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The pocket-protector crowd held its equivalent of the senior ball at last month's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia, a giddy expanse of dilated time where vendors (figuratively) slow-danced with operators and everybody mooned over the promise of a world without curfews or interoperability constraints. And because we're speaking metaphorically here, SCTE was even all the more magical because nobody got pregnant or threw up in the punch bowl.

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Anyway, it's party time again, only this month's wingding is going to be geared equally toward the swells over in programming. While the National Cable and Telecommunications Association Cable 2003 Exhibition will showcase an even split of propellerheads and programmers, don't expect the jock (ESPN) and the really popular girl (Playboy) to walk away as the king and queen of the prom just like that. Microsoft's Bill Gates will be on hand in Chicago to inject a little geek chic into the proceedings, and even if the presence of a kabillionaire doesn't shake things up a little, the confluence of sound and picture, of tech and content, should make this year's NCTA show about as memorable as the one in Carrie, minus the pig blood.

Lest we drag out the conceit past the breaking point, it is of particular interest that the most sought-after marriage of form and function will serve as the focal point of this year's show. High-definition television has become the ultimate expression of cable's lofty goals - NCTA president and CEO Robert Sachs says HDTV is the "key to facilitating the transition from analog to digital television" - and as such, an entire pavilion is being dedicated to HD inside Chicago's McCormick Place. There, a baker's dozen programmers will show their wares in crisp, realer-than-real hi-def, while a host of technology partners make it all happen. And if that's not enough, the NCTA will be transmitting all of the National Show general sessions in high definition, to a nationwide audience.

But don't settle for watching the big show on TV. It's time to strap on those dancing shoes, load your hair up with pomade and break into your dad's stash of Old Crow. What follows is a list of some of the exhibitors who will serve as cable's prom dates, and some of the new moves they plan to demonstrate on the show floor.

ARRIS

VoIP, for sure, but a ToIP demo to boot

Voice-over-IP vendor Arris will be showing off the nuts and bolts behind its Cornerstone cable telephony platform, which includes the carrier-grade Cadant C4 Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) and G2 IMS software for advanced IP voice and tiered data applications. It will also unveil a new product, the Cadant C3, which, as you may have guessed by the naming convention, is a CMTS meant for use in smaller systems. Plus, there will be a whole mess of customer premises equipment to boot: data gateways, DOCSIS 2.0-certified CM 450 cable modems, DOCSIS 1.1-certified E-MTAs and Touchstone telephony modems. The icing on the cake will be a demo of Arris's Telephony-over-IP (ToIP) integration with Net2Phone.

ARTEL VIDEO SYSTEMS

A couple new VOD transport devices

Artel throws the curtain back on two new products, the VSGx and VSGm, a pair of VOD transport devices. The VSGx is a gigabit Ethernet VOD transport system designed to support all VOD architectures at a low cost, while keeping the door open for future applications. The VSGm is a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) platform that allows the transport device to adapt to any network topology.

BIGBAND NETWORKS

White papers, but what else?

A BigBand mouthpiece tells us that the company hasn't decided exactly what it's planning to show at NCTA, although HD RateShaping will figure prominently in the presentation. As an aside, we'd like to note that BigBand had better start thinking about the show, given the logistics that will be involved in transporting the 100 or so engineers it had in the booth at SCTE. We don't have an exact figure for how many staffers will be on hand for this show, but we can say with a certain degree of confidence that the population of Philadelphia more or less tripled when BigBand rolled into town last month. At any rate, besides the compulsory BMR demo, BigBand bigwigs will be presenting a pair of white papers, including "Network Design for a Multiplicity of Services" and the more snappily titled "Cable and Consumer Electronics...A Vegas Wedding?"

BROADBUS TECHNOLOGIES

Video server and a new chief architect

Broadbus will demonstrate its B-1 video server, the first high-density, highly scalable DRAM-based server built to support VOD and SVOD, as well as the future demands of Television-on-Demand (TOD). A Broadbus rep will walk visitors through some key innovations in the B-1 architecture, such as its asymmetric multiprocessor, decoupled storage and streaming and a huge RAM cache. The company will also present a technical paper on TOD, and will formally introduce Robert G. Scheffler as its new chief architect.

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Cable World, June 2, 2003

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