CES: Cisco Launches Cloud-Enabled Videoscape For Immersive TV

Cisco is reaching out to broadband service providers with Cisco Videoscape, a platform designed to unite entertainment, social media, communications, and mobility to create “an immersive TV experience.” Telstra’s already on board, and while Videoscape is currently aimed at enhancing the consumer experience, there’s plenty of service provider potential.

The Videosphere platform as it exists today, as per Cisco’s press release, includes:

For consumers, the pitch is simple and perfectly in line with recent Cisco telepresence efforts. Combine the Internet and TV to give the ability to choose to watch a web video as easily as you watch something from your DVR or even a live cable broadcast. And Videoscape is built to integrate with those Cisco telepresence offerings to give everything on one box.

But for service providers, Cisco indicates the value proposition is twofold: service differentiation and extended service reach. If you can offer customers an IP device that extends their television to their Apple iPad, that’s a tremendous value-add. And since it’s all over the network, you can deliver this service to any customer, regardless of geographic location.

There’s some skepticism about Cisco’s push to bring telepresence into the home and SMB, especially when competitors like Skype offer a good-enough alternative for free. But will Cisco Videoscape promote those efforts?

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