A February 21, 2007 Wall Street Journal article by Peter Grant reports on cable operators’ support for two-way “plug and play” television sets, set-top boxes and other products which use the OpenCable platform. As the article observes, “manufacturers such as Panasonic, Samsung and LG already have designed OCAP TV sets that will eliminate the need for set-top boxes, the scourge of many a home-entertainment center. With OCAP TVs, scheduled to be available as early as this year, users just have to attach a cable and the set will get video-on-demand, advanced program guides and other interactive features from cable.”

After more than six years of development by CableLabs, the industry's research and development arm, cable operators are rolling out technology that could facilitate new applications and help cable TV maintain its dominant position in home entertainment.

The technology addresses an age-old problem at the root of the cable industry. Because the industry grew up as thousands of separate systems, there was little consistency in the technology used, making service upgrades difficult. This remained true even though many systems were consolidated by giants such as Comcast and Time Warner. Just to add a feature like a news ticker on the bottom of the screen, for example, software has to be modified many times to fit different set-top boxes and network gear in a multitude of systems.

The new technology, with the cumbersome name of OCAP, for Open Cable Application Platform, is software that behaves like an operating system that runs on digital cable set-top boxes and other devices. OCAP, then, is to set-top boxes what Microsoft Windows is to computers. Adding a new feature, like the ticker, is an easy task regardless of the cable system. That ease is expected to spark a flurry of creativity among software companies, as new applications will no longer have to be tailored to fit separate cable systems.

You can read the entire article online (sub. req): Cable TV's New Aim: Free Us From Tangle Of Boxes and Remotes