General

IPTV is Software as a Service (SaaS) — continued

Galio will also use UPnP (Universal Plug 'n' Play) and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard technologies to manage interactions between different STBs in a single household. Some market watchers believe a centralized home gateway model will ultimately prevail—a network server with multiple tuner/receivers serving multiple dumb screens around the house. Reeder argues that consumers are unlikely to go with this model because it means they'd have to throw out STBs they already own. Right now when a consumer buys a new STB—one with a bigger hard drive, for example—he puts the old one in the bedroom or den. Galio will let STBs redirect content to another STB device for viewing in a different room—assuming the necessary networking is in place.

"This is very much where the market is going," Reeder says of Galio's next-generation capabilities. "And our long and strong heritage in IPTV put us in a position to identify this need, the fact that we're at this new stage in the evolution of service delivery, and bring a product to market first."

A brand new thing
ANT claims that none of its competitors has anything like Galio yet. Many have browsers, but they don't have Galio's TV application management features. The company would like the concept to become an industry standard, so it welcomes competitors. "We would encourage them," Reeder says. "We don't want a single pseudo standard. Competition [in a standards-based environment] is what keeps everybody sharp."

The TV application manager provides many of the benefits of Windows, but it cannot afford to be like Windows in some respects. For example, Windows often doesn't work as well after several months when a user's computer is full of programs, files, and registry entries. Response times slow noticeably.

"While we're promoting the idea of a single harmonious framework—like Windows—it has to come with all the values of a consumer electronics device," Reeder says. "In the TV space, it's really important that the box always be as responsive as it was the first day it was launched—you turn it on and it's there immediately, and it doesn't crash. You can't be running defrag on a PVR, or Norton Utilities on your television." Galio can meet those standards, he says.

ANT expects the first STBs running Galio from major manufacturers in the next two to three months. The first networks will switch from Fresco-based devices to Galio starting in the early summer, but more are expected to make the move towards the end of the year. More than one tier one European telco has already made the decision to switch, Reeder says. There are telcos in the U.S. "actively evaluating" the product. And ANT is currently working on "a couple" of Asian deployments.

While the company's direct customers are STB manufacturers, more and more IPTV operators are paying attention to what ANT does because they realize that STB software is crucial in defining the look and feel of the services they offer. They want control of how it behaves. "We are increasingly being pulled in by ISPs and telcos," Reeder says. "And many are saying 'We want to select your product and we want to mandate use of it by our set top box manufacturer.'"

Is ANT setting itself on a collision course with the 800-pound gorilla of the PC industry? It sure sounds like it. It's interesting to note that ANT also has a portable media player operating system, PurePlay—similar to Microsoft's Windows Portable Media Center platform. And PurePlay devices, the first of which are expected later this year, will be able to interact easily with Galio, just the way PMC devices interact with PCs running Windows Media Center Edition.

It's more than just ANT squaring off against Microsoft—an uneven contest to be sure. It's part of a chaotic many-sided war reaching across several industries, with many foes trying to control the digital living room.

—End

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