relative to the information stream.  With V-Factor SP-ADV, we have added a lower cost, higher density, deep content inspection applet that also includes an intelligent (lightweight) decode and an instant viewer (video capture).  With all of these tools, Cheetah Technologies is well on the way to proving the value of video deep content inspection.

With Intel, we see that core technology development companies are leading the way with service specific processors, memory and transmission chipsets.  So it stands to reason that DCI is about to become very important in this discussion.

One of the most important policy pieces I have seen, with implications on how video may be delivered to the home in the future was published in Advanced Television Journal in Europe this week.  The European Union is producing a policy paper on ConnectedTV.  What is important about this is two different facts that they have used.  90% of televisions sold in Europe are connected to the Internet.  But the comment that really seemed visionary to me was:

“So I want to support new developments in content, like Connected TV. We know people are already happy to pay for high-quality TV services. What if they could combine their favourite TV programmes with the best of the Internet, or indeed special on-line services? With features that are interactive, on-demand, or social?” quoted from Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda.

This policy paper may have implications that extend well beyond the European Union.  It observes two very distinct trends that I suspect are worldwide.  "Customers are happy to pay for high-quality TV services." So often, when we have this conversation, we are arguing about OTT as a substitute for current services.  The big question has been, can I view this movie on an OTT service, for a lower cost?

Yet what the EU policy paper gives us a glimpse of is a very different argument.  How can I make content better, of higher quality and more interactive to continue pursuit and subscription of higher value customers?  Keep in mind that the higher value customers are also the individuals that have purchased the "connected" display terminals.  They are the customers with a higher level expectation in quality of experience from content and quality of service for the network.  Often they get lost in the discussion, as instead we turn to focus on singular instances of someone that has found a solution to go "off the grid."

Pay attention to this European Policy.  It will become one of the most hotly debated issues related to video quality and content delivery over this coming summer.

"How Roku is kicking the cable industry’s butt & where it’s going next" is a interesting commentary out of Venture Beat /Media.  At Cheetah, we view quality of service and quality of experience the key tools in this battlefront.

It’s really interesting to hear Anthony Wood’s perspective on all of the innovation underway in the video industry and I agree that the Internet is driving a paradigm shift in the way we view video. The statistic Anthony mentions about 40 percent of Roku’s customers cancelling or cutting back on their cable subscriptions is particularly interesting, and is definitely sparking innovation among traditional cable providers along with competition from OTT services like Netflix and Hulu. Comcast, for example, has stepped up its game with its new streaming service Streampix. There’s definitely a lot happening right now in the video market with traditional cable, OTT services, Apple, Google and new streaming services like Aereo driving TV innovation. However, content remains king and with all of the licensing issues associated with content, in addition to the fact that many subscribers still have both cable and broadband, I think we will start to see a number of partnerships develop. However, I also think that companies in the video space will need to focus on other differentiators such as video quality to set themselves apart in these video wars.

Remember that cord cutting is an over-hyped phenomena.  The more commonly adopted phenomena is to use subscription based traditional video for local, sports and syndicated programming.  OTT is more commonly used as a supplemental movie, time shifted programming type service.  In fact, the following illustration is something I use frequently to portray the world.  In doing so, you see a very distinct comparison.

In this diagram, we see that there are different applications and different consumer behaviors possible with these two formats.  That becomes a basis of understanding the harmony of these worlds.  CATV, TelcoTV, DBS may always be a more expensive alternative.  But the quality, depth of programming and real time nature will also be attractive.  The OTT world is obviously a low cost alternative.  But beyond that, it is browser friendly, it is convenient, it is quickly merging its value with HDTV and SmartTV.  So is one better than the other.  No, but each has very different and important consumer values and characteristics.

In the last few days, we saw both Comcast and TWC announce streaming video services to compete with OTT vendors such as NetFlix and Hulu. Comcast Takes Aim It brings to mind an old word in the Industry, BYPASS.  There is another article that we looked at today, and the two of these really resonated with me at the same time.

Carriers lose $14 BB in SMS is the second article.  How do these two articles relate to Bypass?  When video (or SMS text) services are carried over any broadband information stream, we see that consumers find a way to bypass fee for use service with free service.  In SMS Text, they can bypass service provider text messaging with tools like Skype, GoogleTalk, MSNMessanger and so on.  In CATV, we see that a CATV company subscription model can by bypassed with NetFlix and Hulu.  The consumer's perspective is that bypass is a means to cut cost or realize savings.  When a consumer takes coupons to the grocery store it is really the same type of motivation.

