The Online Reporter Issue 980 May 13-19, 2016 The Business of Internet TV, Broadband, Home Networks and UHD (4K/8K) Plus Lies, Damn Lies and Industry Statistics Liberty Global & Its Virgin Media See the Light: 4K Is Here Now and Here to Stay 4K / HDR / UHD Vizio s Mass Market P-Series TV Have Ultra HD, Both Versions of HDR & Google Cast Wagner Opera Goes 4K LIVE STREAMING Cameras Being Built for Live Streaming Will Increase Demand for Broadband BROADBAND BEAT 300 Mbps Now, 500 Mbps in the Near Future & Ultimately 5 Gbps Liberty Global to Accelerate Broadband Buildout on the Continent Freesat Adds More HD Channels & More On-Demand Services EU s Investigation into DT s Broadband Technique May Put Brakes on G.fast European Commission Delivers Huge Blow to Telcos Plans for Deploying Vectoring and G.fast AT&T Expands Its All-Fiber Network to 4 Markets HOME NETWORKING XOware Blocks Ads at Home & on Mobile Devices That Connect to Public Networks Cujo s Smart Firewall Protects Connected Homes & All Their Smart Devices AirTies Makes Major Breakthrough in Wi-Fi HomeGrid Forum Goes to CES Asia for the First Time HomeGrid Slam Dunks on HomePlug War of Words SET- & NET-TOP BOXES DearMob s 5Kplayer Streams Sports to an Apple TV LIES, DAMN LIES & STATISTICS 49% of Total Spend on Advertising & Marketing Will Be Spent Online 4K TV s Market Share Increases to a Record 20.9% of LCD TV Shipments LCD TV Shipments Are Recovering But Probably Not for Long OTT Sports Services Catching On In US YouTube Makes Lofty Audience Reach Claim; Networks Fire Back DIGIGRAMS OTT Content Has to Look as Good as That from Other Sources OTT s Ability to Measure & Analyze Audiences Makes It Part of the Way Forward IoT & Automotive Electronics Market Won t Approach the Size of Smartphones Copyright 2016. Rider Research Inc. It is illegal to reproduce, copy, photocopy, forward, e-mail, publish, broadcast, post on an Internet/Intranet site, fax, rewrite, store in a retrieval system or otherwise distribute this publication or any article in whole or in part by any means, electronic, e-mail, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of Rider Research.
Page 2 Liberty Global & Its Virgin Media See the Light: 4K Is Here Now and Here to Stay Virgin Media Scrambles to Ship 4K TiVo-based DVR/ STBs This Year - But Will It Support HDR? - Liberty Global to Later Ship a Different 4K DVR/STB Called Eos We first reported on 4K in 2009 but the sudden coming of massmarket priced 4K TVs and content seems to have surprised Liberty Global and its UK-based Virgin Media who were planning to wait several more years to launch Liberty Global s 4K capable DVR/STB called Eos. The threat of having to compete against Sky s upcoming 4K service and BT s nascent 4K service, plus the threat of OTT services offering 4K content, has forced Virgin Media to cobble together a 4K-capable, TiVobased DVR/STB that it plans to launch this year, 2016. Kudos to Virgin Media for correcting its mistake but boos to Liberty Global for not having seen the obvious: 4K is here now and is here to stay. So much for Liberty Global s plan to shorten what its president Mike Fries called the company s long tail of vendor specific solutions. Liberty Global s Virgin Media plans to launch a 4K-capable DVR/STB that is based on TiVo s platform, at least in the short term. TiVo already makes 4K DVR called the Bolt that allows users with the click of a button to skip through blocks of commercials. However, so far as we know the TiVo Bolt does not support HDR, which seems certain to become a must have feature for bandwidth-limited pay TV services like Liberty Global. Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge said on a call with financial analysts that the company is committed to UK rollout before the end of 2016. He said, I will just say we are committed in the second half of this year to deploy in the United Kingdom. We put some TiVo software on it, but that will give us a lot more functionality for our customers. Liberty Global CTO Balan Nair said, It s a pretty high-powered box that will get a refreshed TiVo UI on it later this year. And then in the following years, our goal is to get Horizon across all of Europe. And the EOS box [that would come after the 4K-capable TiVo-based boxes] is this new 4K box that s going to be the engine for the next generation video for Liberty. The announcement ended speculation that Liberty Global would force Virgin Media to distribute the Horizon DVR/STBs instead of the TiVobased units that Liberty Global is marketing on the continent - at least in the short term. Virgin Media s biggest competitor is Sky, which has said it will start shipping a 4K capable DVR/STB this year.
