CES Under Wraps: Cisco Adds ActiveVideo To Videoscape Offering

At CES, Cisco announced its Videoscape TV platform that combines digital TV and online video content with social media and communications applications now will help enable new "video in the cloud" services aimed at driving new revenue streams for service providers. The big story is that Videoscape now includes ActiveVideo Networks’ CloudTV network-based interactive TV software.

According to Jeff Miller, ActiveVideo’s president/CEO, “ActiveVideo’s CloudTV solution cuts through the device chaos created by diverse set-top box models and helps Videoscape become widely and quickly deployed. We are delighted to have the world’s largest networking infrastructure provider expanding ActiveVideo’s value proposition globally and helping our customers deliver uniform viewing experience to their subscribers.”

Adds Jesper Andersen, senior vice president and GM/Service Provider Video Technology Group at Cisco, "We have spent the last year refining and advancing our Videoscape platform with new capabilities that will support our customers’ biggest challenges. Only Videoscape offers the combined power of the network, cloud and client to help service providers accelerate time to market with new multi-screen video services. With our new cloud components in play, we are confident we can help our customers open new programming distribution channels and advertising possibilities to drive new revenue."

Here are some of the cloud-based services Cisco is touting in Las Vegas:

>> 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) that 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 that advance service providers’ capabilities to deliver video content to second and third screens through expanded video format support such as adaptive bit rate technologies (that optimize delivery of services to each screen for the best possible quality of experience).
>> Videoscape Content Delivery Network Analytics that deliver advanced reporting so that service providers can gather and view more in-depth information from their Cisco Content Delivery System or third-party CDN deployment, and analyze network performance in real time.