In a previous blog post here I spoke about a number of issues surrounding Video over IP. All of these issues were of a non-technical nature and one of them specifically addressed the User Interface or I should say….the lack of a good User Interface. Well, I’ve been “schooled” by a little company in Switzerland named Sierre Energie.
Sierre Energie is an energy provider nestled in the Swiss Alps in the beautiful Valais region of Switzerland surrounded by vineyards and cheesemakers. They have a telecommunications daughter company who has laid Fiber Optics to every household and business in their region. As if trenching fiber wasn’t enough work, they laid an entire active Ethernet service on this physical infrastructure and developed a clever triple-play services offering under the name of Vario. Included in this offering are, Vario TV, Vario Web and Vario Vox; Hopefully you can read French 
The most impressive of all, though, is the Video Over IP User Interface Sierre has developed. When the UI (User Interface) is activated an overlay pops up onto the screen that is relevant to the program on the screen at that time. From that point the user can navigate channels, programs, genres, time of day, etc.
There is also a way of doing TiVo like time shifting through the same Interface. A user can pick a program to be saved and then watch it at a later date. During a program a customer can then pause it, rewind it, fast forward it or save it for an even later date.
The killer application here however is that it all happens in the network. Every video navigation, interface and timeshifting feature is served between a cluster of servers and a large amount of disk space. This fact avoids all of the complexities and expense of having hard drives and intelligent set top boxes at the Consumer Premises.