Page 3 Liberty Global president Mike Fries said, EOS is a set-top we intend to roll out everywhere at some point, including in that market [the UK] and it s certain. We already have a TiVo interim plan or a medium range plan in the UK. Fries also said that the Replay TV concept was as popular as the DVR in the markets where it s been launched, We are seeing 60% usage of Replay TV at home and on the mobile in the four markets where we ve made it available. Look for us to expand that killer app to many more markets through the course of this year. No mention was made of HDR, which, as certainly as 4K is replacing 1080p HD, will be in every 4K TV. Let s hope that Liberty Global and Virgin Media don t make the same mistake with HDR that they made with 4K. By year-end, 2016, and certainly no later than CES 2017, we expect that every 4K TV set will have HDR and that content producers, who seem to love HDR even more than they do 4K, will have flooded the market with content that was shot in or upgraded to HDR. 4K/HDR/UHD Vizio s Mass Market P-Series TV Have Ultra HD, Both Versions of HDR & Google Cast - Top-Notch Picture Quality & Future-Ready Features at an Affordable Price Vizio has been shipping its new P-Series Ultra HD HDR Home Theater TVs for about two months and the reviews so far are very positive. As Vizio almost always does, they are aimed for the mass market with the 50-inch model priced at $999. Ultra HD and HDR are, we think, the minimum that consumers should insist on when buying a TV. Both are open industry standards and available for any setmaker to use. Vizio uses Dolby Vision technology to play content in HDR. Chromecast dongles are not needed because all the P-Series sets have Google Cast technology embedded. Any smartphone, tablet or PC with the Google Cast app can project, or cast, to the P-Series TVs any video the device is playing from Netflix to Pandora. Vizio says the sets are the first Ultra HD and High Dynamic Range sets to fully integrate the Google Cast protocol. Google Cast has filled the very large vacuum that Apple left when it decided not to allow setmakers to embed Apple s Apple TV and its Air-
Page 4 Play technology in their TV sets. Soon, we predict, almost every TV and receiver will have Google Cast, which will substantially reduce the need for Apple TV devices except when playing content that is in a consumer s itunes library. Besides Apple and its Apple TV do not yet support playing 4K content in 4K on a 4K TV. The SmartCast app finally brings home entertainment into the mobile era with advanced navigation, search and control of content sources. P-Series Vizio TV are controlled by the Vizio s SmartCast app that comes preinstalled on the 6-inch 1080p Android Tablet that Vizio users use instead of a remote stick. The SmartCast app can also be downloaded to any ios an Android device. It allows users to search and browse content by genre across multiple apps at the same time and then select the app or source to play the content. Users can use the SmartCast app to access all menus and playback controls. The tablet has Android Lollipop OS, a V8 octa-core processor, integrated stereo speakers and 16GB of storage, plus a recharging stand. Users can download other apps from the Google Play store. Casting is done over Wi-Fi, which means users can multi-task on their smartphones and tablets while watching TV. Vizio CTO Matt McRae said, The VIZIO SmartCast app, pre-installed on the P-Series Tablet Remote, finally brings home entertainment into the mobile era with advanced navigation, search and control of content sources. Vizio said that in addition to the Dolby Vision HDR, the P-Series TVs also have its Ultra Color Spectrum, which it said, provides a wider color gamut enabling impeccable accuracy in every hue and tone, allowing more realistic colors than ever before. The P-Series TVs Full-Array LED backlighting with up to 128 Active LED zones, which dynamically adjust to on-screen content for deeper, richer black levels and more accurate contrast. Vizio said Vudu has more than 30 Warner Bro. titles available in the Dolby Vision format and more are coming. Netflix and Amazon have also launched a few titles that are in HDR. Giles Baker, SVP for the broadcast business group at Dolby Laboratories, said, We re excited to see VIZIO cascade Dolby Vision into their P -Series collection, delivering a premium imaging experience to a broader range of consumers. Viewers are now just a few taps away from the vibrant color and stunning contrast that Dolby Vision brings to Hollywood content.
Page 5 CNET said, HDR is TV s next big format war, and Samsung and Sony could find themselves on the losing side. Of the Vizio P-Series, it said they have outstanding picture quality that competes well against the highest-end TVs and can handle both high-dynamic-range formats HDR10 and Dolby Vision. The Google Cast tablet offers more apps and frequent updates than many dedicated smart-tv systems but is often more difficult to use for settings and streaming apps than onscreen menus. There is no built-in tuner so users that want to watch over-the-air broadcasts will have to buy a separate tuner. HDR10 is not available now and users will have to wait for a promised future software upgrade. CNET s bottom line is Forget the free tablet; the real story with Vizio s excellent P-Series TV is top-notch picture quality and future-ready features at an affordable price. digitaltrends.com said Vizio s P-Series has elbowed into the running for best TV of 2016 and Vizio yes, Vizio will be the TV brand to beat in 2016. It s too bad that consumers outside North America can t buy Vizio s TV sets because in 2016 at least Vizio TVs have remarkable features at remarkable prices that Samsung, LG and Sony will be hard-pressed to match. Wagner Opera Goes 4K French encoding firm Ateme announced today that RTVE, Spain s leading public service broadcaster has produced a 4K version of the Wagner opera Parsifal from Teatro Real as performed on April 21, according to Faultline. The broadcast used the HISPASAT satellite and terrestrial DVB-T2 network, and was compressed at 30 Mbps, in Main10 profile using Ateme s Titan encoders using HEVC. Keep up with The Online Reporter at www.onlinereporter.com
Page 6 LIVE STREAMING Cameras Being Built for Live Streaming Will Increase Demand for Broadband - Especially for Upstream Bandwidth The rapid growth in live streaming has surprised many. More growth is coming, which will impact the demand for bandwidth. Three things that will increase the volume of live streaming that is done are: 1. Smartphones with better cameras such as the latest models from Apple, Samsung and others 2. Cameras that are designed specifically for live streaming such as: - India-based Nexgear s tiny, 1080p HD Frodo camera that can be placed almost anywhere indoors or out. - Tiny low cost and battery-operated cameras such as Blink s $60 cameras that can be placed throughout a home or business. Their motion sensing turns on the camera for a 30-second video and sends an immediate notice to a user s smartphone and tablet. - Mokacam s tiny, low-cost (under $200) 4K camera is said to be world s smallest at 45mm by 45mm. It records in full 4K at 15FPS, has a 126 megapixel sensor, a built-in high-definition microphone and a wide angle view of 152 degrees. 3. New platforms for mounting live streaming cameras such as people (or pets) and drones. GoPro, which currently has the most popular mobile camera of them all, intends to make a drone, called Karma, on which its camera can be mounted. It initially promised to start shipping them in June 2016 but has delayed its launch, hopefully in time for the holiday shopping season. GoPro CEO Nick Woodman says Karma has unspecified revolutionary features that will set it apart from other drones. Aiding GoPro in the drone market will be its well-known brand and its existing retail distribution channels. GoPro will be up against the China-based drone and camera manufacturer DJI, which has about 75% share of US-registered commercial drones. DJI s newest drone has autopilot-like features that help it avoid collisions. As with most new CE gear, the prices of major drones have dropped from the $700-$900 range to $400-$600 just this year, according
