It’s official as of this morning. CableLabs announced that the “tru2way™” brand will replace use of the term “OpenCable Platform.” You may recall that the initiative, which began back in ‘97 with the goal of helping the cable industry deploy interactive services, was previous known as OCAP.

Why the name change?

The tru2way brand was developed by the global brand consulting firm Siegel + Gale, in consultation with the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), and marketing and technology representatives of a variety of major cable providers.

Which basically means that, based on talking with consumers, it was felt that a new name would help with branding. Manufacturers can then make products under that name.

For example: Panasonic and Comcast Announce Products With Tru2way(TM) Technology. Specifically, this means that you’ll be able to soon be able to get a portable DVR which you can take on the road, watching those TV shows you recorded.

With the DTV transition just over a year away, a lot of talk here at CES is focused on the impact of that change. Analog broadcasting ends on February 17, 2009. Estimates are 13-20 million US households rely entirely on over-the-air broadcast (OTA households). 60-70 million analog TVs exist alongside televisions that are either digital or attached to a set-top box.

In an effort to ensure those analog TVs will work after the transition, the government created a coupon program that will allow consumers to purchase low-cost converter boxes that will convert the digital signal to analog for older TVs.

33.5 million coupons will be made available and each is good for $40 towards the purchase of a coupon-eligible converter box. These converter boxes are expected to cost between $40 and $70. Two-thirds are available to every household. One-third will be reserved solely for OTA households. Each household may request up to two coupons.

The application process to request a coupon began last week with coupon distribution beginning February 17. So far the response has been strong with 1.1 million requests for 2 million coupons having been received so far.

Last day to request is 3/31/09 (that date is correct and assumes some people will wake up next February with TVs that don’t receive a signal. Coupons can be requested through March of next year and will be accepted through July 9, 2009.

For a list of eligible converter boxes and participating retailers, visit www.ntiadtv.gov or www.dtv2009.gov.

For more information about the digital transition, you can visit www.dtvtransition.org.

As Kyle mentioned in his first post, we see this blog as a place for serious discussion of telecommunications policy and the potential impact of changes to legislation and regulation.  We’ll get to that very shortly.  However, we also recognize that the cable platform of video, voice and data have fundamentally changed the way we interact with our world.  The information resources available, the entertainment options it affords us, and the new ways we can share our lives with the world shape our day-to-day lives in ways we never thought possible a few years ago.

What better way to explore some of those possibilities than to spend a few days at the 2008 International CES - the showcase for consumer electronics.  Along the way, we’ll look into some of the issues facing both the cable industry and electronics manufacturers - things like the explosion of social media, the transition to digital television, and the best way to protect intellectual property in the age of easily transferable digital media.  Here’s just a few of the things I plan to cover between now and Thursday.

Monday - We’ll take a look at Television 2.0: How the entertainment platform is changing the way we communicate and access entertainment.  We’ll also explore the DTV conversion and the government coupon program, intellectual property and government policy

Tuesday - Smart and connected TVs, PVRs, advancements in set-top boxes and PC media centers may change the way we access and view content.  In addition, we’ll cover FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s forum, social media, the spectrum auction, and staying connected in an increasingly mobile world.  Comcast’s Brian Roberts is giving the Tuesday keynote and has some surprise announcements.  We’ll cover it as it happens.

Wednesday - Discussion turns to the next generation of broadband platforms.   We’ll cover the “Last Gadget Standing”, where a panel of Yahoo! bloggers will look at the best gadgets on display to see which will last, and which will become the Macarena of consumer electronics.  Changes to mobile and broadband networks are also on the agenda.

Thursday - We’ll close the week with a look at CableCARDs and Gary Shapiro’s discussion of the regulatory environment facing consumer electronics.

Somewhere in there we’ll also stroll the show floor and  look at the latest and greatest gadgets for the home, car, and personal use on display here.  We thought we would spend a few days looking at the devices you’ll be using in the near future to get the most out of your cable service.

Have anything else you’d like us to look at while we’re here?  Leave a comment and let me know.  I’ll do my best to keep up with the feedback and answer your requests.

Welcome to CableTechTalk.com, the new blog of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA). We are the primary trade association of the cable television industry in the United States, representing cable operators serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s cable television households and more than 200 cable program networks, as well as equipment suppliers and providers of other services to the cable industry.

Our industry is at the forefront of technology change. Cable operators have spent more than $110 billion since 1996 to build a robust network for delivering voice, video and data services to our customers. We’ve dramatically increased the amount of video programming available, saved consumers hundreds of millions of dollars through telephone choice, and driven the deployment of high speed Internet – leading to a sea change in the way we interact with the world around us.

But we didn’t start this blog just to tell you all that. We launched this blog to talk about telecom policy. Today’s vibrant public policy discussions are driven by conversation and debate taking place online, so we hope this blog will contribute to that dialogue.

We’ll be talking about proposed legislation and regulation at the federal, state, and local level. We’ll voice our support for changes that would lead to a better, more competitive technology landscape. When we think legislation is unnecessary or detrimental, we’ll talk about that, too.

And, while we will certainly express our views, our goal is to have a dialogue. So, we’ll be inviting the people who make cable work – from our chief technology officers to the technical executives that manage our industry’s research & development arm, CableLabs – to talk about the management of large scale networks and the effect that changes in regulation would have on the customer’s experience. And we’ll also invite people with whom we may not agree to engage in debates across their blogs and ours. We’re looking to cross post ongoing exchanges in an effort to provide you with the kind of information that helps you decide for yourself.

We’ll make our best efforts to use this medium in a way that is familiar to you and other bloggers and blog readers. We’d like to talk with you, not at you. We want to provide you with information, but we hope you will do the same in return. We’ve opened up the comments so you can give us feedback and share your thoughts.

We’ll also talk about the stuff that makes life fun. We’ll take a look at the newest gadgets and tech toys – the consumer electronics that benefit from and leverage cable’s platform. To that end, we’re kicking things off with a week of blogging from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Our two bloggers-in-chief (more on them in a moment) will bring you the latest in home and personal electronics direct from the show floor. They’ll take you behind the scenes at the biggest electronics show on earth, and give you a peak at what’s cool and new, from their perspective inside the cable industry.

Our two resident bloggers are Paul Rodriguez and Michael Turk (Here are their bios). In addition to being NCTA employees, they’re avid bloggers and blog readers themselves. And they’re looking forward to talking with you in the days and months ahead.

But as I said, they won’t be the only voices you’ll hear. This blog will have dozens of authors, all with unique perspectives.

So, thanks for visiting, and come back often.