CableLabs® Hosts OpenCable Conference For Key Consumer Electronics Companies

ableLabs®, in cooperation with Circuit City Stores, sponsored a one-day conference June 30 in Denver to update consumer electronics companies with regard to the status of the OpenCable initiative.

The cable television industry has conducted a series of meetings with business and technical executives from the consumer electronics, computer and broadcast industries over the past year. The focus has been on the cable industry's OpenCable initiative and other areas of mutual interest. This conference was meant to offer a comprehensive progress report on OpenCable to key consumer electronics executives.

"In light of the Federal Communications Commission navigation devices rulemaking, which is based in large part on the OpenCable initiative, this conference takes on added importance as we seek to design next-generation digital set-top products with the help of consumer electronics manufacturers and the companies that sell their products," said William T. Schleyer, head of the OpenCable project and a member of the CableLabs Board of Directors.

OpenCable is a CableLabs-managed initiative established to foster interoperability among advanced digital set-top terminals by developing key interface specifications. The OpenCable specifications are intended to foster competition among vendors for key elements of digital cable networks, while ensuring interoperability of devices connected to cable networks.

The key OpenCable interfaces include the formats for digital cable television signals (MPEG-2), the consumer privacy system, the copyright protection system, the interfaces for high-speed connections to the Internet (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification [DOCSIS]), and the interfaces required to author interactive applications.

More detailed information about OpenCable is available on the www.opencable.com web-site.

The OpenCable working team recently released for vendor review a draft specification for the set-top's point-of-deployment (POD) security interface. This document is one of several documents under preparation that will define an end-to-end specification for digital set-top devices for use in two-way broadband cable networks.