Online Media Ltd, the Acorn Computer Group Plc division that will be the main beneficiary from the #17m rights issue announced last month (CI No 2,609), says about 100 households have already joined the second phase of the Cambridge Interactive TV trial. Main players in the trial, which is the only totally Asynchronous Transfer Mode-based one around, are Online Media, which is acting as the systems integrator and provider of the set top boxes; Cambridge Cable Ltd,providing one video server and the network infrastructure, which it is currently expanding to cope with high bandwidth digital data; ICL Plc,is about to supply a larger scale server for phase two; Cambridge-based S J Research Ltd,providing the Aysnchronous Transfer Mode switches that are based on the 32-bit ARM chip; and Advanced Telecommunications Modules Ltd, launched last year when it was spun out from Olivetti Research Ltd’s Cambridge laboratory (CI No 2,496), providing the switching at the server-side, based on its low-cost Async hronous Transfer Mode products, also based on the ARM RISC.
Mirror roll out
Since the trial started in September last year (CI No 2,513), the local television station, Anglia has joined, as have National Westminster Bank Plc and Independent Television News Ltd, as service providers. Online Media says another eight providers are about to be announced, two of which will provide audio services, another retail services and the rest will be information providers. Online Media was formed in April 1994 and needs the further planned investment from its parent as it does not envisage large-scale exploitation of the interactive multimedia market until 1997 at the earliest. The second phase of the trial won’t finish until the end of this year and then there is a third phase that will attempt to mirror what a real roll-out of the service would be like. One of the things Online Media thinks might hold back interactive services worldwide is the lack of standards. This makes it difficult for people writing applications as they then have to write them to suit each system. Malcolm Bird, the chief executive, has suggested a ‘neutral’ standard, where all information is translated by the set-top box software and to this end Online Media is also working with media authoring tool providers to develop content that can be run on different boxes and is keenly watching the debate on network standards, which it sees as vitally important. Naturally, it would like its box to be compatible with a range of video-on-demand networks and says that the mature Acorn RISC OS it uses means that it can already suport multiple servers. Earlier this year, Online Media and San Francisco, California-based Macromedia Inc signed a joint development and marketing agreement that gave Online the right to become a full implementation partner in Macromedia’s Portable Player programme (CI No 2,584).
By Maya Anaokar
This programme is both a strategy and a technology and means that an application written using the Macromedia Director and Authorware authoring tools will not have to be re-written separately for the variety of proprietary set-top boxes on the market. Macromedia’s philosophy is slightly at variance with Bird’s call for a neutral standard, as it does not believe there needs to be a standard for set-top devices or games systems: if applications are written using its tools then they can be run on the set-top box. However, their goals are clearly the same. Online Media’s set-top box is currently a first generation one with an Asynchronous Transfer Mode interface, Motion Picture Expert Group I video board, which can be replaced for a higher level, serial port and parallel port, and the company describes the box as intelligent. The company has no definite prices but says it hopes to sell the product for a little under #400, and the low cost is one of the attractions of using the 32-bit ARM chip. Version two is still a prototype. With it Online Media’s main aim is to integrate as many of the box’s functions as possible directly into the A
RM 7000 chip. An infra-red keyboard control module is also being developed. By the third generation, Online Media plans a set-top box whose entire functionality is contained on the chip and where the Motion Picture Experts Group decoding is done in software, all of which should reduce the cost to a fairly affordable $300, a level the consortium has identified as the point of entry for the service to take off. Its timetable for the boxes is MPEG 2 by August, second-generation boxes and higher data rates and the adoption of standards by the end of the year. In the first phase, 10 households of families of employees of the consortium were connected to the network using fibre right into the house. This type of connection has been deemed as too expensive and the households connected in phase two have been linked using coaxial cable with data rates of up to 2Mbps. Problems that phase one discovered included difficulty with bursty data caused when data was sent through the switches on the Asynchronous Transfer Mode network; installation of the equipment taking longer than the consortium had expected; and some dips in reliability of provision of services to end users. The company says it has spent considerable effort making text look good on people’s fairly low resolution television screens, as video-on-demand is a small part of the service the consortium offers, nor does it believe that it’ll be a particularly big money-maker in the fully fledged commercial service. The network itself is a bi-directional, fibre-based, fully-switched Asynchronous Transfer Mode one, with data rates of 155Mbps from the cable company premises to the kerb over fibre.
Static content
At the kerb is a box that serves 50 users and from this point runs the coaxial connection, with data rates of 2Mbps. S J Research has been providing the technology to enable high data transfer rates on a hybrid fibre-coaxial system. Online Media says this will be raised to 8Mbps by the middle of this year. Actual static content for the service has been held in Joint Photographic Expert Group images on an Acorn RiscPC that also acts as the host for networking connection management, user authorisation and usage logging. Motion pictures are stored on a Advanced Telecommunications Modules DiscBrick ARM-based video server with capacity of 20Gb capable of 25 simultaneous video streams. ICL’s server will have hundreds of Gigabytes of capacity and support hundreds of simultaneous streams. About 250 users will take part in the second phase of the trial. In this phase, the range of services has been increased: there is now on-line shopping, banking and the ability to download games. These three are expected to be the big moneymakers, and phase two will take care to analyse the different services on which people are prepared to spend real money.
