NCTA Opens Window to Switched Channels
Cable Offers to Develop ‘Tuning Resolver’ for CE Devices to Receive Switched Linear Channels
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 8/24/2007 4:29:00 PM
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, while maintaining that the industry’s OpenCable Platform technology is the “optimal path” for accessing two-way cable services, has offered to develop a small “tuning resolver” to allow consumer-electronics devices to receive switched linear channels, the group said in a filing Friday with the Federal Communications Commission.
The NCTA said cable has worked with individual consumer-electronics makers – it cited TiVo – to develop a solution that can provide two-way switched digital video channels to unidirectional digital cable products. This tuning resolver option requires a firmware update and a Universal Serial Bus 2.0 device.
The tuning resolver, the NCTA said, is “for CE manufacturers who believe that all [unidirectional digital cable products] need for success as a ‘good’ product is the ability to receive ‘switched’ linear cable channels.”
The NCTA’s proposal comes after Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) voiced concerns in May that switched digital video rollouts would limit the usefulness of third-party set-tops, like TiVo’s digital video recorders.
Besides OpenCable and the switched-channel resolver, the NCTA had a third suggestion: a standard for interactive services that would work across all multichannel video providers -- not just cable, but also on satellite and telephone companies’ networks. “The cable industry could work on such a solution should the commission bring those networks into meaningful regulation,” the association said.
But the NCTA reiterated that the OpenCable platform is its preferred standard for set-top boxes, TVs and other digital devices to access video-on-demand, electronic program guides, switched digital video or other services.
The Consumer Electronics Association has already rejected the OpenCable option as unduly expensive and cumbersome to develop into products. Instead, the CEA wants cable to provide a way for devices to support “basic” interactive services, including VOD, SDV, EPGs and pay-per-view, in the way that low-end digital cable set-top boxes do today.
In its comments to the FCC Friday, the NCTA opposed the CEA’s proposal, saying it would “strip away the most exciting interactive services and features that distinguishes [sic] cable from its competitors.”
Some consumer-electronics companies have been receptive to OpenCable, most notably early licensees LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung Electronics.
Most recently, Intel in June said it would license the OpenCable Platform -- previously called the OpenCable Application Platform, or OCAP -- for future system-on-a-chip products. As part of that announcement, Comcast said it would work with Intel to bring an OCAP-enabled set-top box to market in the next two years.
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