Cisco Advances Its Videoscape TV Platform With 'Video in the Cloud'

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
Cisco Systems logo

New Networked Cloud Video Technology Helps Service Providers Accelerate Services to Any Screen

LAS VEGAS, NV — CES — Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced today that Cisco Videoscape™, the company’s comprehensive TV platform for service providers that brings together digital TV and online video content with social media and communications applications, will now help enable new “video in the cloud” services that will drive new revenue streams for service providers — and exciting new video entertainment experiences for consumers. Cisco also announced that several major video service providers, including Rogers Communications of Canada, ‘yes’ of Israel and Numéricable of France, have selected Videoscape to deliver their next-generation video services.

At CES 2012 this week, Cisco is unveiling several new Videoscape products that will power “video in the cloud” experiences for consumers, offering a consistent look-and-feel across devices, no matter where they are. With this new technology, service providers can offer complete “Any Screen TV” capabilities that deliver live video and on-demand video experiences not only to PCs and Macs, but also across iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.

More content is being stored in the cloud rather than on home devices. Service providers are evaluating ways to send live linear (traditional) and cloud-based, on-demand programming channels to a range of managed and unmanaged IP devices in and out of the home. These include IP set-top boxes, personal computers (PCs), laptops, tablets, gaming consoles, smartphones and Internet-connected TVs. Videoscape is uniquely designed as an open software-based platform that provides a migration path to an all IP-based video infrastructure, with cloud, network and client components working together to allow video experiences to move, pause and resume across all of these devices.

New Client Technologies

  • Videoscape Multiscreen Gateway family. The Cisco 9800 Series is the first in a new family of multiscreen gateway products. Featuring six tuners that allow consumers to watch and record six video streams at once, it delivers live, recorded and on-demand content — including standard, high-definition and 3DTV — to multiple screens within the home via traditional quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-based set-tops and pure IP set-tops. It is also a flexible platform that can support cable, wireless and satellite service provider needs.
  • Videoscape Voyager Vantage is a software platform, connecting set-tops to the cloud, that gives service providers what they need to deploy rich user interfaces (UIs) and EPGs, provide extensive video on-demand catalogs, and integrate new applications for social media, Internet video, content sharing and more.

New Videoscape Cloud components (built on the Cisco Unified Cloud Services platform) include:

  • Videoscape Voyager Virtual – A new cloud-rendered user interface that delivers IP video to legacy MPEG-2 set-top boxes and helps to enable new social media applications, e-commerce, gaming, cloud-driven electronic programming guides (EPGs), video place shifting and remote user interfaces.
  • Cisco Conductor back-office technology (for QAM Video) allows service providers to roll out differentiated video services faster and more efficiently through comprehensive video control plane and service management capabilities across networks and devices.
  • The Cisco Media Processor and Transcode Manager advance service providers’ capabilities to deliver video content to second and third screens through expanded video format support such as adaptive bit rate (ABR) technologies (that optimize delivery of services to each screen for the best possible quality of experience).
  • Videoscape Content Delivery Network (CDN) Analytics deliver advanced reporting so that service providers can gather and view more in-depth information from their Cisco Content Delivery System (CDS) or third-party CDN deployment, and analyze network performance in real-time.