AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Informaitv

Tru2way is gaining momentum as the new way ahead for interactive television on cable in the United States. Tru2way is the retail brand for OpenCable hardware and OCAP software and will be much in evidence at the annual industry Cable Show in New Orleans. Following a two-day Tru2way developer conference, there will be more than a dozen demonstrations on display.

Tru2way is a software platform, formerly known as OCAP which is in turn based on the European DVB MHP standard. It is designed to enable interactive services to be delivered over cable networks to compatible televisions, set-top boxes and other devices. It is intended to establish a national footprint for the creators of interactive services to develop products that work on cable systems in nearly every market in the United States.

Major cable operators have committed to support the Tru2way platform by the end of 2008. Collectively they operate systems that cover more than 90 million homes across the country, although they will not all be immediately enabled.

The focus on Tru2way and interactive television applications at the Cable Show this year builds on the growing momentum for open specifications that let hardware and software vendors develop innovative capabilities that can be broadly deployed on any cable system or consumer electronics device that supports those specifications.

Comcast will be introducing a national platform for deploying and managing Tru2way applications, including games developed by PixelPlay. “We’re seeing great response from the application developer community for Tru2way technology and for the overall enhanced TV effort,” said Mark Hess, responsible for digital television at Comcast. “The industry’s move toward open CableLabs’ specifications and technology is generating great volumes of application development.”

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