The communications and entertainment industries get a look this week at the trade show planning to become the main event for next-generation converged service providers when NXTcomm kicks off at McCormick Place in Chicago. The event hopes to draw 20,000 visitors. But, more important, it hopes to attract not only the telecom equipment manufacturers and suppliers that have traditionally attended shows sponsored by USTelecom and the Telecommunications Industry Association, but also content creators, enterprise customers and the full gamut of competitive service providers.

Video is very much a theme of this year's event as IPTV takes center stage, and Internet video makes its presence felt. Middleware players led by Microsoft (see story on page 10) and including Minvera, Nokia Siemens/Myrio, global success stories Thomson/Grass Valley and UTStarcom, and upstarts Kasenna and Seachange are all promising new functionality. Alcatel-Lucent is debuting new converged applications, and two players — Falcon/IP Complete and SES Americom/National Rural Telecommunications Association — are showing end-to-end IPTV, including content targeted at smaller and rural telcos. Ericsson is showing how IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) technology can link IPTV at home with mobile handsets outside the house and PCs as well. Cisco Systems is demonstrating end-to-end IPTV, including a complete set-top box family, which runs on multiple middleware platforms to provide choices for service providers.

Set-top box-maker Amino is introducing the personal video recorder (PVR) version of its popular AmiNET line, while Entone is introducing both PVR and high-definition capabilities for its Hydra IP Video Gateway, which eliminates the need for multiple set-top boxes in the home and creates a whole-home PVR with either Home Phone Network Alliance or Multimedia over Cable Alliance technology. There will also be new content protection technology from companies such as Verimatrix and Widevine.

Wireless also will have a presence at NXTcomm. Enterprise messaging provider Mirapoint is unveiling its mobile access strategy this week, kicking off its entry into wireless with a deal with Nokia. Mirapoint is melding its secure e-mail and calendar applications with Nokia's Intellisync Mobile Suite, extending Mirapoint's secure e-mail and calendar synchronization to mobile phones running the Intellisync client.

As always, optical and access technologies will be major players, both on the show floor and in multiple conference sessions. Expanded previews of these technologies can be found elsewhere on the next page and on page 20.

IMS is not going unnoticed this year, although it's moved somewhat out of the hype spotlight and more into the reality realm at the IMS Forum booth. Member companies from the forum will be presenting the results of Plugfest II, a mash-up at the UNH Interoperability Lab held earlier this month. And if you like hard data, you might want to visit VRB Power Systems and run your hands over something called vanadium — atomic number 23, nestled between chromium and titanium (see story on page 52). But on the show floor — depending on the layout — it will be nestled into booth 5442 somewhere between the FCC and Electro Wire.

Companies such as Dialogic, Performance Technologies and Tekelec are showing what's new in signaling with demonstrations of new signaling routers and media processing technologies.