Cisco launches web broadcast tools for telcos

Networking vendor Cisco Systems has announced the release of an integrated series of products aimed at helping telcos deliver a broad range of entertainment content to homes.

The ‘Videoscape’ series of products, announced today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, offers service providers a suite of tools to control the distribution of video content, and offers consumers an IP-enabled set-top box and media gateway to more easily consume this telco-delivered video entertainment.

Cisco said its 'Videoscape’ IP-enabled set-top box [pictured] could deliver broadcast TV, pay-TV, video-on-demand and other web video to a user’s television, whilst its Videoscape media gateway could be used to distribute content to other devices around the home using common home networking standards.

Cisco is also pitching service providers the Videoscape Media Suite (a content management system) and the ‘Conductor’ product, which controls which subscribers have access to this content.

Cisco Systems' bet is that consumers will be willing to pay a service provider for the ease of having all of this content delivered via one easy-to-use device, even if the larger portion of that content is already freely available by other means.

The vendor is also hoping that service providers will use Cisco as a one-stop shop for building out the infrastructure required to offer video services. Beyond the five ‘Videoscape’ products announced, Cisco can also provide the telcos networking products (the ‘medianet’ portfolio) that aim to guarantee the quality of the media experience delivered to subscribers.

Cisco named Telstra as a launch customer for the 'Videoscape' platform.

“Cisco is currently working with several major global service provider customers, including Telstra, to enable next-generation video experiences through the Videoscape platform,” the networking vendor said in a press release.

But Telstra has since confirmed with iTnews that it is not (at least, not yet) specifically a customer of the Videoscape products.

The telco has instead used products in Cisco’s medianet portfolio to build its content delivery system.

Telstra would be an unlikely customer for the Videoscape set-top box given it has already released its own media player, the T-Box.

“Our CDN supports the breadth and depth of content that gives our customers choice and reliability to download and access their favourite movies and programs to the TV using our T-Box media player, through direct download to the TV, or via the PC,” Thodey said in a statement.

A representative from Cisco Systems told iTnews that the its Australian telco partner was "committed to delivering the Videoscape experience and are trialing other key components of the solution."