There have been quite a few announcements in recent months about cable’s progress towards deploying tru2way, but unfortunately, there continues to be some confusion in the blogosphere about the future of CableCARDs and exactly how tru2way devices will work.

For example, I see tru2way described as “CableCARD 2.0,” which is cute but not technically correct. I see questions about when there will be a “two-way CableCARD,” when in fact all CableCARDs are capable of accessing two-way cable services such as video-on-demand. I see people expressing expectations that the introduction of tru2way means that CableCARDs will go away, when in fact tru2way devices require use of CableCARDs.

It’s great to know that so many people are passionate about these issues, but the misinformation is a little frustrating.

I thought I would back up and walk through a very brief history of CableCARDs and tru2way, so as to hopefully clear up this confusion.

The Beginning of CableCARDs
In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress sought to foster competition in the set-top box market by enacting a new provision of the Communications Act, section 629, whose purpose was to make set-top boxes available for retail purchase. Specifically, that provision called on the FCC to adopt rules to ensure the commercial availability of “navigation devices” (e.g., a set-top box). But you couldn’t jeopardize the signal security of the provider (e.g., your local cable operator).

The FCC determined that this could be accomplished by separating security (i.e., conditional access) from the function of the device. The security functions would instead reside in a separate security module that you would get from your local provider. These security modules were first known as Point-of-Deployment (POD) Modules and later were named CableCARDs.

An FCC order in 1998 required the cable industry to develop PODs which it did by 2000, but, for a variety of reasons, there were no retail devices built with which the PODs were intended to work. By December of 2002, a “Plug & Play” agreement was reached between major cable operators and major consumer electronics companies setting the stage for the release of the first wave of devices – such as digital “cable ready” television sets – which would work with CableCARDs. These DTVs could be sold (and moved) anywhere in the country and allowed cable subscribers to receive one-way digital cable services without the use of a set-top box by obtaining a CableCARD from his or her cable operator. CableCARDs allowed cable customers to view encrypted digital programming after being authorized to do so by the cable operator.

That “Plug and Play” agreement took effect in the Summer of 2004. As of August 2004, there were approximately 700 CableCARDs deployed by the top 10 MSOs. NCTA just reported new numbers to the FCC and we found that there are 372,000 CableCARDs that the top 10 operators have supplied to date to customers who requested them for Digital Cable Ready TV sets or other CableCARD-compliant products, such as some TiVo digital-video recorders.

In addition, as a result of the FCC’s “integration ban” requiring that cable operators use CableCARDs in their own leased set-top boxes, we just reported that major cable operators have deployed more than 6.2 million digital set-tops with CableCARD conditional-access systems since July 2007.

One-way versus two-way
It’s good to stop here and point out that the 2002 agreement was an agreement for building devices to access one-way cable services such as linear (e.g., TNT, ESPN) and premium (e.g., HBO, Showtime) digital channels, including high-definition channels, but not two-way (“interactive”) services such as video-on-demand.

The reasons for this are long and involved and include technical, business and legal issues, but the short answer is that the cable and CE industries decided to adopt a one-way agreement as a first step to a “two-way” agreement. But agreement on a two-way agreement proved to be much more difficult and complex than a one-way agreement.

In particular, two-way services involve high-value content and we have three affected industries: cable, content providers (such as studios) and consumer electronics manufacturers. Not all of the companies within each industry have all the same views and not all of these industries have the same views. It’s a hard thing to accomplish.

The Story of tru2way
Now, I need to back up one more time and point out that something else was going on at almost exactly the same time. In the fall of 1997, came the beginning of the cable industry’s OpenCable project. Its mission was to provide a set of hardware and software specifications for the next generation of cable’s set-top boxes and other two-way devices. The software involved was called the OpenCable Applications Platform or OCAP, now known as tru2way. The tru2way hardware and software forms the basis for interactivity in two-way retail devices, as well as cable operator devices, and is used in conjunction with – not as a substitute for – CableCARDs which are still needed to provide access to secure cable services.

These are two separate stories
Now, let’s put it all in context. CableCARDs came from a government mandate to separate security from “channel surfing” functionality in set-top boxes, making them available at retail. The CableCARD itself can handle one-way or two-way communication, but the first Digital Cable Ready sets were one-way, because that’s all that was negotiated.

