The Ruckus Room

Our Big-Ass Antenna and Morality

We recently installed this rather voluptuous UHF/VHF TV antenna on top of our building.  It lets us receive free HD content being broadcast from different TV stations in the Bay Area. It works great, though the HD content is extremely sparse (at least during the day).

One of the reasons we did this is so we could capture some HD content (other than the canned HD clips from MSFT) to stream over Wi-Fi for our demos.

Well as it turns out there's a big brew-haha about copying free HD content.  And it has to do with something called "the broadcast flag."

A broadcast flag is a set of bits sent in a data stream that says whether or not that stream can be recorded or if there are any restrictions. Basically Hollywood wants to protect against copyright infringement. But doesn't this interfere with the fair use rights of the viewing public? 

Evidently the FCC ruled in 2003 (47 CFR 73.9002b) that "No party shall sell or distribute in interstate commerce a Covered Demodulator Product that does not comply with the Demodulator Compliance Requirements and Demodulator Robustness Requirements."  Too bad they couldn't just say what they meant. "We don't want people to copy stuff if we don't know about or control....we might get in trouble or get people yelling at us."

But in May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the FCC had exceeded its authority in creating this rule. Yet the ruling was a limited one. The judges said that though the FCC lacked the authority to outlaw TV tuners, Congress could choose to enact a law allowing it.

This broadcast flag issue is buried in a big telecom bill (S.2686) that the senate is pondering....but it looks like the issue is being resurrected. Members of the Senate Commerce Committee have endorsed the idea of requiring digital TV receivers to restrict redistribution--particularly over the Internet--of over-the-air broadcasts. The measure would also allow for similar rules, or an "audio flag," for digital radio receivers.

Since broadcast flags could be activated at any time, a viewer who records a program might suddenly find that it is no longer possible to save their favorite show.

Today, you can use any device you like with your television: VCR, TiVo, DVD recorder, home theater receiver, or a PC combining these functions. But if the broadcast flag mandate is passed, Hollywood and federal bureaucrats will get a veto over innovative devices and legitimate uses of recorded programming.

The mandate forces all future digital television (DTV) tuners to include "content protection" (aka DRM) technologies. All makers of HDTV receivers will be required to build their devices to watch for a "flag" embedded in programs by copyright holders.

When it comes to digital recording, it would be Hollywood's DRM way or the highway. Want to burn that recording digitally to a DVD to save hard drive space? Sorry, the DRM lock-box won't allow it. How about sending it over your home network to another TV? Not unless you rip out your existing network and replace it with DRMd routers. And forget about using open source TV tools.

The good news is that digital multimedia can be distributed and consumed more easily.  The bad news is that digital multimedia can be distributed and consumed more easily.  I feel a headache coming on.

The answer isn't to legislate this but let the free markets decide.  In the end, you can't govern morality. Was that a leap or what?  Think about it.

IPTV without the IPTV

When we show our IPTV demo to people here in the U.S. (other than service providers), we get this sort of dumbfounded look.  "Well I don't have IPTV, what the hell am I supposed to do with your stuff?" they ask.

There's no doubt that computer networks and consumer electronics are on a collision course.  And IP seems to be the common denominator.  So what do you do if you want location-free TV without IPTV? 

You do this! 

This is a new in-home digital hub system from a company in the Bay Area called Digital Deck (evidently it was started by some of the TiVo founders).  We have zero affiliation with them (though we'd like to have), we just think what they're doing is not only cool but a glimpse into the future.

While pricey and cumbersome to set up, the product concept is brilliant. This is one of the only devices that really bridges the gap between the world of analog consumer electronics and computer networks.

The device - called the Digital Deck Media Connector - lets you to centralize all your multimedia and distribute it around the home. You can control virtually any device located in one room and stream it to another.  Users can access centralized iTunes music, share recordings with networks TiVo, watch a movie in one room and catch the rest in another, etc.

It takes in virtually any type of analog or digital input from say a DVD player, DirectTV box, MP3 Juke box, A/V receiver and provides high bit rate MPEG2 encoding and IP encapsulation.  All traffic runs over Ethernet.

The idea is to centralize all your various multimedia equipment in a single room and then provide a simple and easy way to access it from any "connected room." You must have a digital deck in every room to do this. 

