BendBroadband has adopted Arris’ Whole Home solution, making it one of the first U.S. service providers (if not the first) to ditch traditional set-tops and cable modems in favor of a central gateway that serves various media to different devices throughout subscribers’ homes.
Arris’ Whole Home approach replaces the combination of cable set-top boxes, E-MTAs, cable modems and wireless Wi-Fi routers with two devices, a central server, and a video receiver. The company’s Media Gateway is a converged multi-services platform that provides integrated multimedia entertainment to the entire home, and its Media Player can be distributed around the house, one per TV.
The Media Gateway includes a six-tuner, multi-room HD DVR with 500 GB HDD storage and a four-port Ethernet home networking router with MoCA 1.1+ home networking technology and optional 802.11n Wi-Fi. It supports broadcast and narrowcast video, video-on-demand, DOCSIS 3.0 high-speed data and two lines of carrier-grade voice over IP, as well as Internet over-the-top and media sharing of user-generated content.
The gateway also supports DLNA to connect with subscriber-owned, DLNA-enabled devices across the home network and CableCard conditional access. When integrated with the Arris’ ConvergeMedia management system’s multi-screen architecture, Arris said, the gateway delivers an on-demand experience that serves both traditional set-tops and advanced IP capable devices.
“The Arris Whole Home solution is a disruptive technology solution that will accelerate the transition of content delivery to an all-IP paradigm,” said Arris Broadband Communication Systems President Bruce McClelland. “We are very happy to be working with BendBroadband, our first announced Media Gateway and Media Player customer, on this innovative approach to charting a new direction in personalized customer experience.”