Cable Show 2009: CableLabs To Provide Tru2way Reference Implementation
Source Code to Be Available Under Free And Commercial Licenses
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 4/2/2009 2:04:59 PM
Washington — Complete Cable Show 2009 coverage from Multichannel News
CableLabs plans to release a source-code reference implementation of its tru2way specifications for interactive TV, with the aim of accelerating development and deployment of devices and applications based on the technology.
The idea is to give device manufacturers and application developers a single, compliant software stack for building tru2way-enabled products and services.
CableLabs plans to publicly launch the reference implementation later this year under both a free open source license and a commercial license. The reference implementation will be available for use on a PC, so developers won't need a cable headend to build to tru2way.
"As we launch tru2way capability in additional markets and on other devices, including set-top boxes, providing our equipment manufacturing partners with a reference implementation supports our goal of bringing more interactivity to more customers," said Sree Kotay, senior vice president and chief software architect for Comcast, in a statement.
"With CableLabs providing a reference implementation and a compliance test plan, tru2way vendors and developers will have immediate access to a common source code that implements new features and functions on the tru2way platform," said Phil Won, Time Warner Cable senior director of product management.
CableLabs also said it will issue updates for the reference implementation and a new compliance test plan as new features are added to the tru2way spec.
The cable consortium is working with Sun Microsystems, which will host the reference implementation in an "open-source community" within the OpenCable Project located on Sun's Java.net site.
CableLabs noted that its tru2way specifications are based on Sun's phoneME Java stack, which is the same platform used by Blu-ray DVD players and the DVB Multimedia Home Platform.
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Pretenders to the Throne: Well an interesting step by Cablelabs and one that may not give the industry anything of any use. I could be wrong but this is all a little bit deja vu (a mimic of what IRT did with MHP in Europe). IRT a German Governmnent funded TV RandD facility offered an MHP RI thinking that they would be a force in MHP. All that it did was to slow down the market by around 2 years. Companies thought that they would obtain a cheap implementation that they could commercialise it - access to the source code and woohoo easy peasy software engineering. It was built for PC, it had the same aspirations. The question is why do organisations like these think that they can build something that commercially driven companies have been building for years. There is nothing like real life deployments for debugging, multi platform porting in non PC environments to test complex software. In the case of a Tru2way RI there has alreasy been deployments in South Korea and MHP (the basis of Tru2way) deployments in over 10 millions STBs. Now we are to believe that our implementation is not "Gold Standard"? I really believe that this may be a well intentioned but absolutely misguided attempt to help the industry. The middleare is not the problem its all the people who believe that it is easy market to play in: new players in embedded STBs, iDTVs, enter the market, squash down the price of the software and then promptly fall by the wayside leaving those companies who have toiled and sweated over the technology finding it harder to support the industry they dedicated themselves to. In the beginning there were 12 MHP implementers and now only a few who survive...Those survivors will see their work usurped by pretenders to the throne who will fall by the wayside but will have again slowed down the market and butchered business plans.
Anthony Smith-Chaigneau - 4/7/2009 8:33:12 PM EDT -
Well an interesting step by Cablelabs and one that may not give the industry anything of any use. I could be wrong but this is all a little bit deja vu (a mimic of what IRT did with MHP in Europe). IRT a German Governmnent funded TV R
Anthony Smith-Chaigneau - 4/7/2009 6:33:27 PM EDT
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