Paul Gluckman

Qualifying DTV converter boxes as eligible for govt. subsidy under newly enacted analog TV cutoff legislation will be a central challenge of any NTIA management plan detailing how the agency will promote the availability of low-cost set- tops through $40 vouchers (CD Feb 7 p1).

The FCC shouldn’t “underestimate the massive challenge” faced by CE makers and cable operators in ensuring that a 2- way interactive Digital Cable Ready (iDCR) system based on OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) specs not only works as promised, but doesn’t crash TVs, Sony Electronics said in a letter to the Commission. “Such problems result from the pervasiveness of OCAP in the host device, and the complexity of testing the almost infinite number of combinations of device hardware, device software, OCAP middleware implementations, MSO headend hardware, and downloadable OCAP applications,” Sony said. It said it’s “deeply concerned that the OCAP approach will be incapable of scaling beyond application to cable’s own leased set-top boxes. The cable industry’s resistance to solving the application/receiver testing challenges is evidence of this.” Neither cable nor CE disputes that OCAP, as envisioned, “will manage all of the functionality of the host device when that device is legally receiving and displaying cable programming,” Sony said. “In short, when a consumer inserts a CableCARD or, presumably, attaches the device to a system having software downloadable security, OCAP will become the intelligence of the CE product and the ‘face’ of the product to the consumer.” If an MSO’s downloaded OCAP guide application fails in a device, “the consumer will lose entirely the ability to receive and display cable programming with that device, notwithstanding the consumer’s legal entitlement to receive that programming,” Sony said. “In short, meeting consumer expectations about adequate device operation in an OCAP world presents a significant, perhaps insurmountable, problem for CE manufacturers and cable providers.” Sony said the task for CE and cable is to develop a testing regimen “sufficiently robust to manage this risk and complexity.” But no such agreement has been reached, Sony said. In a joint response, CableLabs and NCTA said they've explained many times to CE manufacturers and the FCC that CE makers shouldn’t face any “control” problem with OCAP, let alone one that’s “insurmountable… This is evidenced by the CE manufacturers who have agreed to use OCAP in their 2-way devices, including Samsung, whose two-way digital cable ready DTV was shown at this year’s CES… In fact, OCAP is based on the European MHP standard and Sony’s MHP boxes are deployed in Europe today.” OCAP doesn’t give cable “pervasive control of product functionality,” as Sony alleges, “only control over the cable service we are providing to cable subscribers… Until Sony’s filing, we had thought that we were in productive private discussions about a workable testing regime,” CableLabs and NCTA said: “We are disappointed that Sony has chosen to suggest otherwise with mischaracterizations and exaggerations that are designed for dramatic effect, rather than to advance the process.”

CE and other industries may well bear a large burden for educating the public about the Feb. 17, 2009, analog TV cutoff, now that the House has narrowly approved a deficit- reduction package and its DTV provisions and sent it to the White House for President Bush’s signature (CD Feb 2 p1). But for the CE industry and others, for which enactment of a hard DTV transition date is a long-sought victory, the burden is one they're ready to shoulder.

Despite “the animated rhetoric of pleadings” filed at the FCC in late Nov. on the progress of negotiations over bidirectional CableCARDs (CD Dec 2 p6), “the cable and consumer electronics industries continue to meet and work with each other,” NCTA told the Commission on Mon. in its latest update on the talks. Besides getting together Dec. 8 and Jan. 17 to discuss business and technical issues on 2-way plug & play, NCTA said, cable and CE have continued engineering discussions on “how device resources can be shared practically between cable and applications and other applications” of a bidirectional CableCARD product. Those talks have addressed several “use cases” that may arise as issues in different generations of interactive DTVs, NCTA said. It said the issues discussed include: (1) How to tune to terrestrial channels using an 8-VSB tuner while cable services are running. (2) How functions such as volume and color controls and PIP might appear. (3) Which remote control keys should be reserved for specific functions. The talks, which include weekly conference calls and more in- depth meetings face to face, aim at developing “engineering change requests” (ECRs) for submission to CableLabs “as may be needed to improve, clarify and adjust” the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) specs, NCTA said. In a separate filing CEA concurred that cable and CE met in Dec. and Jan. mainly to discuss OCAP testing. At the most recent meeting, CEA said, “cable proposed being able to launch new applications on their leased devices without any required testing and then submitting them for testing on competitive entrant devices -- with no mechanism to assure that the applications would ever run properly (or be fixed to run properly within a reasonable time) on those competitive devices. The CE side found this approach unsatisfactory, and further discussions on this subject are already scheduled.” Even so, cable and CE “have come a long way in the inter- industry process to achieve a mutual appreciation of the dimensions of the problem posed by the testing of OCAP applications,” CEA said: “In particular, an inadequately tested ‘unbound’ application, whose function is not limited to a particular program or channel, could threaten the essential functions and viability of a DTV receiver that represents one of a family’s larger investments. This case is especially problematic when faulty operation, resulting from a faulty application downloaded by the cable provider without the consent or knowledge of the consumer, has the potential to impair or disable the functionality of the consumer’s DTV receiver. Yet it is these applications, in particular, which the cable group proposes to put into commercial release after testing only on proprietary set-top boxes, with no intent to test these critical applications on competitive entrant devices.” CEA said cable acknowledges the need for such testing, but only after commercial deployment may occur.