Page 7 to Piper Jaffray in a Wall Street Journal article. And soon millions more drone-mounted cameras will be taking videos that get uploaded and streamed over the Net. BROADBAND BEAT 300 Mbps Now, 500 Mbps in the Near Future & Ultimately 5 Gbps Copperwire-based telcos have a broadband technology available that will allow them to compete against cablecos, keep government regulators off their back and make consumers happy. BT says it s currently getting download speeds of 300 Mbps over copper phone wires in its field trials of G.fast broadband technology. It said that could increase to 500 Mbps down in the future. BT is also testing XG-FAST broadband technology, which can provide download speeds of more than 5 Gbps over short copper lines. Upgrading to G.fast in large swaths of it network accounts for some of the approximately 6 billion ($8.6 billion) it plans to invest over the next three years. Also included will be deployment of all-fiber networks past about 2 million homes and in expanding 4G mobile coverage to over 95% of the country by 2020. Ambitious indeed! Liberty Global to Accelerate Broadband Buildout on the Continent Liberty Global plans to follow its UK operations Virgin Media s Project Lightning and accelerate its buildout of a high-speed broadband network. Liberty Global president Mike Fries said in a conference call with financial analysts that it is ramping up its wireline deployments on the continent, Across the markets where we are expected and planning to build, we re going to ramp every quarter. We re targeting 7 million homes, and budgeting 2.5 million this year. You can expect that every six months there s going to be a bigger than in the prior six months. Concerning it mobile service in the UK, Fries said the company does not plan any changes. Its current MVNO contract with the BT s EE runs until 2018 and the company already has plans to launch a 4G service in the UK. Liberty Global already offers 4G I four market and plans to launch 4G in four more markets by year-end,
Page 8 Addressing the UK market, Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge said that its build was ramping up. He said, We ve got a target of 500,000 premises this year and to indicate our momentum we ve got over 300,000 premises in the build program at this moment. This time last year that number was 30,000. So we ve definitely got the momentum, but we ve got to deliver that 500,000 this year and then lift that to 1 million next year. Mockridge said the new build out was getting the penetration levels it needs and that as a result ARPUs are rising. Freesat Adds More HD Channels & More On- Demand Services The US has nothing like the UK s Freesat, which offers a Freetime platform that more than 4 million viewers tune to each week. The can access for free over 200 TV and radio channels, including 12 in HD. Channel 5 HD and Daystar HD were added this year. Sales of devices that can receive Freesat increased by 18% year-onyear and the total number of homes connected to Freesat by both satellite and broadband is up by 54% year-on-year. All the major free catch up players BBC iplayer, All4, My5 and ITV Hub are now available on Freesat. The BBC Trust recently approved Freesat to offer its live pay sports services. Freesat s managing director Alistair Thom said, By adding more quality channels and on-demand services to our subscription-free platform, we re able to offer consumers an attractive alternative to expensive TV contracts and hefty bills. As always, we re focusing on giving customers choice to watch the TV they want and plan to bring even more channels and players to the platform in the near future. Keep up with The Online Reporter at www.onlinereporter.com
Page 9 EU s Investigation into DT s Broadband Technique May Put Brakes on G.fast - Who Wins? Cablecos! Who Loses? Consumers! In November 2015 The Online Reporter reported that the German regulator Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA, Federal Network Agency in English) had approved Deutsche Telekom s (DT) plans to deploy VDSL2 vectoring past an additional 6 million residences in Germany about 15% of Germany s homes. DT already had approval to deploy VDSL2 vectoring past 65% of German residences. DT said the extension would cost it an additional 1 billion ($1.1 billion). Now the European Commission (EC) has stepped in and may cause a halt to DT s broadband deployments until the EC can investigate DTs vectoring techniques and whether they hamper DT s competitors to the detriment of consumers. If the EC has its way, it will delay the deployment of every European incumbent telcos new broadband technologies such as G.fast, which is heavily dependent on vectoring. Who would suffer most? Broadband subscribers who would have been left to use one broadband service provider the cablecos! That is not the monopoly that BNetzA and the EC have said they want the EC says they want competition but what the EC has in mind is for DT s competitors to be able to takeaway DT s customers not to bring high-speed broadband to every residence. As part of its ruling on vectoring last year, BNetzA stuck a provision in its approval of DT s techniques and one that was not in its earlier approvals. BNetzA ordered DT to provide a new regulated wholesale service that would be available to competing ISPs that use DT s networks. DT agreed to that and began upgrading its network. If DT had not chosen to deploy vectoring in new footprint, DT s competitors could have staked an exclusive claim on that footprint. Of course, DT s competitors might also have chosen to deploy vectoring, leaving those residents with slower broadband, which is not what BNetzA said it wanted. Shouldn t the EC s question be, What can the EC do to get high-speed speed broadband, at least 50 Mbps now and 100 Mbps in the near future, to the maximum number of residence the quickest and at the least cost. DT and BNetzA had figured that out but now the EC wants to butt in. If the EC has its way, who wins? Cablecos! Who loses? Consumers! That does not seem to matter to the monolithic, bureaucratic, slowmoving, power-hungry European Commission, which at the very least is delaying every European telco s deployment of new, faster broadband technologies that consumers and politicians are demanding.
