4th annual - The Connected Home: bringing down the barriers

.

Conference material - Usernames and Passwords will be issued from 14/3/07

.

Show Highlights

- The Connected Home is Europe's largest specialist show covering the connected home industry.
- Leading worldwide satellite, cable, telco and mobile operators will discuss their vision of the connected home, and how it relates to their industries.
- The showcase area will outline future home and connected home scenarios from the perspective of operators
- Over 2000 attendees already pre-registered for the exhibition
- Co-hosted at the IPTV World Forum and TV Over Net with a joint exhibition of over 200 exhibitors.
- Maximised networking opportunities with IPTV industry representatives.
- Please  click here for our 2007 Connected Home Brochure.

Co hosted with The IPTV World Forum and TV Over Net

Registration Hotline +44 (0)117 3116 222

Some of the speakers inlcude:

For many years the Pay TV industry has existed inside peoples' homes as an island fortress, built to withstand hostile attack from hackers and preserve the valuable premium content that sustains its business. Cable and satellite operators prevented television or movies from moving beyond their own customer premise equipment, neither needing or seeking close relations with other Consumer Electronics devices. But that is all about to change and one of the leading themes of The Connected Home 2007 will be the implications of increased openness - including the challenges and opportunities presented when set-top boxes and Digital Video Recorders (DVR) can exchange content with the PC and vice-versa.

The winds of change are already blowing. DIRECTV and Microsoft are working on ways to enable the satellite operator's content to be transferred to Windows PCs, the Xbox 360 entertainment console and directly onto suitable handheld devices. This includes "a broad range of high-definition, exclusive and original programming" from one of the world's foremost Pay TV providers. The aim is that content should also be moved in the other direction onto a DIRECTV set-top box, which means music, video (including home movies) and pictures from the PC can be viewed on the television.

Following on from better picture quality and channel choice, then content on-demand, content mobility both within and beyond the subscriber home is going to be the next mantra for the digital Pay TV industry. What are the revenue rewards for allowing content to be moved freely and what kind of business models will develop for content mobility? When will the enabling home gateway technologies be available? Is content rights management sufficiently flexible to track and manage content 'transactions' between multiple devices? Is content security robust enough? These are just some of the issues that will be addressed at The Connected Home, where thought-leaders and technology experts will ponder what TV/PC convergence means for the industry.

The conference will review content protection for home networking – and how it can support increased content mobility and ultimately the concept of peer-to-peer video distribution (super-distribution). Time will be devoted to the so-called CA-to-DRM bridges that provide interoperability between traditional Pay TV content protection systems and CE devices, and the current work towards the development of true DRM standards. We will be looking at home gateway technologies and how they will evolve to support content mobility, and assessing the many home networking technologies, both wired and wireless, and their role in supporting the connected home of the future.

Networking technologies are already high on the agenda for cable, satellite and IPTV providers as they deploy multi-room Pay TV services for both standard-definition and high-definition TV. The Connected Home will assess the progress of multi-room services - including multi-room DVR - and the impact they are having on revenues, customer satisfaction and CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) development. Broadband data services will be thoroughly covered with assessments of new access technologies like ADSL2+ and VDSL for telcos, and Wideband (turbo-button) broadband over coax for cable.

The emergence of Voice over IP means that voice services will increasingly become part of the broadband data service offered by ISPs, cable operators and DSL/FTTH providers and VoIP will be another important theme of this event. IP telephony services are currently limited to PC-based applications and 'virtual' IP handsets but it will not be long before DECT wireless phones are connected via the broadband modem too. The deployment of voice-enabled modems plus innovations in IP telephony user interfaces will be addressed, together with the wider possibilities for convergence of voice, data and video services in the customer premise.

Because of their potential impact on how consumers behave at home, and which devices they use to access content, our 2007 event will also touch upon the market for mobile handheld devices. Is a WiFi-enabled Internet browser on the Sony PlayStation Portable a threat to traditional broadband service providers who have come to expect a monopoly on broadband provision within their own subscriber homes? Will mobile phone TV draw viewers - and especially younger viewers - away from the living room TV and onto what are, in effect, competitive networks? The advent of mobile multimedia devices will have an increasing impact on the connected home as DVR content is downloaded onto portable DVRs or even direct onto memory-enabled mobile phones, and this year's event will recognise this fact.

The Connected Home will encompass threats and opportunities, revenue generating realism and forward-thinking. If you have a professional interest in delivering or enabling infotainment within a connected home environment, this is a must-attend event for 2007.