iO-TV: One Family's Experience With the Latest Cable Service

(December 5, 2002 ) Cablevision has a new service for southern Westchester - i0-TV - designed to expand the quantity, quality and flexibility of TV programming. This service adds a host of new channels and delivers them via digital signal, which provides sharper images and cd-quality sound. An additional feature is "on demand" viewing of programs from assorted sources, including HBO-on-Demand, Showtime-on-Demand and commercial-free music channels.

The service is new to Southern Westchester, and all the bugs have yet to be worked out: installation can be complicated and the on-demand feature may not always work at any given moment. Nevertheless, after more than two weeks of use, I give a qualifed "thumbs-up" to iO-TV based on its ability to deliver a dramatic improvement in picture quality and program selection.

Our family's experience with Cablevision and their new service may help you decide if you're ready to take the iO plunge.

A Challenging Installation

Our home is a great test of whether Cablevision's installers can adapt their newest technology to the "spaghetti wiring" that is typical inside of many homes. I personally installed every inch of our in-house wiring, and it shows. The installers were politely unimpressed with my handiwork, especially my bargain splitters and wires, and my creative dual-use strategies. Doesn't everyone use cable wiring to hang paint-brushes and beach-towels?

It took four service visits, on four different days, to complete installation of all three sets we ordered. While our home must be a particular challenge, Cablevision also has some wrinkles to iron out, particularly in the way it communicates with its dispatchers and installers.

Our first in-house technician came to install the service only to find that the outside technician had yet to provide a signal to our streetside pole. A second technician arrived without an appointment and without clear instructions. A third installer showed up with the wrong number of cable boxes. The fourth had been assigned four installations between 11 and 3 and was still diligently working on ours - his first that day - at 3:30 in the afternoon. I appreciated his commitment to getting our service working, but his other three customers must have been frustrated as the day went on.

The Basics: Quality and Quantity

The first thing apparent with iO-TV is that the picture quality is better - much better. All of the channels are crisp and clear, perhaps because the family of squirrels on our roof is no longer sharing our signal.

The digital service comes with a new channel guide. Instead of the crawler that combines ads and takes many minutes to display all the channels, the new guide is under your control and works much like a web site. You can search by channel, title or category (like comedy or action) and for movies, you can click on an "info" button that provides a capsule of the plot, stars, and ratings. Highlighting the show and hitting the "select" button causes your show to appear. If you'd rather channel-surf, you get a bar on the bottom indicating the station and title of the show, even when there's an ad on the screen.

You'll appreciate the guide to get you through all the programming available with even the lowest level of iO service. The basic package, for $9.95 more than what you are paying today, provides the digital signal, the new channel guide, 27 new digital channels similar to the regular menu of history, nature and cartoon cable channels, and 50 channels of commercial-free music. You also get access to a wider selection of shows on a digital pay-per-view basis.

The music channels add more than I expected. I dislike all the chatter and ads on most radio stations, regret the loss of some of our classical FM stations, and (having lived and worked a lot in the South) miss a good country-music station. The music channels fill this gap.

All these services come through a new digital set-top box, which rents for the same fee as the old set-top box. You'll need a new box for each TV you want upgraded, but you can continue to get standard service for the rest of your sets, as you do now, with no box.

One quibble is with the iO-TV remote control, which permit you to avoide having five other remotes cluttering your coffee table. Unfortunately iO's remote has no extra programmable buttons to cover the extra equipment attached to many home theater systems. We'll need to hold on to at least one other clicker to control the amps.

More Quantity: On-Demand Programming

A distinctive feature of iO-TV is its on-demand programming, which is unavailable from its satellite competitors. You select from a wide menu of movies, specials or shows, and Cablevision immediately transmits your choice to your set-top box. If the phone rings, you can pause the show, or rewind and fast-forward as you wish.

At the basic level, you can order from a long menu of pay-per-view movies, and from another menu of free services such as Mag Rack which includes videos on health, cooking, automobiles, religion and pet care and other topics. For example, the pet care section includes a short video on "beagle grooming."