Page 10 European Commission Delivers Huge Blow to Telcos Plans for Deploying Vectoring and G.fast - Is VULA Unfair to 3 rd Party Service Providers that Want to Use Telcos Networks This appeared in Faultline. The European Commission (EC) has delivered a huge blow to the idea of VULA (virtual unbundled local access) broadband across Europe because it has opened an investigation into precisely how VULA is being deployed Germany by Deutsche Telekom since 2012. VULA came about as a way to promote vectoring in telco based broadband. Broadly speaking vectoring can take copper twisted pair broadband up to 50 Mbps (depending upon the exact distance the node is from the home), but if all of the lines in a wiring bundle have their interference cancelled in the same server together, it can go closer to 100 Mbps and 200 Mbps for two bonded pairs. From there, once crosstalk cancellation is in place, all of the steps towards G.fast and speeds of 1 Gbps are possible as long as fiber is moved closer and closer to the home. This investigation has almost certainly been brought by rival VULA licensees but also by cablecos crying foul over a process that could set back local loop unbundling and competition in broadband by two decades. In Germany Vodafone and Telefonica rapidly signed VULA agreements with Deutsche Telekom to have it take over all crosstalk cancellation, and assign them a bandwidth to access to each client. This process was in the process of happening in the UK also with British Telecom arguing with its regulator Ofcom for the terms of VULA access to be agreed. In January last year one of the inventors of crosstalk cancellation Assia, told us that VULA was just one approach to handling cancellation, and said that it was not the only answer as, in Assia s opinion, it removed competition from broadband. George Ginis, the SVP of service provider marketing at Assia told us at the time that, VULA limits the competitive service providers to choosing from a menu of connection speeds. This means that they lose the flexibility to create unique service products to help them differentiate. His point is that as virtualization creeps into every level of communication, it is possible to virtualize the access network, but still give competing vendors direct control over customer lines, without sacrificing the desire of the wholesalers for network stability and predictability. He presented an idea he called multi-tenant management which included management functions separate and specific to the network operators and the infrastructure provider for individual lines, and another where the management functions are outside the Access Virtualization System, so that a wider range of management tasks can be conducted by the entity which owns the clients.
Page 11 Assia of course may find it tougher to negotiate with a single incumbent operator in each country so it may be biased. It certainly hit problems when it reached the UK with British Telecom launching its own crosstalk cancellation technique, which UK courts eventually agreed had been copied from Assia. Assia pushes the idea of a Virtual Network Operator which allows for diagnostics, optimization and support as well as giving access to real time functions like resetting ports, and changing a DSL profile. The European Commission will no doubt call the US experts on broadband for evidence in this investigation; whose founder John Cioffi virtually invented ADSL. So the short term effect of this news could be a freeze on G.fast implementation. The European Commission is in effect investigating the German telecoms regulator (BNetzA) which wanted to let Deutsche Telekom build crosstalk cancellation technology close to its phone exchanges. This had been previously prohibited by the regulator. In the complaint the Commission said that while BNetzA s proposal would lead broadband speed gains at millions of homes, it would have a considerably restricting effect on alternative operators. Many European regulators will now put any changes to vectoring on hold until they see the outcome of this investigation. The complaint suggests that Deutsche s competitors would have little control to differentiate retail broadband offers and make them more like wholesalers, an idea supported by a virtual freeze on new broadband sales from DT resellers. The Commission now has three months to discuss the case with BNetzA, in close cooperation with the body of European regulators and come up with a plan that removes any part of BNetzA s plan that removes broadband competition. AT&T Expands Its All-Fiber Network to 4 Markets AT&T has expanded its Gigapower all-fiber service in four cities: Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, Atlanta and Kansas City. AT&T has said it wants to deploy it all-fiber network to residences and upgrade its copperwire broadband service to MDUs by deploying G.fast. Speaking on a conference call with investors, AT&T CTO John Stephens said AT&T is on schedule of high-speed deployment that meets the commitment it made with the FCC so that AT&T could acquire DirecTV. He said,