OTT video services present one of the most interesting consumer bargain or bypass opportunities.  Afterall, the consumer watches well over 4 hours of television per household per day.  The consumer has roughly 2.3 televisions in their home (ref: Nielsen, 2009).  So bypass is not trivial.  Historically, bypass has always involved cost savings, while the consumer used a comparable service.

Quality of video in the OTT domain has the most reasonable expectation for being comparable ... if in fact Comcast, TWC and other video service providers are involved. They know what it takes to distribute 100's of video streams, across 10's of video formats to 1MM's of consumers.  This is exciting to see Comcast and TWC move in this direction.

Jeremy Bennington posted to Nielsen blog article:  Cord Cutting And Internet TV Viewing On The Rise. It is an interesting article, and even more interesting commentary.  As much as people promote the notion of cutting the cord, there are always going to be programming formats and television viewing habits that defeat this goal.  Local news, sports programming, high definition content, syndicated programming all resist the behavior of cutting the cord.  At the same time, the casual television viewer, the person that is not interested in certain programming (sports), or the person who consumes information differently (from the newspaper, Internet surfing, etc); will migrate more easily to streaming video.  Understanding the behavioral aspects of this also presents an implication to quality of video experience.  Those characterized as viewing more sports, high definition, local news are also by association going to be those who demand a higher quality product ... at least this seems like a logical conclusion.

I recently read a blog post on Hulu.  The central post was about Hulu's decision to provide video service as a subscription.  The excerpt that I pulled out of the blog was:

"if Hulu doesn't offer content in at least 720p, users aren't going to pay to get the same poor Hulu video quality that exists today. Hulu's encoding only supports up to 480p and full-screen does not look great. I always get lots of stuttering, pixelation in scenes with fast movement and quite a bit of buffering." Hulu Blogpost

I think that the most important issue here is what was stated indirectly.  Between the complaints about the subscription service, what you see is that people are really passionate about Hulu video quality.  In other words, this post could have just as easily stated,"Hulu customers willing to pay monthly subscription if quality of video improves."

I will promise to post this, but tonight is just inconvenient.  But there are studies that show children will switch off video content if there is greater than a 15 second disruption in quality of service.  Whether you own content, are a programmer, or a video service provider (VSP), there has never been a more significant issue than video quality.

Time Warner’s iPhone decision is an evolutionary step of “video everywhere.”  With bandwidth becoming a presumption, the delivery and the interaction of video information streams becomes common place.  Video streaming in multiple formats must also be presumed.  Whether iPhone or iPAD or Android or HDTV; the consumer wants consistently high quality video as a foundational enabler of entertainment and communications.  100’s of original sources can become 10,000’s of streams overnight.  The technological significance of this is twofold.  First, searching for this content in a consumer-productive way becomes so important.  This is not only a consumer concern, but companies like Time Warner are experts at understanding what the consumer is interested in.  Secondly, consuming this content with consistent quality regardless of format becomes an inherent expectation by the consumer.  A consumer wants to see a full feature movie with the same quality regardless of display device.  This is the challenge and the inherent “secret sauce” Time Warner possesses.  They understand broadcast, networked distribution, on-demand distribution and OTT distribution.  It is reasonable to believe that this will become a future blueprint for video everywhere.

I recently read a very interesting article, "How Google and Apple will Control TV", and it led Jeremy and myself to consider the projection of where OTT will take us. Jeremy is one of our resident experts on OTT and I have been in the service provider space for many, many years. So as this article states, do we within that network-based video services providers are threatened?

In evaluating the competitiveness and projecting the future of video consumerism, it is important to acknowledge OTT as an evolutionary opportunity. But history would teach us that it is premature to discount the importance of networked video suppliers. CATV, DBS and TelcoTV will always have the opportunity to participate, as

o They remain the consumer’s supplier of bits and bytes.

o They remain the consumer’s QoS-based supplier of broadband.

o They remain a trusted and monthly manager of financial transactions.

If we think of VoIP technology, the entry of new VoIP service providers was projected to threaten traditional telephone operators. Instead, the VoIP technology was adopted in three ways. Traditional suppliers integrated VoIP into their portfolios, with a distinct and differentiated quality of experience (Comcast). Transformational suppliers reacted by evolving their business models to even more profitable businesses such as wireless (Verizon). Both of these suppliers embraced the technology to reduce costs and eventually improve quality of experience. Emerging suppliers still executed upon the vision of new technology businesses (Skype). OTT video is most likely to evolve along the same lines.

