Demonstrations of the CableLabs OpenCable Applications Platform or OCAP standard will be a central feature of the CableNET showcase at the NCTA National Show in San Francisco in April.
Co-sponsored by CableLabs and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, CableNET is a technology showcase aimed at American cable operators.
“CableNET continues to provide a unique environment in which to understand the industry’s technology and service future,” said Dr Richard Green, president and chief executive of CableLabs. “This year’s version will be the most advanced yet in terms of displaying cutting-edge, forward technologies which serve to underscore cable’s competitive lead in the broadband industry.”
The OCAP OpenCable Applications Platform was established as a standard by CableLabs as part of the OpenCable project and is based on the DVB MHP Multimedia Home Platform.
OCAP provides a middleware software specification intended to enable the developers of interactive television services and applications to design such products so that they will run successfully on any cable television system in North America, independent of set-top box or television receiver hardware or operating system.
OCAP highlights
- Advanced Digital Broadcast introduces the i-can 3200C set-top box with OCAP-based middleware.
- NDS is showing its MediaHighway Advanced OCAP middleware and development kit with personal video recorder support, together with applications developed in collaboration with third parties.
- Nionex is demonstrating pontegra, an HTML-based OCAP browser for the development of interactive TV services.
- Osmosys is exhibiting OCAP middleware and products for cable operators, application developers and set-top box vendors.
- Samsung is showing its interactive digital cable ready high-definition television based on OCAP software and OpenCable hardware specifications.
- Softel-USA is showing the MediaSphere TX carousel delivering OCAP applications, and MediaSphere Lab for prototyping and testing OCAP applications and set-top boxes.
- UniSoft and Strategy and Technology are exhibiting TSBroadcaster, an OCAP playout server for cable headends, lab, testing and application development.
- Vidiom is demonstrating OCAP-based applications, middleware, and services that support cable operator migration from their existing, deployed systems to the OpenCable platform.