Page 12 We ll continue to expand our 100% fiber AT&T GigaPower network to additional locations. We re planning to triple availability by the end of 2016. AT&T has not said publicly how many residences will be able to get the Gigapower service, nor when. DSL Reports points out that AT&T s Gigapower pricing depends on whether another fiber service Google Fiber or another all-fiber service is available in the same area. It said, If Google Fiber is present, AT&T s Gigapower pricing usually starts at $70 a month (plus fees) for symmetrical gigabit service. That pricing will jump to $110 a month if Google Fiber isn t around to generate additional competition. HOME NETWORKING XOware Blocks Ads at Home & on Mobile Devices That Connect to Public Networks Startup XOware has an ad-blocking box for people that work on unsecured networks at public hotspot such as coffee shops and airports. They plug into their device a $40 XOkey USB stick that connects to the XOnet gateway, a tiny $70 box that resides in the home or office and which keeps lists of sites from which the user wants to block ads. The XOnet gateway at home provides ad-blocking and prevents unsafe ads from displaying. No browser plugins or extensions are needed. The $40 XOkey USB Stick Plugs into Mobile Devices to Block Naughty Malware
Page 13 Ads help pay for content and services but they can also shield malware that can wreak havoc to the device and invade privacy. The XOnet keeps a blacklist of servers that it blocks because they install malware on the user s device. It checks all the servers on its blacklist before performing a DNS lookup. If a URL is blacklisted, XOnet prevents the server from sending data to the user s device. Users can also add sites to the blacklist. The Home s Xonet Blocks Ads& Serves as a Firewall The Xonet box at home has a firewall and technology that reduces data consumption on mobile devices. Cujo s Smart Firewall Protects Connected Homes & All Their Smart Devices The cybersecurity battle is currently shifting from businesses to homes because homes have an increasing number of Internet-connected devices that don t have the security protection that office networks have. Consequently all the billions of connected devices are in danger of exposing users private data like user names, passwords and account numbers to cybercriminals and hackers whether kids down the street or someone in Asia - can cause a great deal of damage and monitor every user s activities. Cujo is a simple yet powerful solution to keep homes safer by bringing business-level security to guard the home network. It s housed in a small cylinder-shaped box with a smile that is a smart firewall to keep home networks safe from cyber-attacks and hackers. It promises to protect all of your wired and wireless Internet connected devices.
Page 14 Cujo Brings Enterprise-level Security to the Home Network It promises to protect all of your wired and wireless Internet connected devices. Cujo CEO Einaras Gravrock said Cujo should be thought of as an immunity system for your network. The product, he said, brings enterprise -level security to the home network, helping protect against cyber-attacks the home s vulnerable network and its connected devices - from PCs to smart lightbulbs to TVs to thermostats to baby monitors to smartphones. The Cujo box looks nothing like the mad dog in the Stephen King novel and movie with the same name. It s a small plastic cylinder-shaped unit with eyes that light up and which plugs into the home s modem or router. An app shows viewers everything on their network. It continuously monitors all the devices connected to the home s network and looks for suspicious file transfers or communications with distant IP addresses. Cujo Continuously Analyzes Network Traffic in Real Time Cujo continuously analyzes in real time the traffic on a network. It sends statistics on that data, but not the data, to the cloud for further anal-
Page 15 ysis. To protect privacy and improve performance it does not send the contents to the cloud. If it detects a threat or even suspects a threat, it immediately tells the cloud what it has blocked, which results in the user getting a notification via Cujo s mobile app on a smartphone or tablet. Users can manually override any of Cujo s automatic blocks. Cujo cites these statistics when justifying the purchase of its product: - 55% of cyberattacks are unnoticed by commercial antivirus software, according to The Guardian - 70% of connected devices are vulnerable to security threats, according to HP - 75% is the success rate for home hackers getting into devices Someone hacking into a smart lightbulb can access to other devices such as cameras and PCs. - 90% of connected devices store personal information. If the user goes to a bad site or if something bad comes to it, such as someone trying to access the user s camera, it blocks the bad behavior and sends the user a notification. A typical warning is We blocked an unauthorized attempt to access device IP camera from [IP number]. Gravrock says that in a connected home, someone hacking into a smart lightbulb can access to other devices such as cameras and PCs where they copy files or install malware. He said that the director of the FBI tapes over his Webcam when not in use. The company has been conducting tests since August and, he said, during that time consumers have become more concerned about security. Cujo has compiled a list of articles and reports about the many dangers to the home s network connected devices. See: https://www.getcujo.com/ blog So far the company said it has sold about 5,000 units directly to consumers but the product is now available for pre-order at Amazon for $99 plus the user pays $8.99 per month for an unlimited number of connected devices.
