More Than 100 Firms At OpenCable™ Developers’ Conference

OCAP implementations will enable interactive television applications and services that are portable between any cable television system in North America, regardless of the hardware or operating system software selected by numerous manufacturers.

The conference began with a technical review of the specification, followed by presentations from companies likely to develop OCAP implementations. The technical presentations provided a detailed overview of the architecture, followed by explanations of the Application Model, or application lifecycle, and the two major components of the specification: the Execution Engine (EE) and the Presentation Engine (PE).

The EE provides a Java™-based programming environment, and has its roots in the DVB-MHP (Digital Video Broadcasting–Multimedia Home Platform) specification. The PE, which is similar to a Web browser, will provide support for creating and using the Web’s standardized markup and scripting languages—Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and ECMAScript. The PE also includes support of the Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF) content specification as part of its requirements. The final technical presentation covered the set of OCAP "Bridge" application programming interfaces (APIs) used to interface between the EE and PE.

"This specification will offer an efficient road to the cable consumer market for the developer community already providing interactive technology for the Internet. At the same time, the emerging community of Java developers will be able to create advanced applications and services that will run interchangeably on cable systems worldwide," said So Vang, CableLabs’ Project Director for the OCAP specification.

The second half of the day was dedicated to presentations by some of the potential early implementers of the OCAP specification: Canal+US Technologies, Liberate, Microsoft, OpenTV, Philips, and PowerTV. Because many elements of OCAP are adopted from work that is nearing completion elsewhere, it is expected that the significant portions of the specification can be implemented as early as the third or four quarter of this year. It is contemplated that the OCAP implementation will be deployed in consumer set tops, digital televisions, and other devices shortly thereafter. Release of this draft specification allows middleware developers and equipment manufacturers to begin building products to the specification, and CableLabs is preparing to sponsor interoperability events to assist product development. The interop testing process at CableLabs serves to validate the written specification, identify areas that need to be amended based on real-world implementation, generally reduces the time to market, and improves the expected performance and reliability of such products.