Getting to Know the OpenCable Application Platform

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When developers of Java-based software consider portable devices as platforms for their applications, they often see cell phones as the only real option.

That focus is changing. With worldwide adoption of open-standard digital television platforms based on Java technology finally becoming a reality, developers can add TVs to the list of devices needing creative software applications.

Here's why: A national middleware platform for cable set-top boxes and digital cable-ready televisions is finally edging into the mainstream. It's called OCAP, for OpenCable Applications Platform. It's based on the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME), and specifically on the Connected Device Configuration (CDC) and two related profiles, the Foundation Profile and the Personal Basis Profile.

OCAP is steadily rising in strategic importance among cable providers. In the U.S., that rise matters because of potential reach: Cable providers serve 70 million television households in the U.S. Roughly half of those households subscribe to services that require a set-top box.

Combine that market potential with the industry's enormous push to make all channels available in a digital format - an effort known as "digital simulcast" - and the subscription levels to digital cable services look ready to rise.

This article will examine what OCAP is, why it's gaining speed, and what it means to developers working on the Java platform.

For years, OCAP was the to-do item that never quite made it to the top of the cable industry's list of priorities. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the platform. It was more a case of other priorities taking a more dominant role in the day-to-day concerns of the nation's cable providers.

Until recently, for example, cable's top executives spent little time talking publicly about set-top software, let alone OCAP. Yet consider this montage of comments, delivered by Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt at a media conference hosted by CableLabs, a cable-funded research and development facility headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, in late May, 2005: "What's coming up next, which is very important, and not written about much, is OCAP ... OCAP is middleware that all set-tops will have in the future ... We will have the opportunity for someone in a garage to write interactive applications that potentially work on every cable system in the country. This is quite significant."

Comcast Corp, the nation's largest cable provider, has a similar outlook. Says Mark Coblitz, senior VP of strategic planning for the multiple system operator (MSO): "OCAP is the next place where we all can go, in order to develop a national platform for people to do applications and interactivity. It's very important to us."

Two big factors are driving the heightened interest in OCAP among large and small cable operators.

One is the need for a national applications footprint, to help the industry to better itself against existing and new video competitors. A key distinction in this strategic need is the use of OCAP as a services answer for the set-top boxes that are purchased by cable operators, then leased to consumers.

The other is the anticipated rise in "digital cable-ready" consumer electronics devices - probably high-definition TVs, to start - that will include premium services, and work across all operator geographies. Four notable consumer electronics companies - Samsung, Panasonic, LG, and Digeo - have signed a plan that enables them to co-develop "interactive cable-ready" devices with the cable industry.

Both satellite providers and telco entrants plan to entice U.S. television viewers with interactive applications that range from an enhanced 2005 NFL season, in the case of DirecTV, to a home media center environment, linking multiple media types, from SBC.

With a middleware platform that works on multiple types of digital set-tops and CE devices, the cable community can avoid a fragmented competitive response. All services are technically capable of running on all OCAP devices - instead of being available in some parts of the country but not others.

A national middleware platform matters especially to "bound" applications - where an interactive element is embedded within a show, as it's transmitted. Voting someone off the island is a commonly cited example of a bound app, as is invoking a stream of related content from a remotely located video-on-demand (VOD) server. As an example, while watching hurricane coverage you could pull up a companion VOD stream about how to seal your house, inside and out.

"Unbound" apps are those that aren't correlated with a specific television program. You customarily invoke them by pressing a particular button on a remote control. The menuing system and electronic program guide (EPG) are two examples of unbound applications that would likely make use of OCAP.

Last fall, cable-ready digital television sets entered the retail market. Mostly HDTVs, they contain a slot for a "CableCard" that local cable providers supply to descramble premium channels. Because the sets don't contain an upstream transmitter, they can't provide access to any cable-delivered interactive services, most notably the electronic program guide and VOD titles.

Discussions continue avidly between the consumer electronics and cable industries to reach an agreement on the underpinnings of two-way, plug-and-play, cable-ready consumer electronics devices. The general idea is to put the set-top inside the TV - which, as any good software developer can imagine, isn't as simple as it sounds.

It's widely anticipated that, when those negotiations are complete, OCAP will be a critical component, broadening considerably the marketplace for OCAP-based applications, on leased boxes provided by cable operators, and on CE devices as well.

Until that time, four CE companies will take a faster route to the interactive digital cable scene. Over the past 12 months, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, and Digeo individually signed a CableLabs agreement called CHILA, for Cable Host Interface Licensing Agreement.

