Talks Progress on 2-Way Plug & Play, But Much Remains Undone, Report Says
Cable and CE negotiators have met more than 40 times the past several years -- most recently Oct. 6 -- to hash out an agreement on bidirectional plug & play devices and, while much progress has been made, much remains to be done. So concluded a joint CEA-NCTA report filed at the FCC Fri. -- the first in a series to be required by the Commission every 60 days on the status of negotiations toward an accord on “interactive Digital Cable Ready” devices ("iDCRs").
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Negotiators have agreed that iDCRs will use OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) middleware, CEA and NCTA said. They're in engineering talks “on how device resources can be shared practically” between cable applications and other iDCR uses, the report said. Other technical issues “remain to be addressed,” it said.
Cable and CE also have agreed on a general framework for interoperability and “conformance” testing of iDCRs, CEA and NCTA said. The program will include device and applications testing and system interoperability testing “among a subset of devices and applications,” the report said. Subset and testing “will evolve over time,” it said. “A broader interoperability testing program” is envisioned, but may not be part of the formal conformance program, the report said.
Relatively little progress has been made on licensing. Detailed negotiations haven’t taken place on what licensing “structure or provisions” to present the FCC in a bidirectional plug & play agreement, the report said. It hints of broad disagreement between cable and CE -- with cable pointing to CableLabs licenses on the OpenCable website as a possible model, while CEA asks that the parties consider licensing based on DFAST for unidirectional plug & play devices.
“Detailed” negotiations have begun “with an array” of content providers on copy protection for iDCRs, the report said. Cable and CE have agreed that selectable output controls should be included in iDCRs as they were for unidirectional devices, but the encoding rules to drive such controls “have not yet been defined,” the report said. “There also remains work to be done” on using CGMS- A analog protection and devising a “multi-industry means” for sending revocation messages to iDCRs that have been hacked, it said.
Other iDCR progress cited in the report: (1) Negotiators are attempting to develop a better way to fix software bugs than the “hard media” currently used to address CableCARD problems. (2) The PC and IT industries have been included in the negotiations “to remain sensitive to issues that may be unique to PCs.” (3) Agreement is being sought to promote differentiation among iDCRs. One recent focus has been on the use by some MSOs of “switched digital” techniques and how they might be incorporated into future products, the report said.
As for efforts to deploy downloadable software-based security in future devices -- another mandatory subject of the CEA-NCTA updates -- individual CE makers and other parties are discussing such solutions under NDAs, the report said. Cable is expected to file the license for downloadable security at the FCC by Nov. 30, the report said.