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SBC's soon-to-be-launched video service will answer critics of telco video strategies by being clearly different than traditional cable and satellite offerings, according to Edward Cholerton, vice president of broadband marketing for the carrier.

Among the differentiators will be whole-house digital video recorder (DVR) capability, virtually limitless content, personalization through the company's alliance with Yahoo and expanded parental control. While not all of those features will be available in the initial offering, which is currently in alpha trials in Texas, the company aims to provide most as a follow-up to the initial launch.

SBC plans to integrate some of its parental control capabilities through its Cingular wireless group.

"[Parental control] is a really big deal now in light of what's going on at the FCC with regards to decency," Cholerton said. "We're going to make it easy for parents to take control of that TV."

SBC's agreement to use Microsoft TV's platform also will yield a whole-house DVR solution that will likely keep the carrier using a premise-based solution for some time. A number of vendors at Supercomm 2005 are beginning to explore the possibility of providing network-based DVR. However, there are some issue with that, Cholerton said.

"When you go to network-based DVR, you've got rights issues with content owners," he said. "The other issue is we don't get to use the network aggregation as well."

The company's initial video, which may be made under the U-verse brand, will include one high-definition stream and three standard-definition streams with enough left over for high-speed data and voice. Over time, SBC wants to allow users to change that profile to increase bandwidth for data, if desired.