Page 16 AirTies Makes Major Breakthrough in Wi-Fi - Aims to Eliminate the Sticky Client Problem with Client Steering - Reduces Millions of Wasted Service Calls - A Telcos 50 Mbps Broadband Could Preform Like a Cablecos 300 Mbps Broadband This appeared in Faultline AirTies Wireless promises theoretical max performance using Wi-Fi tools Turkish Wi-Fi pioneer AirTies Wireless launched a piece of software this week designed to eat into the millions of broadband service calls around the world. It calls it Remote View, and it allows engineers initially, but later both consumers and help desks, to understand what s currently going wrong with their Wi-Fi and to instantly fix it. It s a big claim and we wouldn t repeat it idly, but we know Bulent Celebi, chairman of AirTies, and his entire team, have made it their life s work to understand Wi-Fi, and we first got dragged into this subject when he asked us to write a white paper on What s Wrong with Wi-Fi. During that project Celebi and his team not only explained the kinds of problems that Wi-Fi can encounter, but he tried to model it by sniffing the air around a typical Wi-Fi home, and mapping what was happening. It is an improvement to those original visual maps, along with in-depth reporting on data usage per device, both in real time and over time, that forms the bulk of its new product. Celebi maintains that Wi-Fi had gone as far as it can down the hardware path and now it is the turn of software to manage and look after the MIMO beamforming multi-user Wi-Fi that is already being built into chips, and to do it more intelligently. AirTies then went silent for a while until last July it came out with something it calls Client Steering, the ability in a multi Access Point Wi- Fi environment, to force a client to connect to a more appropriate Access Point than the one it is currently attached to. There is a problem in Wi-Fi which is called the sticky client problem and it is an extension of the bad apple problem. A sticky client is a device which is talking to an Access Point that is using beamforming, positive signal reinforcement to create an artificial beam from multiple antennas that is stronger when aimed at that client. The client thinks it has a really good connection and it cannot sense a better one from another AP. However if it moves further from that AP, it often reaches a point where it would never choose that AP if it tried to re-attach. In order to reach it the AP is using up Wi-Fi time and resource that would be better spent on nearer devices (the bad apple problem) because there really are better APs to which to be connected. The reason that the client cannot sense this is because the new AP hasn t yet connected to it and exercised its
Page 17 ability to form beams, so the client thinks it has the best connection it can get. So this is an unexpected consequence of making the hardware better, and to get around it, the network must collect all the information needed to make the decision on behalf of the entire network and for this client, making it break its connection with one AP and connect to another. AirTies does this by creating a form of proprietary Wi-Fi mesh, a series of connected APs inside the home (for instance one in the home gateway, one in the set top and one at a remote TV upstairs), which all use the same SSID, but which can talk to one another and send minimal amounts of control information to one another, to resolve such issues either automatically, or by sharing that information with the user (customer or field engineer) or sending it to a remote cloud location (help desk) and allowing manual steering of these devices to take place. We are now achieving over 90% of the theoretical maximums that Wi-Fi is supposed to achieve. So after a few years of looking into this AirTies say it has finally cracked the entire equation. Celebi told us, We are now achieving over 90% of the theoretical maximums that Wi-Fi is supposed to achieve. This represents something like 8 times the previous average performance. We have said many times that Wi-Fi which has a PHY + MAC performance of 1 Gbps, often peaks at 50 Mbps to 70 Mbps around the home or even less. This is because of dead spots and the issues we mentioned before of sticky clients and bad apples, and because devices tend to congregate around the 2.4 GHz connection if there is one, often because early smartphones ONLY connected to 2.4 GHz. We queried Celebi on why he had never been able to model Wi-Fi usage before? We had to introduce the Client Steering idea before it would work. All the models we introduced before just failed to behave as predicted, until we had that in place. It was one of those blinding realizations which product guys have after 3 or 4 years dancing around the problem when one of the team says, What about if we do this? and everyone has a lightbulb moment. So what this has all led to is Remote View, which amounts to being able to monitor in-home Wi-Fi performance from anywhere in the world, and he shows us a dozen homes in New York in real time right now, and their different Wi-Fi usage patterns and devices and how much bandwidth is flowing through them all. The system is available for field trials
Page 18 immediately the company says. It was virtually surreal to then go to our next meeting at TV Connect where AirTies showed us this, to see a similar demonstration from Arris. This tells is one thing for sure, that at least one of the major US operators has an RFP out for this type of function, or else how could it emerge in more than one roadmap at the same time. The Arris system used a Wi-Fi extender, so ran across different SSIDs, and the client steering approach was handled differently, but the outward result was supposedly the same. So expect orders to emerge from this research shortly, although they may not be publicized for a while as they will be strategic. It s easy to miss the significance of having a predictable Wi-Fi performance. Celebi also made the point that the best benefit was shifting an iphone 6 away from a congested 2.4 GHz channel to a wider 5.0 GHz channel. One iphone 6 with 1X1 11ac maintained an average PHY rate of 410 Mbps vs the theoretical maximum of 433 Mbps. And this was in a two story duplex with steel reinforced concrete floors and walls. Celebi said that this device had to be steered 25 times in a week away from a 2.4 GHz client and that all performance complaints from the consumer were eliminated once it only connected to a 2.4 GHz connection for 1% of the time. That connection topped out at 52Mbps. It s easy to miss the significance of having a predictable Wi-Fi performance. Celebi suggests that one operator he had spoken to had 1 million truck rolls a year and around 90% of them were a combination of no fault found and looking up Wi-Fi passwords. The kind of improved customer satisfaction that this might create would make a 50 Mbps telco broadband line perform every bit as well as a 300 Mbps cable broadband line, with a vastly reduced engineering team cost. So it would have the power to make a telco able to claim a similar performance to a cable company using DOCSIS 3.1, in terms of the bandwidth getting to each device. And it could prove it with this system. AirTies plans to show this off at the INTX: The Internet & Television Expo, starting today. There is, of course one catch. In order to get Remote View to work, an operator either needs to buy all of its APs from AirTies, or it needs to get Celebi to license the software, which presumably could mean some of these capabilities being loaded onto existing installed equipment. Most
