Setting Open Cable standards is a lot like setting standards for DVD....................................
multichannel.com
Ops Divided Over Aspects Of OpenCable Initiatives
By FRED DAWSON
Cable-industry leaders' efforts to smooth the way into the digital future via the OpenCable set-top initiative are proving tougher than some had hoped, thanks to underlying disagreements over which options represent the best path to achieving widely shared goals.
Sources said decisions to be made just prior to and during this week's Western Show will be crucial to demonstrating whether MSO commitments to purchasing OpenCable boxes are sufficient to induce vendors to take the steps that are necessary to ensure availability of product by the end of 1998.
Such decisions are difficult to make, in part because the standards are not slated to be completed until this coming spring.
More ominous is the fact that serious divisions over arcane but crucial technical issues have surfaced since vendors responded to the OpenCable request for proposals nearly two months ago.
One dividing line centers on a debate over the extent to which the OpenCable platform should tie TV and data applications together within a common architecture.
"How integrated are the data and video businesses going to be is the question, which is to say, what kind of content strategy do you want to pursue?" said Milo Medin, chief technical officer of @Home Network, which has developed its own proposal for an OpenCable architecture that calls for set-tops "capable of displaying advanced Web content and integrating that content seamlessly with video services."
So far, the OpenCable task force has made it clear that it embraces a design that will implement most interactive services at the "middleware layer," using existing Internet specifications. That includes HTML (hypertext markup language), the software coding used to link applications in the IP (Internet protocol) environment; and JavaScript, a set of commonly used instructions for performing certain tasks that is often confused with Java, the object-oriented software language developed by Sun Microsystems Inc. that underlies JavaScript and myriad other applications spun out by some 640,000 developers worldwide.
OpenCable backers are encouraging development of standardized application program interfaces specifically designed to link server-based content with various set-top functions, such as graphics display, tuning, decryption and much else. They hope to ensure that content developers and cable operators can readily devise interactive services that can be run on any OpenCable-compliant box, no matter what its underlying operating system is.
But if these interactive applications for the TV are to exploit content being developed for delivery over high-speed-data networks to personal computers, then the APIs must be compatible with the architectures used in delivering data services.
Even though the OpenCable set-tops will come with standardized cable modems, there will be limited flexibility in adapting data content for the TV platform or video content for the data platform if this compatibility isn't locked in, Medin noted.
"It doesn't do any good to push data down to the TV set if it takes a significant amount of time to render data into dots," Medin said, in reference to the need to format data for NTSC (National Television System Committee) display.
By using APIs that are common to both domains, content providers can pre-adapt server-based multimedia content for TV applications, thereby avoiding the need to write the program twice.
The problem with this scenario is that there is wide division within the industry over data architectures, with some MSOs, such as Time Warner Cable and MediaOne, building their broadband-enhanced content on APIs tied to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows OS foundation, and others, such as those working with @Home, using Java-based APIs, which are meant to work with any OS environment.
Moreover, there are divisions within these camps where some players believe that the data- and video-service architectures should be the same, and others don't see this as essential.
Further complicating matters, noted Curtis Sasaki, group-product manager for consumer technology at Sun's JavaSoft unit, is the wide range of functionality parameters envisioned for OpenCable set-tops.
"What we're hearing is that there's going to be a range of boxes deployed from the low end to the high end," Sasaki said. "Our hope is that we can provide a means to scale from low- to high-end, but it will take creative thinking in the low-end environment for us to work in that space."
While the JavaScript/HTML concept is fine for the low-end functionalities envisioned by some MSOs, where simple commands back to the headend trigger all of the necessary applications, the JavaSoft group is hoping for a much bigger play for its technology in the set-top arena, where Java-based applications might include support for interactive gaming, additional layers of security, special billing arrangements, tuning and much else, Sasaki said.
"What we care about is that personal Java APIs [APIs based on a version of Java designed for specialized applications] get included in the software stack," Sasaki added. "That's what we think will drive the platform" as a revenue generator for service providers.
One of the decisive factors in the Java vs. Microsoft debate, aside from the power of investment capital to sway operators' thinking, will be how operators come out on the question of how much processing power is necessary for the OpenCable set-top.
One of the advantages touted by Microsoft backers is the extent to which tight integration of APIs with the Microsoft OS -- a set-top-adapted version of Windows CE -- will reduce the volume of computations required to run applications.
A Java-rich environment will require an additional 1 megabyte to 1.5 MB of random-access memory to accommodate the translation between Java-based content and non-Java OSs, Sasaki noted.
But, he added, this isn't the end of the story, because there are much less set-top processing-intensive models for the OpenCable architecture that rely on centralized computing power in the network.
"With a fast pipe like cable's, there are ways to split off functions and do them at the server," he said, noting that this runs counter to many traditional set-top manufacturers' "old way of thinking, where you put everything in the box."
JavaSoft, which already has technical trials underway using its APIs in set-tops developed by unnamed manufacturers, has proposed network- and set-top-centric models in its submissions to the task force, Sasaki said.
The question of how network-centric the OpenCable architecture should be is another potentially divisive issue within the operating community.
The fact that the computer industry -- the Microsoft camp, as well as the Sun/Netscape Communications Corp./Oracle Corp. side -- is moving to ever thinner clients (low-power user appliances) argues strongly for creating an OpenCable environment that "stays away from using proprietary goo," Medin said, in reference to OS-specific APIs used to run the processors in a set-top.
Similar thinking is evident at Cablevision Systems Corp., which has embarked on a commercial offering of interactive video services in a small segment of its Long Island, N.Y., territory.
"My concern in the formative stages of the [OpenCable] process is that we're being a little too box-centric, as opposed to network-centric," said Wilt Hildenbrand, vice president of engineering and technology at Cablevision.
"The whole magic of this industry is the network that we're building and the performance that we're building into it in the context of all of the advances that we're seeing in network computing," Hildenbrand said. "In an environment that's too box-centric, you set a benchmark with finite imbedded parameters, and then risk running out of those finite resources as an infinite array of new content starts coming into the marketplace."
Countering the argument for network-centric architecture and Java-based APIs is the continuing expansion of the market base for personal computers and the descending cost curve that goes with it.
There are players involved in the debate who believe that the OpenCable performance targets are undershooting the potential of a set-top-centric architecture that taps into the PC juggernaut.
"OpenCable doesn't go far enough, at least as I understand the thinking," said Brian Apgar, executive vice president of Mpath Interactive Inc., the company that pioneered multiplayer gaming over dial-up connections to the Internet. Mpath is now working with Cox Communications Inc. and @Home on broadband-specific gaming applications.
"First and foremost, the focus should be on entertainment, and not on Web surfing on TV. And if you want to provide the type of entertainment that people with PCs are used to getting, you're going to need a set-top machine that can deliver those capabilities," Apgar said.
With such disparities in thinking across the spectrum of participation in the OpenCable debate, it's no wonder that MSOs may be reluctant to commit to set-top orders until the issues are resolved.
"The task force wants quick action, but there's got to be more consensus within the technical community than we have now," said a senior cable engineering executive, asking not to be named.
No matter what purchase commitments are made at the Western Show, it could be a long while before the players really know what they're committing to. |
