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Can Roberts Finally Deliver on Cable's Promise?
I really want to believe Brian Roberts and the hype from Comcast and CableLabs about the potential of interactive TV and open standards. But after watching the industry’s OpenCable project fail to deliver tangible results – more than 10 years after it was formed — I’ve become a skeptic.
Roberts drew some buzz at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Monday, when he unveiled plans to work with Panasonic to sell portable video players next year, allowing Comcast subscribers to take shows they record on a digital video recorder on the road. There were no major OpenCable accomplishments touted at CES, other than a new name for the platform — tru2way.
The Comcast chief spoke again Tuesday morning at CES about working with Panasonic and other CE manufacturers on standards that would allow cable TV customers to access video-on-demand programming and other interactive features through a TV, without the need for a set-top box.
The problem is, that’s the same promise Comcast and other major cable operators made in fall 1997, when CableLabs first unveiled OpenCable, a platform that was supposed to spawn a new age of interactive TV, where TV programmers and advertisers would be able to reach consumers with interactive TV shows, commercials, games and polls, delivering them on any set-top box or video display in the home.
“An OpenCable set-top box purchased in New York will work in Boise,” John Malone, then chairman of Tele-Communications Inc. (Comcast now owns most of his former systems) said in a Nov. 6, 1997 OpenCable announcement from CableLabs. “This interoperability also will allow new interactive services to be made available broadly across the cable industry,” added Malone, now chairman of Liberty Media.
In September 1997, I watched Roberts give an upbeat speech in Baltimore about the promises of OpenCable and the fruits that would come from cable TV operators working with Microsoft, Intel and other technology firms on open standards for set-top boxes.
“This is a chance for us to leap forward,” Roberts said, suggesting interactive TV and OpenCable would help Comcast compete with pay TV rivals.
While Comcast and other operators have succeeded in launching new services like video on demand, telephone and high-speed Internet, Comcast and other operators have largely failed to deliver on the promises of OpenCable.
Interactive TV, which many industry executives expected would one day allow cable subscribers to buy Jennifer Aniston’s sweater on Friends with a click of the remote, has been a dud for cable.
A few cable systems have experimented with interactive TV, such as Time Warner Cable’s Oceanic division in Hawaii, where subscribers can order a pizza through the TV, or vote for contestants on a local version of American Idol with a click of a remote.
But cable has allowed rivals DirecTV and EchoStar Communications to take the lead in interactive TV. They offer their subscribers everything from interactive games and advertising to interactive programming channels that allow consumers to view up to six news channels at the same time (DirecTV’s Newsmix channel).
OpenCable, now called tru2way, promised to allow subscribers easy access to interactive services on any set-top, and eventually, on any digital TV.
But 10 years after its formation was trumpeted at the Western Show cable convention in 1997, all we have is more promises in press releases. Comcast and Panasonic say we’ll see the first tru2way TVs hit retail shelves later this year. Will Roberts and his partners at Panasonic finally be able to deliver?