Microsoft figured prominently in the FCC’s decision last year to push out the integration ban to July 2007 when it switched sides and joined cable in urging the deadline extension for the development of a downloadable conditional access system. But Microsoft since has said little about DCAS. The company didn’t file comments at the FCC on the NCTA’s Nov. 30 progress report that said a DCAS was feasible and will be ready to deploy nationally by July 2008. But Microsoft remains “very much engaged with all parties” in the DCAS debate, a spokeswoman told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily. Microsoft is reviewing the NCTA report and comments filed Fri. “to determine an appropriate response,” she said. Replies in the docket (97-80) are due Feb. 6. Meanwhile, the MPAA, weighing in on the NCTA report, told the FCC it has been involved in talks with CableLabs to improve the content protection available for the DCAS technology and license. MPAA and CableLabs have reached agreement on important issues such as incorporating a “redistribution control trigger” bit in the specs and explicit rules for generating CGMS-A signaling to fill the analog hole. Talks are planned questions including improvements in the DCAS robustness rules and further steps to plug the analog hole, the MPAA said. Verizon submitted comments agreeing “in principle” with the NCTA that downloadable conditional access “presents distinct advantages over other methods of separating security and non-security functions in leased set-top devices and other devices offered at retail by consumer electronics manufacturers.” But Verizon, like others said it can’t fully evaluate the NCTA proposal because it lacks access to the DCAS requirements document being developed. Moreover, “to the extent that the DCAS proposal is crafted to meet cable-centric technological standards,” Verizon said, it would “present a framework that would unfairly and unnecessarily advantage the traditional cable companies over new entrants that use alternative technologies to deliver video services.”

CEA and its members “view skeptically” cable’s prediction that its proposed downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) is feasible and will be ready to deploy nationally by July 2008 (CD Dec 5 p5), they said. In comments on NCTA’s Nov. 30 DCAS progress report, CEA urged the FCC to evaluate cable’s findings in that report similarly critically.

Radio group members of the HD Digital Radio Alliance filled in many blanks on plans to roll out HD2 multicasts in 28 markets as a bid to take terrestrial digital HD Radio technology mainstream (CD Jan 19 p13). Among Alliance members to detail HD2 programming plans Thurs. was Emmis Communications, which said it will begin rolling out HD2 channels in Chicago, Indianapolis, L.A. and N.Y. “in the coming months.” But Clear Channel was far more aggressive, saying HD2 channels debuted Thurs. in N.Y. and San Francisco, to be followed by Dallas today (Fri.) and Chicago and L.A. Mon.

Launch of the first commercial-free “HD2” multicasts is expected within days, the HD Digital Radio Alliance said Wed., listing the first 28 markets to participate. About 264 HD2 multicast channels spanning a wide diversity of music and talk formats have been created, said the Alliance, formed last month by top radio group owners to infuse terrestrial HD Radio with cash and promotional power in an aggressive bid to take the technology mainstream. All top 12 markets were listed, but not the participating broadcasters in each or the formats to be offered. And coverage in markets 13 to 94 shows noticeable gaps, with only 16 markets listed below Miami (12). Alliance members said they drafted a “format selection allocation process that’s very fair and balanced” to assure a market’s listeners will get the most “widely diverse” local programming. But they've refused to be specific about the process, including how allocations will be made. The first “wave” of HD2 multicasts will include such formats as Vive La Voce, Classical Alternative, Traditional Jazz & Blues, Coffee House, Female Talk, Future Country, Extreme Hip-Hop and in-depth news, the Alliance said. A wide variety of new rock formats being developed includes Deep Cuts Classic Rock, Live Rock, New Alternative, Fusion Hispanic-Anglo Rock, Chick Rock, Indie and New Rock. An HD Radio site maintained by technology developer iBiquity Digital lists 7 models of home receivers available, all with multicast reception capability. But of 7 automotive aftermarket receivers listed, only one -- Kenwood’s KTC-HR100MC -- is indicated as multicast-capable. Moreover, an Alliance spokeswoman said, receivers installed in BMW 6 and 7 series cars aren’t multicast-capable, but new models will be. An iBiquity spokesman said the number of multicast- capable HD Radio receivers and accessories is growing all the time. They include JVC’s new $299 head unit, which will be available soon, as will adapters from DICE and other suppliers earmarked for 2nd-quarter delivery, he said. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to pin down the exact number of HD Radio receivers in the installed base that have multicast capability, he said. That’s because manufacturers aren’t required to disclose that information until long after the radio has been sold, the spokesman said: “There are confidentiality issues involved as well.”

Members of the NAB’s Audio Broadcast Flag Task Force will begin meeting with their recording industry counterparts to hash out content protection for terrestrial digital HD Radio. It isn’t known how long a compromise will take, but the NAB and RIAA already have agreed to take off the table a proposal to encrypt the digital content at the source.

Sony Electronics (SEL) doesn’t endorse CableLabs’ OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) or related efforts, despite “certain misrepresentations” to the contrary made in an NCTA ex parte filing Dec. 23 at the FCC, the company told the Commission in a letter. NCTA’s ex parte listed SEL among companies that had signed an OpenCable intellectual property rights (IPR) declaration or participated in OpenCable engineering change request (ECR) meetings. But SEL said its only purpose for participating in the OpenCable ECR process has been to change the OCAP specification “in ways that would permit the retail availability of multi-function consumer electronics products that can receive bi-directional cable programming.” SEL believes OCAP, “in its current form, does not meet this goal,” the company said. But the OpenCable ECR process “is the only avenue available to interested parties to suggest changes to OCAP,” SEL said. SEL signed the OpenCable Contribution Agreement, which includes the IPR declaration, because it was required for participation in the joint CEA-NCTA technical working group, the company said. SEL said it “protested having to sign” the agreement, “but was told it would be excluded” from the working group meetings if it refused to do so. That SEL participated in the OpenCable ECR proceedings and signed the Contribution Agreement should be taken by the FCC “as evidence that SEL is dedicated to fixing what it considers to be the flaws in OCAP,” the company said: The Commission shouldn’t interpret either action “as an endorsement of OCAP as it now exists, or the process by which CableLabs has controlled the development of the OCAP specification to date.”