The early fruits from the CHILA signatories are anticipated to enter the market in early 2006. CHILA specifies OCAP to be a required component.

We can expect OCAP-based applications will have as many as three significant routes into consumer devices: leased boxes, early CE devices based on CHILA, and the wider CE environment that will appear if current negotiations about two-way CE devices result in widespread adoption of OCAP. In short, all signs indicate that OCAP is headed into digital-cable-connected devices starting in 2006, and you may well be able to purchase an OCAP-enabled television at your favorite electronics retailer in the near future.

OCAP is middleware developed by CableLabs as a subset of its larger OpenCable effort. In short, OpenCable focuses on hardware, OCAP on software.

In 2001, CableLabs announced plans to anchor OCAP to the continuing work of the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) group in Europe, and specifically to its Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) group. It was this move that brought the Java Virtual Machine (JVM)¹, Java packages, and Java APIs into the OCAP scene.

Also included in the first version of the specification, OCAP 1.0, is a method for applying business practices. OCAP requires a minimum footprint of 8 Mbytes of flash memory and 16 Mbytes of DRAM, although the technologists involved suggest that 16 Mbytes of flash and 32 of DRAM would be a much more hospitable environment.

It's well known in the overall interactive television community that Europe is far ahead of the U.S. in this field. It is within BskyB, the direct-to-home satellite service in the U.K., for instance, that DirecTV will harvest its "red button" interactivity to accompany the 2005 NFL season.

Non-U.S. operators are further ahead with MHP deployments as well. Here's the MHP landscape as of April, 2005, according to the DVB-MHP group:

• Italy: So far, consumers have snapped up 1.5 million MHP-enabled receivers, set up to work over digital terrestrial links. This fast uptake was stimulated by a one-euro unit price, with the rest of the costs paid by a government subsidy. Interactivity includes news, weather, audience polling, and the sending of text messages through the set-top.
  
  
• South Korea: SkyLife, a digital satellite provider, is expected to deploy more than 1.5 million MHP boxes by year-end. CJ CableNet, the leading cable company in South Korea, launched a range of OCAP-based services in February. Mike Hayashi, senior VP of subscriber technologies and advanced engineering for Time Warner Cable, visited CJ CableNet in mid-May, specifically to see its progress with OCAP. "It was quite amazing to see a spec put into practice," Hayashi said, noting that CJ CableNet offered seven apps at launch, and plans to release 100 more before year-end. "Given how long it takes us to deploy applications in a proprietary environment, it is simply amazing."
  
  
• Finland: MHP services are available to 30,000 homes on both cable and over-the-air broadcast networks, with satellite soon to come. Services include digital teletext, a menu of unbound applications, and a guide providing seven days of information instead of three or four, as is more common.
  
  
• Germany: Four broadcasters carry MHP offerings, to a limited number of homes so far. An uptick is expected with the launch of set-tops that combine DSL and digital TV.
  
  
• Spain: MHP services including news, tickers, weather, chat, text messaging, and interactive games are available to 170,000 homes in Catalonia.
  
  
• Sweden: Public broadcast service SVT began broadcasting MHP services, mostly text messaging, on all available digital platforms in 2004.
  
  

MHP-based services are expected to advance throughout 2005, with launches in Austria, Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Malta, and Norway.

OCAP isn't at the deployment stage yet, but the situation looks much more encouraging than in years past. Time Warner Cable, the second largest operator in the U.S., has said it wants three systems in OCAP tests by the end of year, with wider rollouts in 2006.

Most, if not all, digital set-tops entering the market since late 2004 include a memory and processing footprint sufficient to handle OCAP. "The majority of the boxes we're purchasing today are capable of running OCAP," confirms Mike LaJoie, chief technical officer of Time Warner. "There are some older boxes we bought last year that are right on the cusp, but as we go forward, our intention is to keep buying OCAP-capable boxes."

Adds Comcast's Coblitz: "All of the DVR (digital video recorder) and HD set-tops we're putting out now are capable of running OCAP."

Boxes already in the field that are too anemic for OCAP will probably be redeployed to rooms of the home that don't need as much interactive capability - the kitchen, perhaps, or the guest bedroom.

One cable operator, Cox Communications, is specification lead for a companion OCAP effort under way in the Java Community Process: JSR 242, the Digital Set-Top Box Profile - "OnRamp to OCAP." This initiative specifically targets the legacy boxes that can't support OCAP. The plan is to implement a CLDC-based subset of OCAP that is fully forward-compatible, allowing cable operators to launch applications that can run on both legacy and OCAP set-tops. Cox and Time Warner are likely to lead the cable pack.

