It's been a while since I wrote about how to build your own digital cable (aka QAM) headend.

Shortly after I wrote that article, Blonder Tongue released a new HD encoder product that's become our QAM modulation product of choice: the Blonder Tongue HDE-2H-QAM.

Inputs/Outputs: The Blonder Tongue HDE-2H-QAM, like the Adtec HDMI-2-QAM, takes two HD inputs and modulates them both to a single QAM output. The inputs can be passed in via

• HDMI (unencrypted) or
• Component HD (ie YPbPr) + Analog Audio or Digital Audio

Closed-Captioning Support: In addition to the above inputs, the Blonder Tongue HDE-2H-QAM has analog inputs for closed-captioning which it converts and inserts into the final QAM output.

Pricing: The street price for this HD encoder comes in around $6,000 (link: SolidSignal), making it a $3,000 / channel solution. Not bad, considering that about 2 years ago, the least expensive solution for building your own QAM headend was about $10,000 / channel!

Stability: Unlike our experiences with it's Adtec competitor (the Adtec HDMI-2-QAM) the Blonder Tongue HDE-2H-QAM is really stable and reliable. It doesn't lock-up and runs for long periods of time uninterrupted.

Bottom line: The Blonder Tongue HDE-2H-QAM is the QAM modulation / HD encoder that we recommend over all the others. It's robust and stable. It's can be purchased at about $3,000 / channel. And it supports passing closed captioning in the QAM output (which our previous recommendation, the Contemporary Research QMOD-HD, does not support). So if you're trying to build your own digital cable headend, the Blonder Tongue HDE-2H-QAM is the way to go!

Today, we are saying goodbye to TV Trends. Since launching the free, online service in 2009, we have gleaned tons of valuable insight into what's frequently said on U.S. television. We harnessed SnapStream's powerful TV search technology to record lots of TV and then graph mentions, comparing up to 10 keywords at a time. TV Trends would show you the pulse of national news, listing the top, hot and cold trending phrases from ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC and CNN.

It was a fun side project for us here at SnapStream, but all good things must come to an end. On the bright side, you can easily build your own searchable TV archive, just like TV Trends, with SnapStream's TV search appliances. If you have any questions, please e-mail us at sales@snapstream.com.

In memoriam, here's a screenshot of the home page:

And here's a capture of comparative results for "hello" vs. "goodbye" dating from fall 2008 to present:

For a timeless reference point, browse our full index of TV Trends articles:

• TV Trend: Jersey Shore, Snooki fly off the charts!
• What’s the most Googled word?
• Is Apple’s iPad the supernova of tech-launch publicity?
• Television news in 2009: Twitter, infidelity and more
• Analyzing trends on TV with SnapStream TV Trends

And in parting, let us sing "So Long, Farewell" to TV Trends!
Auf wiedersehen, adieu!

I had the pleasure of being invited to guest speak at IACP’s PIO Mid-Year Conference in beautiful Louisville, KY. Louisville has tons to offer besides the Louisville Slugger factory and Churchill Downs. For example, Fourth Street Live is a vibrant downtown area with shopping, wining, dining and outdoor concerts. Just a stone's throw away, the IACP conference was located at the Seelbach, known as the setting of Tom and Daisy Buchanan's wedding in "The Great Gatsby."

At the IACP event itself, a collection of dedicated Public Information Officers (PIOs) from around the Kentucky area and beyond met to trade stories, present cases, mingle, learn, and develop relationships with their fellow colleagues.

I always enjoy spending time with PIOs; they are always professional, always friendly, and always striving to become better at their profession. Serving as the mouthpiece of large and important government organizations, PIOs certainly have their work cut out each and every day. I’m happy to see such great interest in improving, and in many cases, sharing skills with fellow PIOs at these events.

One of the things that I was able to take away from the IACP event was that law enforcement organizations are always looking for ways of improving ways in which they do things. Whether it is mastering techniques for responding to a particular type of event or emergency, responding more effectively and efficiently to the masses, or receiving and disseminating information more efficiently (where SnapStream can help with TV collection and distribution).

There are even federal grants that law enforcement organizations are able to draw on to improve the way their organizations respond to emergency situations. Specifically, if a law enforcement organization is interested in using technology (see: COPS Technology Program, Byrne JAG).

A: Here at SnapStream HQ, we are deeply entrenched in closed captioning since it's a key ingredient in our TV search juice. But every so often, we'll see mistakes in the captions, from a generic typo to a full-blown word massacre. You know, the ones that end up as CC Fails for their inappropriate nature. So is it human or machine error?

