The Dog Days of Winter

Normally at this time of the year everyone sits back, takes a hard look at themselves and says, okay, time to make a change. We use January 1 as the time to reflect and resolve to be more active, get more things done, and achieve more with our time.

What I hear is "blah blah blah."

Right after New Year’s Eve, I am done with entertaining, wining (not whining), dining and spending. What I really want most in the world is a little peace and quiet, a few walks with my dog in the sun…and a little bit of quality relaxation.

I, like many people, watch TV to relax, zone out, drain my brain…

Extrapolating my current cable experience to the future IPTV experience I expect to have, means that I need 100% entertainment…no channel fade, no quality loss, no service outages. (Remember, I didn’t say I’d stop whining in 2007!) In an operator’s strive to take IPTV live, keeping quality of service front of mind needs to be a number one concern.

From the results of the last IPTV Channel poll, it looks like a strong quality of experience might be in our collective IPTV future as only a few respondents said it was a major hurdle to delivering wide-scale roll-outs. Excellent! The majority of respondents said they most needed modular and open middleware (may I suggest you look at www.espial.com . Next on the 100-channel hurdle list was the need for wide-scale broadband access. Makes sense. Last on the list was the need for low-cost STBs…looks like the industry’s manufacturers have been filling the bill.

So…gotta go, I’ve PVR’d the O.C., and it waits for no one but ME.

Happy New Year! And don't forget to answer the IPTV Channel Poll and let us know what country you think will have the most IPTV subscribers by the end of this year.

-Meredith