Advanced TV Set Top Boxes – STB Flexibility

TV system operators need set top boxes that can provide the right mix of features to the right customers at the right cost. Francois Chanet from Sagemcom explained to me at the IBC trade show that TV broadcasters must balance the capabilities of STB with the cost. If the TV broadcaster gives a full featured STB to every customer, they may financially fail. To overcome this, TV broadcasters need to have a mix of STBs with different features capabilities that they can provide to certain types of customers in their systems. To enable this, STBs can come with a removable hard disk drive (HDD) for DVR capability. The initial STB can be provided with no HDD or a small HDD. If the customer subscribes to the DVR service, they can be provided with a HDD that matches their specific needs.