It largely comes down to the way the captions were made. 

Real-time captioning. While a faulty decoder or poor signal can produce captioning errors, more often than not they are the result of human error, particularly during live programming. Stenographers are the turbo typists who churn out captions faster than 300 words per minute on a steno machine, which contains 22 keys and code-based phonetics for every word. During live broadcasts, such as the local news and sporting events, every keystroke counts, as all it takes is a single incorrect keystroke to type the phonetic codes for two completely different words. Homonyms and unusual names can prove especially difficult.

Prerecorded captioning. It can take up to 16 hours to caption a one-hour prerecorded program, such as a movie or it sitcom, because captioners use special software to set the placement and duration of the caption on the screen. Thus, you tend to see minimal mistakes.

Speech to text. In smaller markets, TV stations may commonly use non-human transcription methods, like speech-to-text and speech recognition. Though technology has improved significantly, anything automated can't accurately capture all the nuances of language without some degree of error.

SnapSream shall overcome. In most cases, SnapStream's TV search still manages to be very effective with boolean logic. For instance, you can perform perform a "fuzzy" search using the syntax operator ~ to generate results for similar sounding and misspelled terms in the closed captioning data. For example, SNAP~ returns snap, soap, swap, snag and slap. That's the power of our TV search technology, which blends not only closed captioning information, but TV listings information as well.

We held a live, interactive demonstration of SnapStream's new Web Player on Thursday, July 7. Now, here's the video recording for your viewing convenience. Or better yet, attend the second live session we are hosting on Wednesday, July 13 at 3:00 PM EDT to get fully immersed in SnapStream 5.3.

It's no secret that closed captioning data is mission critical to SnapStream's powerful TV search technology. For the deaf or hard-of-hearing, closed-captioned text provides a critical link to the news, entertainment and information that is contained in the audio portion of a television program. Likewise for SnapStream super users, closed captioning serves an equally important purpose, as the data source for the TV search framework.

Because we eat, breathe and snuggle with CC data here at SnapStream, we get a kick out of the silly slipups that arbitrarily appear in televised text. And here's a bit of irony to chew on: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the organization responsible not only for mandating closed captioning, but also for regulating obscenity, indecency and profanity on the air.

Now have a good laugh at these uncensored closed-captioned catastrophes.

Google indexes and searches the dataspace of the Internet. SnapStream indexes and searches the rich information contained in television. It's that simple. Now in our Google Search story, we are searching the internet with the ultimate goal of searching TV — like so many of you are! (Especially those of you who "stumble upon" us at snapstream.com.) When you're on the hunt for a turnkey media monitoring solution... where does Google take you? SnapStream TV Search.

While most software companies start up in Silicon Valley, SnapStream's roots are planted deep in the heart of Texas—in Houston! Houston is the fourth largest city in the USA: home to NASA; oil (that is, black gold); the Astrodome (Eighth Wonder of the World); the Bush family; and Rice University, often referred to as "Harvard of the South."

I know not everyone who reads our blog is local, so just wanted to provide that tidbit of perspective before diving in.

Last Thursday, March 10, was a special day for SnapStream. We participated in the 20th Annual Rice Chili Cook-Off, put on by Rice University's Center for Career Development (CCD). It was a chance for us to meet and mingle with students, casual style, and at the same time, prospect for summer interns and full-time software engineers/testers. (See career opportunities at SnapStream.)

Needless to say, we went to the mattresses. For us, it's go big or or go home. So we went really, really BIG, with a BIG spoon to stir up the heat of our quick-fire TV search technology, which is used by TV shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The View, The Soup... and really almost any talk show that centers around TV clips. The ones that make you wonder "gee, how did they find that?" Chances are, they use SnapStream to do it! (Check out our customers.)

Now back to the Chili Cook-Off. Chris Wilkerson, our IT guy with culinary chops, worked from home the day before the BIG event, to expertly slow-simmer his fire-roasted habanero chili and to bake up a batch of his disappearing jalapeño cornbread. Rice students ate it up, earning us second place in the competition. Whoop, whoop!

Our team had a wonderful time snapping photos of the Rice students, who took total creative liberty posing with the BIG spoon. The pics are all posted on our Facebook page. To all of you at Rice, don't let your fellow spooners remain anonymous (a.k.a. tag your friends!). The only thing left to ponder is, how can we top this stunt next year? Only time will tell, but we can assure you, SnapStream will be back!