A centralized PC running their "Media Connector" software controls everything.  All traffic runs into and out of this PC which provides TiVo-like functions for cable TV, buffering and QoS and storage.  So every traffic stream is first sent to the PC then from the PC out to the end point.

They've designed an elegant (click on the image over there----->), very simple (TiVO-like) common interface for users to interact with EVERY device along with a universal remote (one remote for everything and one menu structure for everything) with downloadable IR codes for pretty much everything.

The point is that - if boxes like this can be made simple and cheap - this is how the "connected home" will work.  I just can't see my mom or dad setting something like this up.  Then again, I don't think my mom and dad are necessarily their target market (or anyone elses).

God and Ultra-Wideband in the Home

Does God want ultra-wideband (UWB) in the home?  We think so.

TZero made headlines this week as their PR people placed a nice story in the Wall Street Journal (don't know why they couldn't do it for us) about how its Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) technology can be used to move video around the home. 

Really? Uh.....we don't think so.

The ultimate application of UWB in the home is for high-speed, short range wireless connectivity between multimedia components or to replace BlueTooth as THE personal area network (PAN) technology of choice - NOT as an in-home multimedia distribution mechanism.

In Europe it is unclear that UWB is even allowed as well as in a number of countries around the world.  In the US it is severely limited in power rendering it a PAN technology. It's also common knowledge that UWB suffered from link stability problems if the path is physically interrupted such as a person passing through the signal path.

While the chips claim to be cheap, the designs aren't - since manufacturers can't use standard PCB material and must use the high performance material and parts.

There is merely too much momentum in the Wi-Fi market, from major chip vendors such as Broadcom, Marvell, Atheros and Intel, for Wi-Fi to be usurped by UWB in the home relative to whole-home multimedia distribution.

Moreover, Wi-Fi has massive grassroots popularity, an established user and device-base and better reach to deliver whole-house connectivity. Here's a UWB primer that helps prove these beliefs.

UWB works by sending billions of very short pulses thus occupying very wide spectrum of frequencies several GHz in bandwidth. To recover the data, a UWB receiver then translates the pulses by listening for a familiar pulse sequence.

Specifically, UWB is defined as any radio technology having a spectrum that occupies a bandwidth greater than 20 percent of the center frequency, or a bandwidth of at least 500 MHz.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that UWB radio transmissions can legally operate in the range from 3.1 GHz up to 10.6 GHz, at a limited transmit power of -41dBm/MHz.  This limits the theoretical (laws of physics can't be overcome via technology) range. 

This chart says (click on it) it all, as does this report.  Basically they show how quickly UWB drops from peak data rates to below Wi-Fi rates.  802.11n would multiply the plotted WiFi performance by the number of spatial streams (but it has it's own problems)

This is why UWB only makes sense at very short distances and is destined to remain a PAN technology.  UWB will likely end up replacing the BlueTooth phy.  Whole-home coverage will require an additional networking technology, such as cable, or power line or mesh networking from room to room.

To the best of our biased and limited-knowledge, no Wimedia multi-band OFDM products have passed FCC and thus current demos should be treated with ”a grain of anything."

Since UWB will obviously involve antennas and software, our Beamflex (smart antenna) and Smartcast (QoS) technology will add value - in the event that (if God allows it) UWB actually proves itself in the marketplace and manages to displace Wi-Fi.

For now we’ll assume that will never happen, despite God's mercy.

New Report into Home Networks Too Revealing?

More often than not the old adage "you get what you pay for" rings true.  While pricey (at least for this cost-conscious startup) the new Heavy Reading Report: Multimedia Whole-Home Networking: Solving the IPTV Distribution Dilemma is money well spent.

The new report, written by a guy named Rick Thompson, is perhaps the most comprehensive look into the home networking scene yet. Even though these Heavy Reading guys often get bashed for not being "real analysts" due to being the offspring of Light Reading, nothing could be further from the truth.

