Divicom partners on interoperable Euro Boxes......................
multichannel.com
Broadband Week for October 26, 1998
Vendors Support Interoperable Euro Boxes
London -- In what is a sort of European version of OpenCable, nine manufacturers teamed up at the annual European Cable Communications show here last week to announce their pursuit of interoperable set-top boxes.
Calling themselves the DVB/DAVIC Interoperability Consortium, the team consists of Alcatel Alsthom S.A., COCOM, DiviCom Inc., Hughes Network Systems, Nokia Multimedia Network Terminals, Sagem, Simac Broadband Technologies, Thomson Broadcast Systems and Thomson Multimedia.
The title refers to the European Digital Video Broadcast and Digital Audio/Video Council standards-setting groups.
The companies said the group's goal is to "build the market for broadband interactivity over hybrid fiber-coaxial networks."
Specifically, the DVB/DAVIC Interoperability Consortium aims to enable product interoperability so that interactive services running on HFC and wireless cable systems will work with one another, based on DVB and DAVIC standards.
Interoperability, in turn, translates into a broader choice of technology solutions for cable-network operators, as well as into economies of scale that lower prices and expand the market, officials said.
Also at the ECC show, consortium members segmented themselves into three functional areas: headend-transmission systems, set-tops and cable modems.
Gregers Kronborg, newly appointed chairman of the DVB/DAVIC Interoperability Consortium, said he believes that DVB and DAVIC "are the best standards for the provision of products for interactive video, audio, data and voice services."
Others involved in the project -- like Ulrich Reimers, chairman of the technical module of the DVB project -- were already positioning the consortium against other international interoperability efforts, like OpenCable.
"I have no doubt that the cable operators of Europe and many other parts of the world will soon realize that DVB-DAVIC will be their best choice," Reimers said.
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