Small Operator All-Digital

By Jennifer Rinaldi

Norman Gillaspie describes the motivation as two-fold: The 2009 digital transition looms on the horizon, and small cable operators are losing subscribers to DirectTV and Dish Network.

"They are bleeding subscribers," Gillaspie said.

Gillaspie is the founder and CEO of Transparent Video Systems. The company has developed a turnkey headend hardware and client management software package that aims to help small cable operators upgrade their systems while evening the video delivery playing field against extraterrestrial competition.

Rack and play

According to Gillaspie, TVS employs a core headend technology consisting of a digital video multiplexer, scrambler and modulator. Those components are installed on one board where they're joined by a small, embedded Linux processor. Together they amount to an EAS-compatible headend complete with a conditional access system and separable security cards. TVS offers multiple set-top box choices, all under $100, including models by Homecast and Koan. The company bundles its hardware along with a Web-based subscriber management system.

"In addition to being highly affordable," Chris Lowell, general manager for Pennsylvania-based small operator Coaxial Cable TV said in a statement, "… the TVS solution allows us to control our own destiny by not having to rely on third parties to package and provision content."

Gillaspie said what makes the TVS solution unique is "the combination and scalability of three different boxes."

"There are three boxes because generally there are feeds coming in from three different sources," Gillaspie said. "It's either coming in via satellite as an analog or digital signal, or you get terrestrial off the air."

By mixing and matching these various boxes, Gillaspie said TVS can create any size system with any number of inputs and outputs.

"The smallest box would handle seven programs all the way up to five hundred programs," Gillaspie said. "It is entirely scalable."

Outside the box

"We don't just sell boxes," Gillaspie said. "We ask what [the small operator has] now for their current channel line up, then we start asking what they want to have later on. We provision a system and a implementation plan."

Gillaspie pointed out that with programming running 24/7, a small operator cannot simply pull down the entire system and upgrade. He said that TVS sets practical priorities for the implementation.

"If they're bandwidth constrained, then we'll immediately put the system in and put up all of their high value content in digital," Gillaspie said. "After that's up and running, we've freed up enough bandwidth to generally simulcast the rest of the system …. We typically do a 7:1 bandwidth compression, so you don't have to take too many analog channels before you have enough capacity to handle the all of your programs."

Once the small operator is technically capable of offering upgraded programs and services, they have to be able to manage them. To this end, Gillaspie said, TVS "offers a Web-based management system that these smaller operators could only dream about."

In exchange for a fee of $0.35 per subscriber per month, the subscriber management system integrates with the operator's billing while allowing provisioning of voice, video and data from one screen.

"Basically, you can have access to everything," Gillaspie said.

This, Gillaspie said, will translate into operational savings as a direct result of increased efficiency and reduced need for costly truck-rolls. Such changes may go a long way to improve both operator productivity and customer satisfaction, particularly important if small operators are to remain competitive with satellite providers.

"The first thing to do is get these guys digital," Gillaspie said. "Eventually, anything that Direct TV or Dish can do, these small operators can do as well."

- Jennifer Rinaldi