Page 19 AirTies installations use either Broadcom or Quantenna chips, with software loaded into them from AirTies, so it may now have to port its system to more chips in a hurry. The company said that Remote View is currently in trials by operators across North America, Europe and Asia and is available as part of the new AirTies Serenity solution, which includes bundled packs of AirTies intelligent AP devices and software. It admits that several US tier 1 players are looking at this, which came as no surprise since it was showing data from New York. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi, which relies on a single AP from a gateway, AirTies uses multiple APs placed around the home to create an intelligent network that ensures consistent, high quality whole home Internet coverage. These smart APs can be connected wirelessly via AirTies Wi-Fi mesh, or with a hybrid combination of wired connections such as MoCA, Ethernet, or powerline. Earlier this year AirTies was revealed as the Wi-Fi glue in the Sky Q 4K set top box. This uses an alternative backhaul of HomePlug powerline inside the set top, so that if all the wireless connections are saturated, the separate APs can speak to one another and to the internet home gateway, over the power cables. In the US is would make more sense to use coaxial cable with MoCA or G.hn on it, so AirTies has a version that works with MoCA too. Earlier this year AirTies announced its first US deployment with regional cable and broadband provider Midco. Other AirTies clients include Vodafone, Singtel, Swisscom and of course Sky. HomeGrid Forum Goes to CES Asia for the First Time - Shows New TR-208 Test Standard that Broadband Forum Developed -Technicolor Joins Arris as a Maker of G.hn Products The HomeGrid Forum is exhibiting at CES Asia 2016 for first time with four different demonstrations that show G.hn powerline capabilities for 4K TVs, Wi-Fi and G.hn powerline extenders. HomeGrid members who are participating include ARRIS (which recently started shipping its first G.hn retail products), Comtrend, Zinwell, Marvell, Allion Labs, Sigma Designs, Brightech, D-Link, FirstMile, PESI/Prime, Readylinks, Technicolor, Wondertek, Xingtera and YOTC. It is significant that Technicolor is participating because it shows that another maker of products for telcos, in addition to ARRIS, is hearing the
Page 20 call for G.hn. Arris and Technicolor are two of the world s biggest makers of products for service providers. In addition, the HomeGrid Forum is demonstrating a Broadband Forum (BBF) performance test plan for powerline using TR-208. The BBF TR- 208 document was created by the collaboration of all powerline chipset manufacturers based on two different standards to find a way to repeatedly test powerline performance in a lab. Skyworth 4K smart TVs will be used in the booth to show the truly plug and play nature of G.hn technology for creating a smart home entertainment center, capable of offering services such as games, shopping, healthcare and others. Also on display will be G.hn products that are available from online retailers Alibaba and Taobao are on display - most of which are currently in the process of certification. New G.hn products are being certified on a regular basis. The HomeGrid Forum and its members say: - G.hn is increasingly becoming universally recognized as a powerful Gigabit home networking technology over any type of home wiring, referring to its ability to work over coax and telephone wires. - G.hn over powerline doesn t suffer from the same issues as legacy powerline technology, obviously referring to HomePlug. - G.hn has been proven to work through multiple electrical panels, through AFCI outlets, and withstand noise better than legacy powerline technology, again referring to HomePlug. - The new TR-208 powerline test standard, provides the industry, operators and test labs with a well-defined test bed specification, and a set of tests that enable a direct performance comparison to be made between different PLC products and technologies that can be independently verified. HomeGrid president and Marvell employee Donna Yasay said, Asia is a big market for G.hn deployments. New G.hn products are being certified on a regular basis. We have seen many test plans being used to compare home networking technologies and the results are variable, depending very much on the choice of set-up. TR-208 takes all the uncertainty and variability out of the set-up and gives truly comparable lab-verified results.
Page 21 HomeGrid Slam Dunks on HomePlug War of Words This appeared in Faultline Write a story about the Home Networking war and you invariably get a response from the other side of the debate claiming your piece is full of inaccuracies and demanding their say. But the email we got over last week s piece on HomePlug is slightly different in that we mostly agree. The comments came via Donna Yasay, business development director at Marvell and president of the HomeGrid Forum. HomePlug Alliance president Rob Ranck had lashed out a bit at Marvell, which he perceives as the evil genius behind G.hn, and the main thrust of his interview was to imply that HomePlug homes would stop working if anyone brought a G.hn powerline router into the home. We told him we seemed to remember that G.hn had implemented some coexistence with HomePlug, but Ranck insisted there was no such feature. A series of emails from Yasay insist to the contrary that G.hn indeed implemented coexistence with IEEE 1901, calling it G.cx (part of G.9972) and it uses the same ISP (Inter System Protocol) that 1901 signed up for. She added, The problem is that no HomePlug chip actually implemented the ISP, therefore making it impossible to coexist with HomePlug. Only Panasonic implemented ISP in their 1901 solution, but Panasonic has little US market penetration. That is pretty much what we told Rob Ranck and he dismissed it. It is one thing to complain that a new technology will interfere with the market-dominant chips, and yet quite another to have that new community go to a lot of trouble to build in coexistence and to then ignore the responsibility to do so yourself. Yasay finally added, In my old job I could never get any HomePlug based chipsets to pass carrier video testing if my life depended on it. I was only able to pass video testing at a carrier s lab using a prototype chipset based on G.hn. It is ironic four years after that timeframe I am now part of the G.hn community. Her final thought was that HomePlug AV2 MIMO has been causing its own technology blackouts when used with its own legacy technology and G.hn is coming to save them both.
