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LarryM99
But the FCC did mandate the inclusion of 1394 as an open option for STB's. ...
rick.merritt
No one expects the FCC to provide regulations about what home network to use. ...
Entropic talks MoCA, next-gen gateways
Rick Merritt
11/1/2010 5:04 PM EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Pay TV carriers are accelerating deployments of Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) home networks and exploring Internet-ready gateways, said the chief executive of Entropic Communications in a video interview.
Carriers could buy as many as ten million MoCA chip sets a quarter by the end of next year to support multiroom high definition video services on their high-end systems, said Patrick Henry. For example, DirecTV supports HD video and MoCA on more than 60 percent of its set-tops now, up from about 40 percent less than a year ago. The deployments lay the groundwork for embedding MoCA in products beyond the set-top box in two or three years, he said.
That’s a big shift for the company that helped define the MoCA standard and shipped the first chip sets for it in 2004. Since that time Entropic has sold a total of about 30 million MoCA chip sets.
Others are jumping into the fray. Broadcom has launched set-top chips supporting MoCA and Cisco System's set-top group (formerly Scientific Atlanta) is designing MoCA into its ASICs with help from STMicroelectronics which is expected to roll out its own MoCA chips.
Bigger changes are in the works as set-top makers prepare Internet-enabled boxes that can serve up both premium and Web video. Cable TV operators want to move to IP-based networks, driving a shift from securing signals using conditional access in a set top to digital rights management in the cloud, said Henry.
In April, the Federal Communications Commission floated a plan called AllVid to accelerate the move to generic IP gateways that could bring any pay TV signals to a home network. "Hopefully they get it right by letting consumers have the flexibility to choose the devices they want—there's a risk of over-regulating and getting it wrong," Henry said.
Meanwhile, Entropic is exploring growth markets it could enter to expand beyond MoCA which represents two-thirds of its business. In September Entropic added to its board Theodore Tewksbury, chief executive of Integrated Device Technology, and Robert Bailey, chairman of PMC-Sierra, to help navigate its future.
After a fall off in revenues during last year's recession, Entropic is back on a growth path and headed for its first profitable year. The company reaped $139 million in revenues and $11 million in profits in the nine months which closed at the end of September.
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LarryM99
11/1/2010 5:54 PM EDT
I have to say that I have trouble envisioning MoCA as a primary home wiring technology. I can certainly see it as a bridge path to get to a location which can't be reached by Ethernet, but I would be much more likely to convert Enet - MoCA - Enet in that case. Is there something that I am missing here other than the reuse of legacy coax?
Larry M.
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Frank Eory
11/1/2010 7:23 PM EDT
Larry, in many older homes -- before it became common to run CAT5 through the walls during construction -- 'legacy coax' is already the primary home wiring for broadband. MoCA enables new uses for that coax, as we are seeing with multi-room DVR. There are lots of other application possibilities that could be enabled by a MoCA-based broadband network in the home.
For many homeowners, the only other wired broadband networking option is broadband over powerline (BPL).
In the absence of either MoCA or BPL, we are left with just 802.11, or busting up walls to add new wiring. For me, 802.11n has been a reasonably effective way to share multimedia content among different rooms in my house, but only between computers and my WiFi-capable mobile devices -- my DVR set-top boxes are still islands to themselves. I would love it if SOME kind of home networking technology would allow me to share the content on those DVRs among all my devices.
If a MoCA-based home network could enable that for me, I'd be happy to make the investment in new hardware. I'm sure there are millions of others who would agree.
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LarryM99
11/1/2010 9:56 PM EDT
This certainly makes sense for a wiring choice of convenience with conversion to and from Ethernet, but as you said the norm today is to install CAT5 or better. Why would we want to encourage (or even force) people to stay with an older wiring standard?
The problem is that these guys are building MoCA directly into the set-top boxes and even (based on the article) pushing the FCC to codify it into the interface standard.
Larry M.
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rick.merritt
11/2/2010 1:33 AM EDT
No one expects the FCC to provide regulations about what home network to use. The ARE expected to set rules to help drive open pay-TV ready gateways into retail markets...as for MoCA, coax is the one well sheilded wire that exists broadly in the home to handle copy protected HD video for multiroom DVR, thus Dish, Cox, TWC, Comcast and Verizon are adopting it.
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LarryM99
11/2/2010 9:03 AM EDT
But the FCC did mandate the inclusion of 1394 as an open option for STB's. Unfortunately, they didn't also specify that they had to actually work. But your point about copy-protected material is well-taken. Cox seems very proud of their "whole-house" solution, which can only connect two satellite boxes. My GigE/Windows Media Center solution is literally through the whole house. Granted, I do have to deal with the Microsoft DRM, but that has become more tolerable in the latest incarnation.
Larry M.
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