Why There is No Interactive TV on your Cable, Yet Standards, Standards, Standards

by Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.
October 2000

Frederick J. Ampel, President of Technology Visions, a CEDIA-member market research and product development consulting firm says (http://www.technologyvisions.com/), "A European friend of mine gave me the best line about that so far: ‘The nice thing about you Americans is you have so many standards to choose from.’ And right now, that’s a huge problem."
The fact that anyone wanting to produce a TV show that supports interactivity has to create multiple versions of the same show illustrates that interactive TV is in a place similar to where personal computers were in the late 1970s. There are lots of different standards, and each broadcaster needs to tailor the programming (software) to fit the standards of the different cable set top boxes (hardware).
When you think of all the individual cable systems in the country you can see how hard it might be
to get them to agree to talk the same interactive language. However, when you realize that 80 percent of Americans receive their TV programs through cable, you see that interactive TV will never really take off until they do. As Ampel says, "That is probably the biggest morass for everybody right now. Putting aside the complexity for a second, just think about the costs associated with having to support multiple formats - its what eventually killed Beta and DCC and . . ."

OpenCable -
Creating the Definitive
Standard

Richard Green wants to break through that morass. As President & CEO of the Cable Television Laboratories, Inc., (http://www.cablelabs.com/) Green is heading a group called the OpenCable project (http://www.opencable.com/) to create a uniform hardware and software standard for set top boxes.
Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (or CableLabs) is a membership organization founded in 1988, consisting of cable television system operators serving cable subscribers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and South America.
CableLabs previously set the standards for cable-modems with their DOCSIS program (Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specification). They are now in the process of setting cable standards for interactive TV. DOCSIS was in many ways the forerunner for the OpenCable initiative, and Green is hoping for similar results.
According to Green, "DOCSIS went from nothing, to full hardware, in three years. It was a very accelerated process of developing an international inter-operable modem that’s now being deployed all over the world. We hope that a similar process will occur with OpenCable."
The OpenCable project builds on DOCSIS, using the same high-speed cable modem data transfer standards. It also adds the MPEG-2 format for digital cable television signals.

Why OpenCable Appeals
to the Cable Industry

James Penhune is the Program Manager of the Media & Entertainment Strategies division of the Yankee Group, a Boston-based international market research firm (http://www.yankeegroup.com/). He says that set top boxes have come out of the legacy of the computing business. And the computer field has not been an industry "where somebody sits down and works out the standard in advance and then everybody uses it the way you would in conventional broadcasting."
One of the chief competitors of the OpenCable project is the Microsoft-backed Advanced TV Enhancement Foundation. Penhune describes ATVEF as "a standards group where a lot of
the drive is coming from Microsoft. And Microsoft’s idea of a standard is always Microsoft!"
While Microsoft’s standards have dominated and revolutionized the home computing industry, the cable industry is a bit leery of letting one company control the standards. Hence, the OpenCable project, which Dick Green describes as a consortium of "about 350 companies participating as manufacturers, people involved in cable, broadcasters, telephone companies, and others."
Penhune says that the cable companies don’t want to be beholden to a single company that would have control over "the OS, and the middleware, and the software that runs the set top box, that performs the interactive functions.
"And that’s one of the reasons they’ve always had very mixed feelings about Microsoft and that business. I think what they’re looking for two, maybe three strong players in that market, that they can play off against each other".

What are the Standards?

Penhune says, "The big debate over standards is whether or not you use something that just takes Web content that is very much HTML-based, or whether you create something yourself." This is the approach some developers such as Liberty Media are already taking, using content already written for the Internet, and shifting it over to a different device: the TV.
In contrast, Penhune says a company like OpenTV Inc. (not to be confused with the OpenCable project), "uses its own not-so-open software to author and create and deliver whatever you send over the TV."
OpenCable uses the HTML approach. Their Web site states "most interactive services will be implemented at the middleware layer using existing open Internet specifications, including HTML, CGI, JavaScript, and popular [Internet] plug-ins."
OpenCable’s hardware specifications are complete and are available on their Web site (http://www.opencable.com/
public_docs.html).
Green says these standards provide "everything you need to build an interactive set top box that is guaranteed to work by the cable companies. See, basically, OpenCable provides the assurance that if a manufacturer builds that box, it will work on a cable system in North America."
Set top boxes designed to OpenCable standards would also ensure that the boxes are HDTV ready. This could potentially eliminate the risk of having to replace the box if a viewer wants to upgrade his television to HDTV.
OpenCable’s Web site states that HDTV "requires a higher bit rate and greater bandwidth than current NTSC television." Because of that, OpenCable will incorporate "a special interface that will connect the OpenCable set top box with the digital television. Called IEEE 1394, or FireWire, the interface is named after the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers that standardized it. This interface may accommodate 400 million bits per second of throughput, and there are efforts underway to
expand that capacity to one billion bits per second."
Digital Harmony Technologies, Inc.
(http://www.digitalharmony.com/) has already created a system that allows for a wide variety of home entertainment media to connect using the IEEE 1394 cables, in an effort to ease the confusion of hooking up the many components of a home theater-type system.
Tracey Swedlow is the President and Editor-in-Chief of InteractiveTV Today (http://www.itvt.com/), a Web site that tracks the ITV industry. She sees the coming marriage of HDTV and ITV as very good thing. "ITV is essentially a data medium inside TV while standards are rudimentary and platforms primitive. When IP broadband and digital video programming collide, we may see a more vigorous exploitation of the power of interactive video as a medium - not a platform for interactive information alongside video."
The goal of the OpenCable project is not just set top boxes. Their Web site states that "[t]he OpenCable architecture will provide suppliers with the plans not only of how to build advanced set top boxes, but also will allow those suppliers to migrate OpenCable functionality into a family of other devices, including VCRs, television sets, DVD players, and personal computer cards."

