John Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco, presented Videoscape, a hardware and software system for next-generation video viewing, at a news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show here in Las Vegas on Wednesday, but he did not disclose any partners for the technology in the United States.“I think there’s going to be an opportunity to completely redefine the TV experience,” Mr. Chambers said, essentially throwing Cisco’s hat into the ring in the battle for control of the digital living room.
But the news was underwhelming because there was little in the way of concrete product information. Cisco said it would not be demonstrating Videoscape on the show floor, but would demo it privately.
The company did demonstrate on stage though. Videoscape involves an improved set-top box, an on-screen guide that blends TV and Internet video sources, and an ability to effortlessly transition video from television screen to tablet to mobile screen to laptop. It is still a long way from a living room near you, which Mr. Chambers tacitly acknowledged when he said there will be just a “handful” of service providers “that will move very aggressively across the board.”
He said Cisco would also make it possible for service providers — think Time Warner Cable, Verizon, DirecTV, etc. in the United States — to
implement the Videoscape model piece by piece. (Whether they want to, however, is an open question.)
“You’ll see us, just about every quarter, announce tighter relationships with key service providers,” Mr. Chambers predicted as he announced a partnership with Telstra, a communications company in Australia.
Cisco emphasized that it wants to work together with service providers, as opposed to building a standalone hardware solution. After all, the vast majority of the viewing public already has a piece of hardware, a set-top box, that sits near the TV set.
Cisco wants more of its hardware around that set. Along with a Videoscape set-top box that supported both linear TV and Internet video, it placed a media gateway device, which integrated data, voice, and video, and a telepresence set-up in its on-stage living
room on Wednesday.
Cisco’s imagined on-screen guide had three columns. The largest was a slicker version of what we all see on TV now, the live and on-demand options from the service provider. The second column was Web content from partners, and the third was content from “my network.” Mr. Chambers showed a Flip video from a family member in that column.
Mr. Chambers proposed that all of these interactions between devices and networks would require Cisco architecture through and through. The company projects that there are 12 billion “networked devices” today, a number that will rise to 22 billion in 2020. “Video is the next voice,” Mr. Chambers said.
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