Furthermore, the consumer cannot be discounted in this technology evolution. Cheetah Technologies V-Factor video monitoring has truly demonstrated that quality of experience by the consumer is a 24/7, full time battle. HDTV, 3DTV, OTT and a wide range of formats all present quality hurdles. At the same time, consumer electronics and consumer tastes and preferences are quickly evolving to demand the “right sized” quality of experience from video entertainment on every device. This cannot be ignored by programmers, content delivery networks or consumer video suppliers.

Finally, the broader consumer market for video entertainment is still a marketplace that has behavioral hurdles. The analogy is to consider how long it took for people or suppliers to find an effective way to “program a VCR.” It is worth noting that while this never occurred, the local video providers finally broke through with personal video recording/time shifting (PVR) based solutions. It is a perfect example of how innovation will occur. History shows us that there is going to be significant room in the video market, and that all will more than likely participate.

"Customer service is about being an active member of these user communities: monitoring and contributing to conversations and being able to identify when someone has a problem before they even approach you with it."

Keith Pearce, Senior Director of Marketing, Alcatel /Lucent

"The Cultural Disconnect in Customer Service: Businesses must bridge that gap," 2011

It becomes important to understand that the Question of Quality does not begin with monitoring power supplies or optical nodes.  It does not begin with putting 1,000's of probes in video offices.  At Cheetah Technologies, our aspiration is that the question of quality begins with CATV and Service Delivery subscribers.  The "middleware" of this discussion is our customers NOC, NMS, and SDP systems management applications.  Specifically, the presentation layer that provides the data that a customer facing person uses to "contribute to the conversation" with a customer of service quality.

From my perspective, I am interested in hearing how 100's of quality metrics provided by CheetahXD can be presented in ways that make it a more meaningful tool in monitoring power supplies, optical node transponders and end of line locations.  How can we present this data to achieve the results that Keith Pearce's article so eloquently described?

In several recent posts, the loss of cable subscribers, pay television subscribers and telcoTV subscribers points to both tough economic times and a call to action. CATV subscriber loss blog.  This call to action is really an investment in quality of service and quality of experience.

At Cheetah, we look at a cable operator spending from $50,000 to $250,000 per mile for HFC broadband network delivery.  We will soon present a calculator that documents a disconnected customer is a loss between $15,000 and $54,000 (if they are a triple play consumer).  Yet, assuring quality of service with a Cheetah network performance monitoring solution is arguably less than $1,500 per mile.  That is roughly 1% of the capital investment cost in HFC networks.  Interesting.

Cheetah quality of experience monitoring of digital video streams is less than $2,000 per stream in cost.  Considering this, a video stream has the potential of being viewed by 100,000's of video customers to millions of customers.  Again, is proactive video monitoring of each channel for $2,000 worth protecting the quality of experience for millions of paying customers?
These are very crude data points that create simple illustrations of very economical and effective ways to accomplish quality assurance that might retain customers as they consider defection to over the top (OTT) and alternative video delivery networks.

In a major MSO installation of the VFactor product line, Cheetah has analyzed the importance of our video performance monitoring and MOS scoring metrics.  It has been an incredibly interesting exercise as we have validated some major assertions on the quality of video.  We have discovered that network metrics, MPEG-ts metrics and video coding layer metrics often report that the quality of the video is good, while our deep content inspection metrics (blockiness, jerkiness, bluriness, colorfulness, audio loudness and so on) are actually reporting significant degradation of the video.

This highlights the weakness in exclusively using probes that only inspect network and transport layers, with the presumption that only defects in this state impact video quality.  Contact us for a detailed explanation on how we can assure the video quality you are providing your subscribers!!!

Cheetah Technologies has created this blog to participate in a discussion with our customers around all things quality oriented.  Quality is a big word.

Quality of service, as it relates to the service provider themself represents a wide range of elements from capital investment to technology implementation to content packaging to digital rights management to user interface to network performance to sustained reliability.

Quality of experience, as it relates to SP subscribers represents an entire outcome starting with paying your $100 bill and consuming a month of voice, video and data services.

With the Cheetah community, we want to explore and exchange ideas and concepts and complaints.  What is it that we can mutually discover about the word quality, and how can we implement it into video offices, networks, service deliver and quality assurance programs.

Simply put, we make sensors.  They sense a 100's of metrics.  How can this information be used and how does it translate to customer satisfaction and loyalty.  Is this simply data sitting on a computer screen in a NOC, or is someone actually mining the data to gain all sorts of advantages in the battle for customer satisfaction?

Let us know where to study, focus and build an offering.