OpenCable on Track

The OpenCable standards will be updated over time, of course. Green says, "DOCSIS went to 1.0, 1.1, 1.2. There will be revisions of the spec, which incorporate new and developing technologies. They’re not frozen in any sense, but we have certain target dates that we try and hit."
One of those target dates is a software standard by the fall of 2000. Green says, "It might be late fall, but yes, our target is to do that. We would have had an announcement earlier, except that we’ve been negotiating for several months. What we did was to issue an RFP. (Request for Proposal). We had a group of software companies respond to that. We’ve had discussions and negotiations for the last three months with a group of those software providers (unannounced, so far). When the contracts are signed, then we will have a group of highly competent software companies who will write the software."

Will Set Top Boxes
Rule the Dens of America?

While OpenCable hopes to simplify ITV’s current Tower of Babel, interactive TV shows are already airing. Tracy Swedlow says that "‘Wheel of Fortune’, ‘Jeopardy’, ‘The Lehrer NewsHour’, ‘Judge Judy’, ‘The Weather Channel’, HBO boxing, HyperTV projects, and Spiderdance’s webRIOt on MTV all use some form of ITV. There are many other programs, but these have the highest profile." The Summer/Fall 2000 issue of Smart TV lists most of these shows in more detail (http://www.smarttvmag.com/).
While interactive TV is here, it may not achieve the acceptance that broadcasters desire. Nor may its acceptance come from the direction its proponents planned. As Fred Ampel says, "The big question that nobody’s asked, with a clear answer yet, is ‘Does the customer want to do that?’ This is only my opinion, but I don’t think so. They’ve not made the connection mentally, which WebTV’s limited number of subscribers would tend to prove.
Ampel believes that "television is something that most viewers want to do relatively passively." Where Ampel sees interactive TV picking up support is not in the primary TV viewing rooms in the homes of America, but in those rooms with computers and video games, where people are already used to interacting with a screen.
He believes that the main television watching rooms (such as the home theater or den) will not be where interactive TV takes hold. "People don’t want to work at watching TV. That’s why there’s continual progression to simpler and simpler and easier onscreen menus. So that when you get a satellite system, and in some other cases now, some of the cable companies, you get a fairly good, if not excellent, onscreen program guide."
But others see this area, where interactive TV has already established a foothold, as the reason why Interactive TV will take root among TV watchers. Jim Penhune estimates that on-screen interactive programming guides, "are already in 16 million homes in the U.S.,
if you put together digital cable, plus direct broadcast satellite. You’re talking about a system that’s giving you 200 channels and a lot of pay per view, and so on. So just to make your way around it, that level of interactivity becomes even more important."
Penhune is confident that a combination of the growing trend of WebTV, ReplayTV, TiVo, and other set top boxes, in addition to the already existing interactive programming guides and the OpenCable project will lead eventually to greater acceptance of interactive TV. He says, "It’s important to remember that it begins with TV, and then adds interactivity, incrementally. And then over time, as people begin to acclimate themselves to greater control and more choices through the things that relate to that core activity of TV viewing, then I think it will get interesting to see how much people want to use the TV for other things."
Set top boxes probably won’t make you feel like you’re leading the Cowboys to a touchdown drive in Texas Stadium. But they will allow you to get closer to the team, provide with the opportunity to learn more about the individual players, and have the potential to turn watching a game - or any television show - into a much more interactive and involving process. The dreaded term "couch potato" comes from "vegging out" when watching TV. While everyone will want to veg out while TV watching from time to time, interactive TV will provide the opportunity to become much more involved, reducing the passiveness of viewing. Tune in, turn on, and be prepared to be involved!