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CES 201: Cisco Unveils Videoscape Software

LAS VEGAS – If you were expecting any earth-shattering
hardware to be unveiled at the Cisco press conference here, you’d be sadly
mistaken – no new Scientific Atlanta set-tops, Flip cameras, Linksys routers or
UMI telepresence systems, all divisions of the networking giant.

Instead CEO John Chambers introduced Videoscape, “a software
architectural play across the Internet” that he hoped would reinvent the TV
experience.

 His vision – which he
detailed over the course of the press conference including the requisite demo –
had consumers accessing infinite sources of video over a cloud-based network so
they could watch anything they’d like on any authorized device. 

According to Cisco, Videoscape is a comprehensive
TV platform for service providers that brings together digital TV and online
content with social media and communications applications to create a new,
truly immersive home and mobile video entertainment experience.

 It’s
a breathtaking vision – articulated by many companies over recent years,
including a similar vision announced by Sony later in the day. Chambers likened
his announcement to one he made a decade earlier when he stated the Internet
would be driven by data and he was proven right; now he was saying the next
generation would be driven by video in all its forms – from cable TV shows to
homemade YouTube videos and everything in between. He admitted Videoscape was
in its early stages and more announcements would be made during the year. As if
to show just how difficult the journey would be, he showed an animated chart
detailing all of the steps required to make this happen “so it would be simple
for the 2-year-old as well as the 87-year-old.”

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