Meanwhile, tru2way comes from a decade of development and was focused on developing specifications that would allow interactive services to be deployed – and interactive services are two-way by definition. Two-way Plug & Play negotiations have been going on for some time, since the one-way agreement was finally settled.

In the meantime, the tru2way specification emerged as an option for building two-way Digital Cable Ready devices. Major CE companies such as Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Sony have agreed to use tru2way technology to build two-way Digital Cable Ready devices (IT companies such as Intel have also endorsed tru2way). And, as noted, tru2way devices still require a CableCARD for security.

After all, without such security, you can’t have content. Cable operators typically have contracts in place that they have to guarantee conditional access and other limits on unauthorized distribution.

So, there you go. It’s understandable that there’s confusion over CableCARDs. After all, customers with Digital Cable Ready devices represent probably less than 1% of cable customers. But I hope this post will serve to bring some clarity to the issue. If anyone wants a more detailed history, the best one I have seen can be found here.

During our recent conference, The Cable Show, I took a camera over to CableNET, a technology exhibit that’s been held for 16 years. Its goal has always been to show “…next-generation broadband technologies and services that cable operators are expected to deliver to consumers in the near term.”

I wanted to capture something about tru2way, since that set of technical specifications has been in the news lately. This video attempts to show that there are three key parts to tru2way: consumer electronics, such as TV sets or other devices; applications, which can be written once and then run anywhere; and cable operators, who would then support tru2way on their networks.

For about a year now, NCTA has been shining a light on the DOCSIS 3.0 specification. Thanks to channel bonding, cable operators will be able to offer wideband service to consumers, with speeds exceeding 100 Mbps downstream. About a month ago, we noted the first deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 in the U.S.

A new article in CED Magazine (“DOCSIS 3.0 arrives“) takes a look at deployments by Videotron and Comcast.

After a year-long trial, [Canadian operator] Videotron is serving up two tiers of the wideband service with speeds of 30 Mbps and 50 Mbps. The slower “Ultimate Speed” costs $64.95 a month while the faster speed checks in at $79.95 a month.

Currently, Videotron’s Ultimate Speed services are available to 112,000 homes in Quebec, with the goal of offering the service to Videotron’s entire footprint of 933,000 homes by next year.

The article notes that, although Videotron didn’t need to do so, some operators may need to use Switched Digital Bandwidth to free up additional DOCSIS channels.

Comcast also picked a system where it wouldn’t need to clear room for more spectrum when it unveiled its first wideband deployment last month in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area with speeds of 50 Mbps on the downstream and 5 Mbps on the upstream.

The service is available to residential customers for $149.95 a month while small to medium-sized businesses can get the increased speeds for $199.95 a month.

Some operators are apparently planning on deployment in 2009.

In our very first post, we promised to bring you guest commentary. I’m pleased to present our first contributor: David Broberg, Vice President of Consumer Video Technology for CableLabs.

“Honey (or Dad) will you fix the network again?” That’s the kind of greeting I’ve been getting far too frequently when I come home from work lately. Have you heard that one yet? Clouds are often used graphically to represent the network connections and it seems my personal cloud (home network) has been suffering some growing pains lately. This growth has required far more attention from the local IT-guy (me).

A few months ago, I attended CES in Las Vegas and this was one of the greetings waiting for me when I returned home from my travels. At the show I saw dozens of new products that will connect to your home network and it frightens me to think these problems are likely to get worse before they get better. I recently took an inventory of the number of IP devices on my personal home network and here is what I found: Up to 8 PCs at any given time; two webcams, two NAS drives, two IP printers, one Xbox360, one DVR, two Nintendo DS units, one Windows Mobile Phone with WiFi access and a Chumby! All of these asking my router for an IP address – that’s 20 devices!

I traced what seemed to be most of the problems to the fact that most of these devices were using dynamic IP assignments and a few were fixed IP addresses; many with the dynamic-IP assignments would store their IP address when they were in power-saving mode, yet act as if they were disconnected from the network. If the router got rebooted for any reason while any of those devices was asleep, the device that just woke up would most likely find an IP address conflict because another device was now assigned to its original IP address. Another reboot of the router only pushed the problem down to the next device that was temporarily off-line. As a fix, I went around the house and reassigned fixed IP addresses to all 20 devices – so far this strategy seems to be helping but it wasn’t easy. Perhaps there is another way to avoid this problem, but that’s not really the point.

