At CES the cable TV industry’s non-profit research arm Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (AKA, CableLabs) announced a branding strategy and several affiliate partners for OCAP, the Open Cable Application Platform initiative. CableLabs (Louisville, Colorado; www.cablelabs.com) announced "Tru2way" as the new brand for the OCAP standard for cable video transport that includes a requirement for a Java based software interpreter.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

In a way this is the conclusion to the long history of the ill-fated cable card initiative - the brainchild of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. It also serves as a prime example of why government should not get involved in product marketing.

By law, cable companies were to separate out security and conditional access from cable Set-Top-Boxes (STBs) to allow CE retailers to sell brand name devices direct to consumers in a push toward bringing more competition into the STB market.

The plan eventually morphed into "CableCard," with security and conditional access data to be made available on a smart "CableCard" from the local cable company. The "CableCard" talks to the electronics embedded in the TV.

If you have never heard of (or barely remember) CableCard, it’s because the first generation roll out was crippled from the start, with support for one-way (uni-directional) access only. Not included were the lucrative added-value services for the cable companies like Video on Demand, or any other interactivity with the cable head-end. So there was no incentive to push this option on cable users, and anyone who really knew about it, had to practically demand a cable card from the cable vendor. CE manufacturers didn’t like the plan either, because it created additional BOM costs (a killer in any low margin industry), as well as the need for additional SKUs in retail. For the consumer, it meant higher costs. Virtually a no-win for everyone involved.

To address these problems the industry came up with the Downloadable Conditional Access System, DCAS for short. This is another way to skin the cat and keep compliance with the ‘96 Telecommunications Act. DCAS puts the security functions of a CableCARD into a software program that can be downloaded to any "host device," like a smart TV. This is done via the OCAP with a middleware stack that will allow DCAS to run standard APIs (application program interfaces) inside your TV, thus turning your set into a computer, or rather "a host processor running software stacks." TV makers don’t like the "c" word — it scares customers away.

The tipping point occurred at the January 2006 CES when the major cable operators (representing 65% of cable households) agreed to adopt OCAP. The other highlight — the software would deploy based on a Java platform licensed from Sun Microsystems, to the consternation of Microsoft lobbying hard to get into the TV space.

So the result of the lawmaker’s efforts to open up competition between set-top-box makers through specific mandates finally emerges a full 12 years (and endless rounds of bickering between the cable industry and consumer electronics association) later. Now Tru2way technology enables consumers to access two-way digital cable programming without the need for a cable operator-supplied set-top box. We are also told operators have committed to deploy support for the Tru2way platform in service areas covering more than 90M US homes by the end of 2008.

Bottom line, we’ll see more features and functionality as the "boob tube" (remember when they called it that?) morphs into the centerpiece of the digital era. Conditional access downloads to support cable feeds are a piece of cake in this IPTV powered society where local streaming of HD content wirelessly, or through the power line plug, has become the norm (at least on the CES trade-show floor).

But in the end it’s good to know that it only took 12 years for the government’s vision to come to pass. And who is the benefactor of all this effort? Probably a couple of high priced law firms, consultants and, perhaps, a bureaucrat or two. With the key lesson, let the market do its thing and keep government regulation to a minimum.

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