Page 22 SET- & NET-TOP BOXES DearMob s 5Kplayer Streams Sports to an Apple TV - Also Plays 4K & 8K, Records & Rips - And Downloads YouTube Videos DearMob has developed a free app called 5Kplayer that allows viewers to watch such events as the US college basketball s March Madness 2016, NBA games, WWE fights, the upcoming Rio Olympic Games and other events on Macs and PCs that have the 5Kplayer app installed. It plays MP4, MKV, AVI formats. It also has a built-in AirPlay sender/ receiver that streams (casts) video and audio from a PC or Mac to an Apple TV. It does that by configuring AirPlay Mirroring to render instant replication of the entire iphone/ipad/mac screen. It also links AirPlay Mirroring with a screen recording utility to record resolutions up to 8K UHD in the H.265/HEVC codec. The 5Kplayer app that is in the iphone/ipad store only plays audios. It does not play videos because, the company said, iphones and ipads can already cast videos to Apple TVs. DearMob said it has improved video playback and Airplay functions in its newest 5KPlayer - version 3.6 including playing encrypted online sports videos and using Airplay to stream to Apple TV 9.2. It said the new Airplay kernel delivers a more brilliant Airplay experience including seamless desktop sharing, perfect screen recording and easy iphone screen mirroring. The company is especially proud that its 5KPlayer works deftly with Apple TVs when many of its competitors apps were squashed by Air- Play in ios 9.0 and later versions. The 5Kplayer can be used to download videos, including videos in 4K, from YouTube and other video sites as well as play DVDs and Webbased radio sites. It can also be used to show some of the 2016 Oscars best pictures such as Spotlight and The Revenant. DearMob said viewers can use the 5KPlayer to make a legal copy of videos. The company said its 5Kplayer analyzes and allows download streaming only from legal sites. DearMob s emphasis is on sports a magnet that always pulls a crowd of viewers. Houston Xu, DearMob s 5Kplayer product manager said, Statistic shows that 81.5% of 5KPlayer users are males - a group that has been proved to love sports more than females do, and 22.2% of the
Page 23 total have strong interest in sports. Our company used to focus on being a leading software developer for the movie and music industry. Now we see the sports market as having the same great potential and have decided to up the ante immediately. DearMob has launched a promotional campaign that invites viewers to earn up to 100% discounts and exclusive sales prices on DVD Ripper, which it said is the world s fastest video converter. The 5KPlayer for Windows and Mac are at http://www.5kplayer.com There are mixed reviews of the 5Kplayer on YouTube such as https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjiijsydkpi and https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=lthc0oempdi DearMob is thinking ahead to 8K and 22.2 channel audios. It appears that some of the functions that the 5Kplayer performs are illegal because they allow piracy. Ripping DVDs that users created is OK but no special software is needed for that. However, it is not legal to rip movie DVDs that are copyrighted. DearMob hints that its 5Kplayer monitors and analyzes the content that it s getting so it can prevent piracy maybe it does and maybe it doesn t. Making a player that allows users to watch a movie DVD on their PC is one thing but there is already software that does that such as Microsoft s Media Player. Based on what we saw, we would not recommend the product but it does show what can be done. 5K Player Does 8K Streams & 22.2 Channel Audios DearMob is thinking ahead to 8K and 22.2 channel audios. Japan s public broadcaster NHK has confirmed that it will transmit some of the Rio Olympics in 8K. Test 8K broadcasts will run for seven hours a day at about 60 public viewing sites around Japan. The newest 5KPlayer uses H.265/HEVC decoding of 8K/60p. It can decode up to 1,100 frames per second at 8K (7680x4320) from 300 plus online video sites. Xu said, 8K video requires much higher compression ratio than 4K. In order to efficiently decode 8K UHD videos, 5K- Player has been updated to process audio of up to 22.2 channels of audio and is ready to contribute to the realization of truly immersive 8K video enjoyment. Xu said the new version of 5KPlayer aims to fix prior playing errors with 4K and 8K content, which makes UHD stream more suitable for
Page 24 average consumers. He said anyone that is having problems playing 4K and 8K videos on their Mac, PC and mobile devices should download the best 4K video player to enjoy 4K/8K programs and fascinating sporting events like 2016 Rio Olympic Games and that is, of course, the 5Kplayer. Keep up with The Online Reporter at www.onlinereporter.com LIES, DAMN LIES & STATISTICS 49% of Total Spend on Advertising & Marketing Will Be Spent Online The total amount spent on digital (online) advertising and marketing in the US in 2016 will be about $228 million, which will be, somewhat shockingly, about 49% of all types of marketing and advertising in the States, according to Outsell s just released Annual Advertising and Marketing Study that surveyed 1,500 B2B and B2C marketers in the US, across 36 spending categories. The report said traditional advertising channels are in retreat. Outsell found that the top three marketing channels were Web sites, TV and email, which will account for almost $170 billion of more than $470 billion to be spent in 2016 on marketing or advertising. Not surprising, mobile was the category that shows the highest percentage year-over-year growth at 38%, which is $23 billion in annual spending. Also not surprising, print newspapers, magazines, directories and direct mail were the traditional media categories that show the largest declines. Web sites will get the most revenue $76 billion and so has at 33% the largest share of marketing budgets. Video sites and social media sites trailed only mobile in the forecast. Video was second at $7.5 billion. Social media was $33 billion. Although mature, paid search advertising increased 13.4% $23.2 billion for 2016.