New Report Assesses the Implications of the Seemingly Inevitable Evolution of OPAC iTV.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c63892) has announced the addition of OCAP iTV - Issues, Opportunities and Threats to their offering.

OCAP stands for OpenCable[TM] Application Platform. OCAP is designed to support applications that run on consumer devices that are connected to a digital cable service. Applications can include electronic programming guides, video on demand, digital video recording, telescoping advertisements, shopping, games, gambling, information retrieval, sport statistics, virtual channels, caller ID, e-mail, and customer support, to name a few - all done on your television screen.

OCAP makes it easier, in theory, for "write once, run anywhere" digital cable application software development by acting as a middleware translator between applications and individual unique devices. In practice, differences in hardware still create implementation issues. OCAP also defines many of the supporting system elements.

Business-wise, OCAP opens up the possibility for new viewer/TV interactivity-based business models. As such, OCAP has some of the potential of what the browser did for the PC, but with some significant differences. Much like the early days of the Internet, people sense that OCAP opens up some significant opportunities - they just can't say for sure exactly what they are. Companies are experimenting and conducting trials in various parts of the U.S. now. Meantime, Korea (the only other country to adopt OCAP) is a little ahead with their deployment with all major cable companies supporting OCAP now. Infrastructure products, such as the head end systems that serve up OCAP applications and set top boxes that run the applications are now available. Support products, such as development tools and emulators are popping up everywhere. After being worked on for years, industry people are saying that "OCAP is now real", though some still hold back full blown endorsement of this claim.

Why Now?

Interactive television has been around for quite a while. As some in the industry joke - once an interactive television feature becomes popular, they quickly rename it to something else (for example, the electronic program guide) so as to not carry the stigma of "iTV". After years of disappointing performance, poor consumer response and failed companies, iTV simply has a bad reputation. So why is it starting to get more real now?

Let us look at the Web for lessons. The Internet had been around in the form of

ARPAnet2 for decades before Marc Andreessen, et al, first created the original "web browser" called Mosaic in 1993. Yet, it was still the latter half of the 1990's before people began to notice the "worldwide web".

Much of the timing of the Internet as we know it was due to the timing of some necessary ecosystem elements like the personal computer, networking and dial-up online services (remember when AOL was only a walled garden?). Before there were large numbers of people with these capabilities the invention of web browsing and e-mail (which predates Mosaic) could not catch fire. But, the ecosystem soon became rich and fertile enough and momentum built up, leading to the Internet as we know it now. A similar story can now be foreseen for interactive television.

This Report:

If OCAP is real, and it does appear to be at least inevitable, what are the issues, implications, opportunities and threats? Clearly, with about 60% of the U.S. households subscribing to cable, the world of television will change for both viewers and companies. Everyone in the ecosystem will be affected - viewers, cable companies, programmers (as in television content), developers (as in application software), advertisers, consumer electronics companies, and cable equipment/software companies.

This report takes a deeper look at the world of OCAP and addresses a little about how it works, what it enables, many of the implementation and strategic issues, who are the players, opportunity areas, and market timing. This report is aimed at marketing and development managers that are wondering how OCAP may impact their business and if there may be an opportunity to investigate.

