Making All Set-Tops Interactive
TVWorks-Ensequence Will Develop Ways to Extend Beyond OCAP
By Karen Brown -- Multichannel News, 10/1/2006 8:00:00 PM
Cable operators’ pledge to roll out the first in a wave of services based on the OpenCable Applications Platform this month may be welcome to developers in long-suffering interactive-TV market, but a thorny problem remains: How to extend interactive capabilities to the many set-top boxes already deployed to customer homes that don’t have the processing horsepower to run OCAP.
Enter Enhanced Television-Binary Interchange Format (EVT-BIF), a CableLabs specification that promised to deliver basic interactive-TV applications to older set-top boxes and newer entry-level boxes that won’t be able to grasp OCAP.
Even as operators including Time Warner Cable move forward with fielding the first OCAP services, in parallel they also are working on EVT-BIF projects to extend at least basic interactive applications to all of their boxes in the field.
ENSEQUENCE DEAL
That’s the main focus for a development deal inked last week between interactive-TV software provider Ensequence and TVWorks, the ITV development unit owned by Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications Inc.
Ensequence agreed to provide a set of ITV-development tools to TVWorks aimed at helping third-party developers such as adverting agencies and television programmers create applications based on EVT-BIF.
EBT-BIF was created to reach older boxes, as well as newer entry level set-tops that can’t run applications using the Java programming language, which is the foundation for OCAP.
ETV-BIF is based on a simpler binary language, and with a piece of client software added to these less-sophisticated set-top boxes it can render basic interactive-TV applications.
“The power really is that OCAP is great and OCAP will happen, but it will take five, six or 10 years for it to broadly get deployed across all of the different systems and replace all of the current set-top boxes,” said Aslam Khader, Ensequence’s vice president of marketing. “The reality is, there are about 25 to 30 million set-top boxes out there that are already deployed by Motorola and Scientific Atlanta across various operators that need to support interactive today.”
THREE-LEVEL PLAN
For Cox and Comcast, EVT-BIF is part of an overall interactive-TV development plan that has three levels — at the top end, the higher-performance OCAP platform will run on new, sophisticated set-top boxes; in the mid-range the TV Navigator scheme created by TVWorks will run on existing Java-enabled set-tops, but it doesn’t offer all of the OCAP functions; and at the low end, EVT-BIF will offer basic interactive applications on boxes that can’t process Java but also will work on Java and OCAP boxes.
Comcast is working to integrate EVT-BIF technology onto its television delivery systems, and it is planning technical trials later this year, according to Mark Hess, senior vice president of business and product development for Comcast Digital TV. It also is staging some technical trials of OCAP applications, but it isn’t releasing any further details for now, he said.
While it may offer only simple applications, the advantage to EVT-BIF is that it can run on any box, simple or advanced.
“The good news is, EVT-BIF works on all of them, so no matter how you are integrating it goes across all of the boxes,” Hess said. “We want to try to figure out if we can do this across all set-tops.”
And because even newer boxes such as the entry-level, all-digital Motorola DCT-700 won’t be able to run OCAP applications either, EVT-BIF goes beyond being just a temporary Band-Aid while cable operators wait for older boxes to be retired.
“I suspect it will have a long life,” said Vince Groff, director of ITV product development for Cox.
Cox is now developing the EVT-BIF set-top box software client, which should be ready for technical trials some time next year. It also is looking at options for EVT-BIF-based applications that could bring the TV programmers into the picture as partners, Groff added.
COX OCAP TRIALS
On the OCAP front, Cox expects to start trials in the next six months involving retail devices. Following that, it will trial OpenCable applications later next year using boxes leased to customers by Cox, Groff said. Those trials will involve applications based on Cox’s core electronic programming guide, as well as a lineup of early interactive applications it has already deployed.
Those applications — ranging from e-mail display on the TV to news and sports portal display — were developed by Cox using a homegrown technology that is akin to EVT-BIF. Cox has a project under way to upgrade these applications so that they are EVT-BIF and OCAP compliant, Groff said.
Given that Cox, Comcast and other cable operators are now developing EVT-BIF technology, entering into the joint development project with TVWorks is a key win for Ensequence, which has put its full support behind ETV-BIF, Khander said.
It’s likely other interactive TV systems developers, including OpenTV Inc. and GoldPocket, also will come into play as time goes forward, offering their own EVT-BIF development tools and interfaces.
“We don’t want to be the single blocking point or way for people to get interactive TV done,” Hess said.
“There is a whole slew of people that have the tools that content providers or other applications developers can use so that they can develop the type of applications. This is the first of other announcements that will be made, and we want people to be able to use these types of tools.”
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