Is tru2way about to take off?

The “In My Opinion” article in the current edition of DVB-SCENE magazine comes from So Vang, the VP of OpenCable Software, Advanced Platforms and Services for CableLabs. In the article he paints a rosy picture for the future of interactive services on cable platforms in the USA, driven by the widespread rollout this year of tru2way, which is the consumer facing brandname used for the GEM based OCAP specification.

Here’s an extract from the article:

“In the past year, major cable operators and top consumer electronics manufacturers agreed to work together to ensure tru2way technology will be rolled out to a majority of US households in 2009. That means tru2way TVs and set-top boxes immediately gain access to a national footprint of the approximately 70 million households served by cable television.

“But before I get into the details, Iâd like to provide a bit of historical reference. CableLabs and some of our leading members founded the OpenCable Project in 1997 to facilitate interoperability of set-top boxes among cable operators, promote the sale of set-tops and DTVs, and to meet certain regulatory requirements for separable security. Within the CableLabsâ OpenCable Project, the OCAP (OpenCable Applications Platform) specification was authored. OpenCable and the OCAP acronym were, of course, technical in reference. In early 2008, the industry developed the tru2way brand, which is the consumer facing brand name for OpenCable. To further the standards-based nature of OCAP, CableLabs chose to base the specification on the excellent work done at the DVB Project in the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) specification. The Blu-ray disc specification later adopted the same core Java technology from Sun Microsystems â Globally Executable MHP or GEM. With such synergies, it is possible to contemplate âwrite once, run everywhereâ applications that run on multiple platforms such as TVs, mobile phones and Blu-ray disc players.”

Read the full article.