Unlike a LOT of expensive and high powered analyst "groups" these guys actually do more than just spew back what numbers and "insight" vendors provide. Mr. Thompson, for example, actually interviewed a ton of providers (and even some end users in the home) to get actually field experience related to what's going on in the home.  Without getting in a lot of trouble, here's SOME of what he found:

• IPTV is shifting the home networking market from consumer-driven to service provider driven
• Reducing provider OPEX is a major driver for next-gen multimedia whole-home networking technology
• Next-gen Wi-Fi solutions supporting multiple HD channels top service provider wish lists
• There will be no single winning technology in the foreseeable future
• Remote management and control of multimedia home networks is as critical as the underlying network medium
• Policy control and management products will start to have more integration with multimedia home CPE
• Multimedia home networking technologies are evolving from external adapters to integrated technology within set top boxes, home gateways, DVR, etc.

According to the Heavy Reading report, the five primary drivers for the next gen home network are:

• The availability of IPTV as a service to consumers
• New technologies that minimize installation time, operational cost and maximize subscriber turn-up rates
• Consumers are demanding a "converged home" that lets them access video and other content over a single, robust network
• New revenue streams for service providers enabled by a robust home network
• The ability to run multimedia over whole-home networking technologies without installing new in-home wiring

According to the report, next generation whole-home networks must deliver:

• High throughput (tens to hundreds of megabits per second)
• Quality of service (to support voice/VoIP, and IPTV)
• No new wires (use of exiting wires or new wireless solutions)
• Reliable performance (minimal latency and packet loss for real-time services)
• Remote management (using TR-069 or equivalent remote management capabilities)

Overall great insights into what should be a wild ride in the home this year (and next).  Strap yourself in.

Airgoing: More Vowel Movements

This week, Airgo had another one of its quarterly vowel movements (with a "V") saying that, when it comes to Wi-Fi,  "it's all about sustaining high performance....the game has changed," Airgo said.

The Wi-Fi game has never changed. It has always been (and always will be) about reliable performance.  We're building a big business around making Wi-Fi predictable. 

Users really don't care about True MIMO, False MIMO, silicon-injected MIMO, smart antennas, spatial multiplexing, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing or 802.11(pick a letter and put it here). They care about their applications working anywhere, anytime - dependably.

Sure they want to go far and fast, but when it comes to multimedia, people just won't tolerate wild fluctuations in performance in their music, video or phone calls - neither will the providers delivering such products or services. 

Check out the chart on the left (click it to expand).  This picture is worth more than a thousand words (but it's based on our own tests so be somewhat suspicious).

Making Wi-Fi predictable is an incredibly difficult thing to do - it's rocket science stuff.  And something that, quite frankly, can't happen with just more gates (i.e. chips). It really takes a systems approach.  The best way to ensure predictability is to control the multi-path and mitigate interference, whether it comes from the neighbors, the microwave or the cordless phone.  This is exactly what we do but without having to purchase expensive and not-ready-for-prime-time chips.

That's why we decided, long ago, to take a more flexible approach to making Wi-Fi better by developing technologies that add predictability on top of ANY Wi-Fi chipset. We chose 802.11a/g first because it's real, and it works.  And when we get to 802.11n, watch out (we say hoping, hoping, hoping).

And 802.11n is going to be great - going to be.  The problem is that the emerging standard is ...well....emerging. The IEEE 802.11n standard is "still in the air" as the task group received 12,000 comments on the Draft 1.0 proposal that was accepted as a working draft in March. And early tests of pre-N products have delivered miserable results.

Think about it. Why would anyone want to purchase Airgo chips now when they will be thrown away soon?  For Airgo, the conundrum is that carriers’ margins can't support expensive silicon (an Airgo-based router is typically 3 to 4X the bill of materials of a standard 802.11G product) not to mention that carriers MUST provide standards-based solutions. 

This leaves consumers and reviewers, who advocate the biggest throughput number, forcing Airgo's application-unaware silicon into unstable but heroic (at very short distances) data rates.

Today, Airgo gets most of its "gains" from transmit power not from MIMO. And even with more power, they can't sustain enough throughput for an HD video stream throughout a home.

George Ou had some excellent insights on this whole topic (and we're not sure he actually even likes us).  Think of it this way.  We're the tires, handling and suspension of a car. The chips are the engine (and the bulk of the cost). 

So what's our long-winded point?

Adapting and controlling the wireless environment - an environment that by definition is subject to constant change - is what's most important. Adapting to this constant change is best done in smart software that sits up the stack.