One of the trends from this year’s CES was for more and more consumer IP devices for your home. Soon, many of the flat panel TVs and STBs are likely to have IP connections, BluRay players with network enhanced features are coming too. Many mobile phones already connect to WiFi, soon this may be a standard feature on all cell phones. The sales of Xbox360s and PS3s are skyrocketing – they need a network too. There are more IP-connected devices coming including robots, music players, Internet radios, media center extenders, cameras, picture frames, flash-memory, lights, thermostats, sprinkler timers, beds – a few years ago there was an Internet-capable refrigerator and I’ve even got an Internet-connected wristwatch (thankfully it doesn’t need its own IP address since it goes through the PC connection.) If you like gadgets like I do, your home will become its own cloud over the next few years.

To make matters worse, another trend at CES was for far more fragmentation in this home networking market, not more uniformity. My house was prewired with structured wiring and has Ethernet available (at one socket) in every room. I’ve added two WiFi access points at opposite corners of the house (one up, one down) to provide good wireless coverage with 802.11b/g and I also added an original HomePlug powerline modem to connect the IP webcam in the garden shed. That accounts for three separate physical layers (one wired, one powerline and one wireless) and more are coming.

On the wireless forefront, many routers are moving to 802.11n or “pre-N” since the standards aren’t quite finalized. It promises faster rates and better coverage, but with all the “pre-standardized” units, interoperability is in question. There were also product introductions for portable TV based on WiMax technology from Motorola and something called a femto cell providing CDMA access inside your home from Samsung. For shorter ranges (3M), there are high speed and low speed choices including the new 480 Mbps wireless USB standard and the popular Bluetooth technology (3 Mbps) which just released version-2.1+EDR. Wireless mesh networks are also growing in popularity and innovation, with competing solutions from ZigBee Alliance and Z-Wave Alliance, both are low-speed technologies aimed primarily at home control and automation.

Networks connected through power-lines also saw innovation and chaos at this year’s CES. There were at least two updated competing power-line networking technologies that offer faster speeds capable of sending HD video with better noise immunity and more reliability. One was from Panasonic called HD-PLC (190 Mbps) the other system is called HomePlug AV (200 Mbps). Some of these technologies are being built into flat-panel DTVs to eliminate the need for the unsightly video/audio cables.

The third physical layer in the home is the coax network. This is usually what is used to connect the TVs in your house. Recently a number of companies have introduced technology to use this cabling for home networking connections too. It offers many advantages because of its shielding and design for high frequencies. There were many innovations described at CES this year including demonstrations of HDMI over coax, 1394 over coax, Ethernet over coax, one that combines 1394 and GigE over coax and a popular system called MoCa which is now introducing components that support the latest version 1.1.

There are other groups working to standardize the home network connections too. CableLabs has published home networking extensions to the OpenCable Host & OCAP specifications and has approved content protection systems for IP-based home network connectivity. The 1394 trade association was demonstrating technologies and devices that can bridge 1394 protocols to coax, fiber and other new physical layers. The Hana Alliance was demonstrating whole-home high-definition video networking solutions also based on 1394 technology at CES and released their Hana 2.0 design guidelines. Meanwhile CEA’s own R7 Home Network Committee maintains a variety of home networking standards as well as active projects to define future remote user interface protocols.

A recent market study from MultiMedia Intelligence reported that shipments of Internet-Protocol (IP)-enabled consumer electronic products reached 64 Million units in 2007. They say this represents a nearly 73% growth. They also report that semiconductor revenues from technology that enables these interfaces will exceed $2 Billion by 2012. Clearly we are just at the beginning of a growth of home networking technology as this trend extends to more and more homes. This growth will impact some homes earlier than others. Those with pre-teens or young teens at home now, are likely to see the most significant growth over the next 5 years. Others will be impacted more gradually. If you still haven’t been asked to fix the network yet, you soon will be.

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.