Interview with Patrick Henry, CEO, Entropic (PART 1)
Entropic, established in 2001, has been focused on Home Entertainment networking. It provides chipsets along with software in this segment. C-Link, its flagship product allows the sharing of multimedia content over COAX infrastructure. The company recently acquired RFIC providers RF Magic and Israel based Arabella Softwares.
Your market focus is home entertainment networking and broadband access. What changes have you witnessed in these markets over the past six years, and what have those changes meant for you as a chipset vendor?
The home networking space historically has centered around data and voice. We are seeing an emerging trend toward digital entertainment including streaming video. The vision of Entropic is to capitalize on this trend. The other trend we are capitalizing upon is the need for higher speed which out chipset facilitates.
c-LINK is your flagship product. Can you share with us its current market status in terms of shipments and other data?
Our growth has been spectacular. We have shipped cumulatively more than five million c.LINK chipsets.
Which companies or technologies do you consider to be your nearest competition?
We have no direct competition today for MoCA-based (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) products. There are a number of companies out there who are working on MoCA chipsets including Conexant and Broadcom, but neither is in production. We also compete with a number of alternatives based on other mediums including power line, phone line and wireless technologies. All have their strengths and weaknesses, but we feel coax and the MoCA standard are best for video.
In the broadband access market, there is no direct product competition to c.LINK, but we are competing with other technologies like the VDSL2, DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems and FTTP.
Does your in-house entertainment sharing technology save money for the end user or do they have to still buy some additional boxes?
Overtime, the implementation of c.LINK technology should translate into fewer devices for the consumer. c.LINK’s value proposition is multi-room DVR. This means if you have a digital video recorder in one room of the house, you can access the stored content on that box from other rooms of the house. c.LINK helps lower costs because of its functionality and performance. Only one set top box needs a hard disk drive.
Your product seems to be geared more toward the cable industry. Does that not limit your market?
Though coax is our medium, all telephone, cable and satellite companies plan to use in-home coax in North America for the home networking of digital entertainment. We really have a solution that fits all of the service provider segments.
Which geographic areas are you focused on?
The U.S. and Japan are the only geographies which have dual and multiple digital TV household penetration of DVRs. In U.S. there are more than three TVs per household. Penetration of DVRs is close to 20 percent. U.S. has more than 20 percent penetration of HDTV. All these trends beg for a technology like ours.
Are you getting any traction outside the US?
Outside the U.S., the market opportunity lies with geographies that have significant coaxial infrastructure like Northern Europe, Japan, Korea and China.
Cable is a superior network medium for video currently. What happens when the telcos upgrade their last mile networks to fiber? Will your technology still be relevant?
More content to the home means more content sharing around the home. Fiber to the home means more content at faster speeds. This is good for us. Verizon is providing fiber to the premises (FTTP) as part of their FiOS TV build out, and uses coax in the house. They use MoCA-based products for providing the content inside the house.
Most people want to avoid paying for additional TV cable connections. How does that affect or improve your prospects?
The prospects are actually very good. There are around 110 million TV households in the U.S. 65 million subscribe to cable TV and 28 million subscribe to satellite TV service. So by that definition all of those TVs in those homes are relevant for DVR and have a coax jack next to them. We think a vast majority will use multi-link DVR with as much as 60 percent penetration over the next few years. You really don’t need to add a jack or anything to the TV because the coax jack is already next to the TV.
With our technology, there is no need for extra connections. We enable current video sources to be distributed to and around the home. This actually helps service providers provide additional services over an already installed network.
