IBC Q&A: Charles Cheevers, EMEA chief technology officer, Arris

Charles Cheevers of Arris talked to DTVE about his plans and expectations for this year’s show.

What has been the most significant development in pay TV technology since IBC 1010?
The integration of smart TVs in particular with MSO gateway- and cloud-based solutions is, and will remain to be, one of the most important new areas of development. This will over the next five years continue to be a very seamless integration and co-existence with MSO-supplied entertainment services.

What is the greatest challenge currently facing the industry?
Integrating CE devices into the cable home without losing ownership of the subscriber will be a challenge. This needs to happen from a technology and convergent home perspective and is likely facilitated by focusing on gateway and cloud-based delivery solutions.

What will you be highlighting at IBC?
Arris will be focusing on showing the reality of the gateway served home with true whole home solutions affecting and enabling all aspects of entertainment in the modern home. Arris will also be demonstrating how the entire HFC plant can today be run to 6Gbps of IP traffic and solutions that already exist to improve upstream capacity.

What trends do you expect to emerge from this year’s IBC?
We expect to see more technology support for adaptive bit-rate and HTTP delivered video, in particular optimisation around encoding and caching for these network types. We also expect to see more of a move towards HTML5 for client support with a focus on using cloud based UI and EPG support moving to solutions where customers can be more independent of the end hardware for their recommendations and video experience. Three-screen solutions will move from demos to deployed examples. You will see a lot more cloud-based services with the gateway being a key part of the cable home. Expect to see more integration with gateway and smart TV devices and the emergence of new MSO cloud and gateway services that will move the cable operator beyond the remote control.

What are your main goals for next year?
Continuing to drive transitional solutions to IP video at the pace the operator needs to go – this usually entails being co-existent with MPEG video solutions and innovating around trying to support legacy and new systems on shared resources. To evolve and lead in gateway based home services encompassing video, voice and data all supported from one device. To evolve and lead in DOCSIS-based processing in the headend and the CPE, especially to lay a foundation for devices that support multiple converged services and bit rates that go to 6Gbps per service group in the headend and 1Gbps-capable CPE devices. To evolve and lead in adaptive bit-rate encoding and delivery solutions particularly on HFC networks – innovating from ingestion to caching networks extended right to the customer premises. To provide denser and new solutions in HFC infrastructure to maximise the fibre and coax investments of the MSO to keep up with more and more bandwidth, services, node splits and deeper fibre solutions.

What are your IBC survival tips?
Don’t eat the pizza at IBC – stay hungry and go for a decent meal after the show ends. Be careful where you walk – someone is always doing an interview in the middle of the aisle-ways.  Don’t go into the camera demonstration areas at IBC if you are under 18 – you may see naked painted ladies. Why this is done to show how 1080p/60 works, I’ll never know.

Arris will be exhibiting at IBC on Stand 1.D41