A plus for public TV aficionados is "Thirteen-on-Demand," featuring free content from local PBS station WNET-TV. This service is still under development, but the plan is to digitize shows (about 3 dozen at a time) to make them available on demand within an hour or two after they air on Channel Thirteen. Fox-on-Demand is also available, but with limited programming at the moment.

The on-demand feature is excellent -- when it works. The video is as crisp and clear as the scheduled programming, and you get control of the timing. However, during the first week, when I "demanded" a show, I received more error messages than movies. After a series of technical support calls, I'm now receiving my choice about 90% of the time.

Even More Quantity: Upgrades on Programming

Two upgrade packages are available. The "silver" package costs $64.95 (total, not in addition to what you pay now) and you get the premium movie channels plus 24 more movie HBO-Starz-Encore channels. For $84.95 you get the "gold" package that includes several dozen more Showtime-TMC-Max channels.

Prices appear to be set competitively with Direct TV and Dish Network, the two satellite competitors. According to Cablevision, the iO-TV charges will not be rising when the other cable charges increase in January, 2003.

Additional upgrades are available for the premium movie channels. If you already subscribe to HBO, you can get HBO-on-Demand for an additional $4.95 per month. Similarly, Showtime subscribers can get Showtime-on-Demand for $4.95 per month.

By the time you're through upgrading your program selections, you'll be inundated with choice. The Complete Channel Listing includes hundreds of choices, including the standard channels, the various movie channels, and the on-demand shows. Figuring out what to watch becomes a major challenge, and random channel-surfing is impractical. iO-TV's program guide helps out by allowing you to use the remote to search shows by "theme." You can locate all the comedies or all the action dramas, for example.

But What About Quality?

So, have we found anything to watch? Yes! There is a lot of "junk" but most families should find plenty to watch whenever they want. We had given up on the premium movie channels, finding it easier to get tapes and DVD's at Larchmont Library or Blockbuster. Now we can stay home, make a selection, and view it when we're ready.

Addendum: The Technical Story

By now, you know enough to watch iO-TV. Read on, if you want to know how the thing works.

Cablevision has developed iO-TV based on technology from Scientific-Atlanta technology, the major source of cable television distribution and subscription products. The set-top box you receive is an Explorer 4200 Home Gateway which is designed to support wired and wireless links between home TVs, PCs, PDAs, phones, and other Internet appliances and Scientific-Atlanta's fully interactive digital network. The box features an internal cable modem, and a high-performance graphics and memory interface. Cablevision's downloadable User Guide explains how all this works.

Cablevision has not yet implemented all the features of the Explorer 4200. Eventually, the box should serve as the center of a home appliance network. For example, the device includes a USB port for computer devices like printers and digital cameras, and a standard 10-base-T network connection for computer networking.

Scientific-Atlanta recently released a top-of-the-line set-top box - the Explorer 8000, which appears to be comparable to the Dish PVR 501 for satellite tv. The Explorer 8000 couples interactive services like Web browsing, e-mail, t-commerce (direct sales over tv), and video-on-demand with TIVO-like personal video recording capabilities that allow you to pause, rewind, fast forward, record, and re-play live analog and digital TV programs using a built-in hard drive. Because it has two tuners, this innovative set-top also enables subscribers to simultaneously view and record two channels of programming - and even watch a third pre-recorded program while two live programs are being recorded. Cablevision has not announced whether this model will be made available to Southern Westchester subscribers. If they would support it, the 8000 would be a great enhancement to iO-TV.

The iO-TV set-top box is a computer that is connected to Cablevision's network using an operating system called Power-TV. The operating system is not obvious to the iO-TV user, but it is the key application that stitches together the hardware at Cablevision with the set-top boxes in your home.

Digital cable television is not HDTV , the high-definition signal that will be used by all broadcasters by 2008. Local stations are beginning to broadcast selected shows in the HDTV format, but for now, iO-TV and the Explorer 4200 cannot pass through the HDTV signal.

Technically, Cablevision is primed for growth in many directions: on-demand movies, networked appliances, t-commerce, and more. They've got plenty of challenges from the satellite and personal computer industries, but Cablevision is positioning itself for the competition to come.

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