1 Introduction

1.1 Why Now?

1.2 This Report

2 OCAP Overview and Issues

2.1 Top Level Background

2.2 OCAP Host Technology and Implications

2.2.1 Block Diagram 

2.2.2 OpenCable Host

2.2.3 OCAP Applications

2.2.3.1 Java vs. HTML 

2.2.3.2 Bounded and Unbounded Applications

2.2.3.3 Monitor Application

2.2.3.4 Native Applications

2.2.4 Application Lifecycle

2.2.4.1 Loading

2.2.4.2 Signaling

2.2.4.3 Bounded Scenarios

2.2.4.4 Resources, Storage

2.2.5 OCAP Engine

2.2.6 Hardware Elements

2.2.6.1 Tuners

2.2.6.2 Processor

2.2.6.3 Input User Interface

2.2.7 Conditional Access Security Elements

2.2.7.1 CableCARD

2.2.7.2 DCAS 

2.2.8 Display

2.3 CE Manufacturer Conflicts

2.4 Infrastructure and Headend

2.4.1 The Networks

2.4.2 Object Carousel

2.4.3 Download Times and Bandwidth

2.4.4 Scalability and Responsiveness

2.4.5 Performance

2.4.6 Authentication Security

2.4.7 Back Office

2.4.8 Deployment Checklist

2.5 OCAP DVR 

2.5.1 Why did it not record?

2.5.2 Dynamic Ads

2.6 OCAP Home Networking

2.7 Application Development

3 Interim Platforms

3.1 EBIF 

3.2 OnRamp

3.3 EBIF, OnRamp and OCAP Comparison

4 OCAP Deployment Timing

4.1 U.S.

4.1.1 Bounded Applications

4.1.2 Unbounded Applications

4.2 Korea

5 Other Standards and Approaches

5.1 MHP 

5.1.1 MHP comparison with OCAP

5.1.2 MHP Deployments

5.1.3 Patent Pool Controversy

5.2 ACAP 

5.3 ARIB 

5.4 Blu-ray BD-J

5.5 MHEG-5

5.6 IPTV 

5.7 iTV Family Tree

6 Comments on Selected Companies and Products

6.1 ADB Holdings

6.1.1 Vidiom

6.1.2 Osmosys

6.2 Alticast

6.3 Cisco

6.3.1 Scientific Atlanta

6.4 Intel

6.5 Itaas

6.6 Kudulski

6.6.1 OpenTV

6.6.2 NagraVision

6.7 Microsoft

6.8 Motorola

6.9 News Corp

6.9.1 NDS 

6.9.2 Sky Interactive, BSkyB, DirecTV & FoxTel

6.9.3 Fox Interactive Media

6.10 Pace

6.11 Sofia Digital

6.12 The Softel Group

6.13 Sun Microsystems

6.14 TiVo

6.15 Unisoft / Strategy & Technology Ltd.

6.16 Company and Product/Service Matrix (49 Companies)

7 Twenty Two Issues, Opportunities & Threats

8 Appendix

8.1 Glossary

8.2 Industry Organizations

8.3 Standards and Other Resources

8.4 Cable Conferences

Figures

Figure 1 - OCAP sits between application software and device hardware

Figure 2 - Fertile Ecosystem Enables New Concept

Figure 3 - Interactive Television Scenario

Figure 4 - OCAP Block Diagram

Figure 5 - The Remote Function scramble

Figure 6 - CableCARDs

Figure 7 - MHP & OCAP Graphics layers

Figure 8 - Object Carousel simplified conceptual diagram

Figure 9 - Comparison of three STB platforms

Figure 10 - Estimated Digital Cable, OCAP, EBIF subscribers (2007-2012)

Figure 11 - iTV Family Tree

Tables

Table 1 - OCAP and Selected STBs: MIPS, RAM, Flash and Storage

Table 2 - National topologies for sending OCAP data to headends

Table 3 - 2006 non-OCAP MHP Deployments

Table 4 - Companies and Product/Service areas - part 1

Table 5 - Companies and Product/Service areas - part 2

Table 6 - Companies and Product/Service areas - part 3

Companies Mentioned:

* Aircode

* Alticast

* Ant Software Ltd.

* Aptiv Digital

* Biap

* Brainstorm Communications

* Canal+ (bought by Thomson)

* Digeo

* DigiQuest

* DTV Interactive

* emuse

* Ensequence

* espial 

* GuideWorks (TW, Comcast)

* IDway

* Infinovate

* Itaas

* OCAP TV

* Microsoft

* Myrio (Siemens)

* Motorola

* NagraVision

* Nexol Telecom

* NDS

* OpenTV

* Ortikon

* Osmosys (ADB Holdings)

* Pace Micro

* Panasonic

* PixelPlay

* Samsung

* Scientific Atlanta (Cisco)

* Sofia Digital

* Softtel

* Solekai Systems

* Strategy & Technology

* Sun Microsystems

* SysMedia

* Tandberg Television

* Thomson, Thomson GV

* TiVo

* TVWorks (Cox, Comcast)

* OCAP TV

* Two Way TV

* UniSoft

* Vidiom (ADB Holdings)

* yoomedia

* Zappware

* Zentek

* Zodiac Interactive

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c63892