CATV trends and video dialtone-technologies and challenges

The cable television network infrastructure and the CATV market in the United States are undergoing a major technological change. Opportunities for interactive television and multimedia to every home seem more real than ever. The ability for the new cable network, in the form of fiber-coax combination, to provide wide bandwidth will make possible new applications. Application of this type are movies-on-demand, interactive newspaper, networked libraries, interactive home shopping, etc. In order to provide cost effective implementations, a number of technology barriers must be overcome. These applications stress every aspect of communication, computation, network, and user-interface technology we know of today. We address the technology and the challenges to make these applications work. This intricate, expensive technology and infrastructure require cooperation between a number of industry partners and network providers. This demands a need for standards covering protocols and interfaces; one common framework is video dialtone. The technical aspects of video dialtone are discussed from a signalling point of view.<>