Nine DTV Manufacturers Preparing for Digital
Cable-Ready TV Rollout

CableLabs® announced recently that four digital television (DTV) manufacturers submitted new products for Joint Test Suite (JTS) testing and successfully achieved “verification” during a recent meeting of the independent Verification Panel that reviews test results for Digital Cable Ready (DCR) products. The manufacturers achieving verified status in this latest round of testing include Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Inc., Philips Consumer Electronics, and Thomson, Inc. This brings the total number of manufacturers building one-way CableCARD™-enabled DTVs to nine.

“It’s exciting to see the manufacturers moving so aggressively to hit the market with these new DCR products,” said Dr. Richard Green, President and CEO of CableLabs. “We’re anticipating that these new high-definition televisions (HDTVs) with advanced display technologies, combined with the CableCARD interface that enables premium digital programming without a set-top box, will be one of the hot new consumer products this holiday season.”

The four new DTV manufacturers join Hitachi, LG Electronics, and Sony that were previously verified under the JTS, and Panasonic and Samsung that were previously certified under CableLabs’ “OpenCable™” testing program. Samsung was successful in certifying its third DCR product in this latest test wave. “The testing programs are quite rigorous,” said Charlie Kennamer, Vice President of Digital Engineering at Comcast Cable Communications, and member of both the verification and certification boards responsible for reviewing test results for digital cable-ready products. “CableCARDs are another way the industry is offering customers choice in how they receive digital cable service, and the growing number of digital cable-ready televisions will give customers interested in this new technology even more options,” Kennamer added.

“We are greatly appreciative of the support being shown to the OpenCable/Digital Cable Ready effort,” said John Hildebrand, Vice President of Multimedia Technology for Cox Communications, who also is a member of the verification and certification boards. “Having nine companies offering certified or verified product is a great milestone for the cable and consumer electronics industries,” he added.

The testing is conducted to show compliance with the applicable test suite, as well as to demonstrate interoperability with various CableCARDs that are available for U.S. cable networks. Verification or certification indicates that the DTVs have shown compliance with the applicable test suite, but does not certify conformance with all applicable specifications, FCC rules, intellectual property licenses, or any other legal requirements applicable to DCR products, nor does it imply any subjective measure of product performance.

Next story

In This Issue ...

Nine DTV Manufacturers Preparing for Digital Cable-Ready TV Rollout

CableLabs® Qualifies Another DOCSIS® 2.0 CMTS

CableLabs® Announces Three PacketCable™ Qualifications, One Certification

CableLabs® Certifies Two CableHome® 1.1 Devices

CableLabs® Issues RFP for VoIP Interface Equipment for Commercial Applications

SCTE Standard on CableLabs® OCAP™ Specification Achieves ANSI Approval

Cable Industry Contest at JavaOne to Search for Latest ITV Applications

South Korean Cable Operators Prepare for Two-Way Digital Cable

To be included on the SPECS News & Technology from CableLabs® e-mail subscription list ...

www.cablelabs.com