Today's OCAP efforts center on porting into an OCAP format existing set-top applications, like the electronic program guide and navigation system, and the video-on-demand ordering system. The effort required is one reason why OCAP is sometimes perceived as less interesting than other interactive TV varietals: Because OCAP is a full platform, it must support the services already in use by paying customers.

Last August, Comcast and Time Warner Cable formed a joint venture around OCAP, calling it OCAP Development LLC. The intent is to develop an OCAP stack that both operators can deploy. The venture's first step was to engage Colorado-based Vidiom Systems to help write the stack.

In Europe, the most popular MHP-based applications so far are the guide, the VOD/PPV ordering system, and games. Bound applications differ widely by market, especially as a result of regulatory variations: Government-owned broadcasters tend to have agendas different from those of privately-owned broadcasters.

In the U.S., OCAP apps beyond the commonplace EPG and VOD clients also vary by MSO. Some operators, like Cox, are keenly focused on "customer care" apps, which let customers automatically upgrade themselves to advanced services, or check billing status.

Others, especially those owning systems in gambling-friendly states, are interested in "couch-based betting," which represents an estimated 50% of revenues for the BSkyB service in the U.K., where betting by television is legal.

The intersection of advertising and bound apps is also of great interest to cable providers, for a variety of reasons. It makes possible an obvious - or at least plausible - business model. First, it delivers a qualified lead to an advertiser. Second, if done correctly, it captures the attention only of people who want more information on that product in the first place, and isn't a turn-off to people who aren't interested.

Finally, more and more operators are interested in "cross-platform" applications: supporting a text message on the TV screen, or caller ID from a voice-over-IP phone appearing as a picture or a number on the TV screen.

Clearly, however, it is the applications environment "beyond the known" - the guide and VOD - that is the ripest zone for developers working on the Java platform. Whether it's something invoked by a button on the remote control, leading to a separate menu, or whether it's an element designed to accompany a live television show - that's the creativity that's needed now.

Several suppliers are already beginning to address the need for OCAP tools, for both authoring and testing. A partial list of tool providers includes GoldPocket Interactive, emuse Technologies, NDS, enSequence, Cardinal Systems, Osmosys, and Vidiom. These companies provide a mixture of tools, ranging from drag-and-drop-based authoring tools to full software development kits and integrated development environments.

When asked what developers should bear in mind when creating OCAP apps, the view of the OCAP tools community is unified: The set-top box environment is a wholly different animal from the personal computer.

"The most important thing to bear in mind is that the device you are targeting is completely different from a desktop," says Cédric Monnier, Senior Product Marketing Manager of NDS. The chief constraints: Set-tops hold less memory and less processing power than PCs.

As a result, "you really have to take care of memory," Monnier explains. "Somebody else - which could be an application within the middleware, or an application coming from the guide or from the stream - could be stronger than you and bring you down if you're not careful."

"It's not your family PC," agrees Walden Miller, VP of engineering services for Vidiom Systems. "To really get a sense of how an app will work, you need to be developing for a box that is the set-top box, not a PC that's emulating the box."

Device-based testing is necessary because set-tops receive applications and associated data from the cable headend over a radio frequency (RF), which is synchronously timed. Timing becomes a huge problem. "Nobody likes to wait for a TV to do something," Miller explains. "Consequently, when developing an application, a PC simulator is great to get the logic and base programming down, but timing and actual execution with the data must be performed on a set-top connected to a headend delivery system.

Even cranking down the available memory, to emulate the tight parameters of the set-top, only solves 80% of the associated challenges, Monnier explains, because "you're still using the chip set of the PC."

All in, the message to the Java development community is this: Think television. And especially, start thinking OCAP.

Why: All cable providers are aligned with an open standard, which, when applied, will provide a national footprint for applications. Satellite providers could plausibly follow.

Similarly, the majority of the digital set-top boxes leased to consumers since late 2004 contain sufficient resources to run OCAP applications.

Moreover, two efforts between cable providers and the consumer electronics community - CHILA and the two-way plug-and-play negotiations - will likely open the market for OCAP-based devices to a wide array of consumer electronics devices, such as TVs, HDTVs, DVRs, and Blu-ray recorders.

If the stars truly are aligning to make it "the time for OCAP," then the dearth of actual applications is the void between the stars. And that's precisely where the Java community is needed.

• OpenCable Applications Platform
• Multimedia Home Platform
• The Interactive TV Web
• Sun Developer Network Java TV forum
• Multimedia Home Platform Developers Resource

¹ As used in this document, the term "Java virtual machine" or "JVM" means a virtual machine for the Java platform.