Time Warner Cable: 150K OpenCable Boxes Deployed
OCAP Set-Tops Are Now Standard Configuration In the Operator’s Markets That Used the Passport Guide
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 10/17/2007 4:22:00 PM
New York -- Time Warner Cable has deployed 150,000 set-top boxes running the OpenCable Platform – the cable industry’s specification for two-way services like video-on-demand – including 50,000 units in the New York region, according to senior vice president of strategy and development Kevin Leddy.
The operator is providing OpenCable-based boxes to new digital-cable subscribers in markets that had been using the Passport interactive program guide, Leddy said. Time Warner Cable used the Passport IPG, developed by Aptiv Digital (now part of Gemstar-TV Guide International), in Milwaukee, Kansas City, Mo., and Lincoln, Neb., among other divisions.
Time Warner Cable is deploying OpenCable-based boxes from Samsung Electronics, but Leddy noted that Scientific Atlanta has supplied more than half of those the operator deployed to date and that SA would represent the majority of OpenCable boxes it deploys in the future.
By the end of 2008, Time Warner Cable expects to have deployed OpenCable technology in all its divisions, as do Comcast, Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems and Bright House Networks. That group of operators represents 91 million households in 145 designated market areas, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
Leddy described Time Warner Cable’s OpenCable deployments at a roundtable discussion for reporters hosted by the NCTA to provide operators’ perspective on the two-way cable issue.
The OpenCable Platform – previously referred to as the OpenCable Application Platform, or OCAP – is the solution the industry has proposed to the Federal Communications Commission as the standard means of allowing third-party consumer-electronics devices, like TVs, to access interactive cable services, like VOD and switched digital video.
The Consumer Electronics Association wants the FCC to require cable to adopt a new specification the association referred to as DCR+ (“digital cable ready plus”), which would define protocols for VOD, SDV, pay-per-view and electronic program guides. The CEA has complained that OpenCable is too cumbersome to implement and objected to CableLabs having control over the technology.
Cable providers contend that developing and supporting DCR+ would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, while at the same time stifling development of new two-way services not specified under DCR+ (such as caller ID on the TV). In addition, the cable industry has argued, OpenCable is the only feasible path toward providing a standard by the February 2009 digital-TV transition.
“OpenCable is a marketplace-driven solution, and it’s in the market,” Comcast senior vice president of strategic planning Mark Coblitz said at the presentation Wednesday. “We’re willing to have national rules from the FCC to hold our feet to the fire, to make sure [OpenCable] happens.”
NCTA VP and general counsel Neal Goldberg pointed out the CEA’s proposal would require cable operators to deploy at least 20% of their set-tops based on DCR+. “It’s common reliance gone amok,” he said.
Meanwhile, Leddy said the cost differential between OpenCable-based devices and analogous proprietary digital set-tops and is minimal. “The premium we’re paying [for OCAP set-tops] is a few dollars,” he said
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I have an OCAP box now. Unfortunately it's also a Mystro Digital
Navigator box. It has quite a few quirks, in my opinion, or divergences
from my old DVR, non HD, also made by S A. You can't swap tuners
without going through picture in picture, and for some reason it doesn't
buffer when the TV is not on. Why does the TV have to be on when the
box is on?
Kent Gibbons - 10/30/2007 7:42:00 PM EDT -
its too bad most ocap deployed cable boxes running twc's navigator (mystro) software is buggy. there are tons are threads on message boards complaining of the problem yet twc keeps rolling this out
raul - 10/20/2007 4:22:00 PM EDT
