ANGA CABLE 2012 – Cologne. Liberty Global’s Horizon gateway will be rolled out on UPC Netherlands during Q3, 2012, Mike Fries told the audience at this morning’s opening congress session.
Following the launch in the Netherlands, Switzerland’s UPC Cable will follow later this year, and the German introduction on Unitymedia and Kabel BW is planned for the first quarter of 2013. Both the NDS stand and the Unitymedia stand at ANGA Cable have a ‘working box’, but only a Flash demo is being displayed.
Broadband TV News understands that 10,000 Dutch homes have been earmarked for the initial deployment.
“Horizon is a game changer for cable,” said Fries, “There are three things we do well on cable, we have a fast pipe, we have a stable customer base and we bring all the content.
“But there are also three things we don’t do well. You can’t see our content on different devices, we cannot bring web content apps to the TV and our user interface is horrible.
“What this device will do is solve these problems. It is going to stream content to PC and tablets, there is thousands of hour of on-demand, linear streaming to tablet, adding personal content. It is going to be a wireless network for the home with one media server. And there is a beautiful user interface with 3D graphics. It not quite Apple, but it is pretty good!”
Horizon was first mooted in an interview given by Fries at CES in 2010. It has subsequently been subject to constant speculation as to the timetable for its deployment and the state of its technology. As long ago as June 2011, Fries told the Denver Business Journal that trials would begin the following month.
