One is porting the TiVo interface to the OCAP platform. This would allow the TiVo interface to run on any device that supports OCAP applications – cable boxes, TVs, etc. That’s what seems to be happening from the letter and what TiVo confirmed to Dave.

The other is CE devices getting access to things like OnDemand, PPV, etc. The cable industry wants to force this via OCAP. The CE devices would have to support OCAP applications. For TiVo this would mean supporting OCAP on a box like the Series3 – or 3.5, whatever supports CableCARD 2.0.

OCAP does not provide a standard way to access things like VOD, TiVo would not be able to provide the interface. The way it works is the cable company downloads their OCAP Java-based ‘VOD’ application. Then what TiVo would have to do is call up that VOD app whenever the user selected VOD. Same thing for things like channel guides. If TiVo wanted to use the cable company provided guide data, they would have to call the OCAP guide application, etc.

What the CE industry wants is a standardized interface to the data, NOT via OCAP applications. A standard API, or something like XML/SOAP, where the CE vendor can get the data and present it in the interface they want, then pass the requests to the cable company. Cable companies don’t want to give that control up, they want to force CE vendors to show the interface they, the cable company, use. So you’d have the same VOD interface no matter if you used a cable box, TV, or TiVo – they’d all be runnign the same OCAP VOD app.

That’s what all the fighting is about, and the major holdup to CC2.0 – since the cable industry wants to force OCAP as part of CC2.0 and the CE industry is fighting for a new system instead.

I haven’t read the OCAP specs, but I’ve read a couple of articles trying to get a handle on it.

It seems that the OCAP layer and the APIs it exposes would allow the TiVo UI to interface with the underlying features provided by the hardware, and exposed by the OCAP/ACAP APIs. In systems where VOD/PPV/etc are available from the provider and supported by the hardware, an application (like TiVo) could provide UI for this as well, instead of being required to call the cable UI.

The punchline is…that’s ALL he knows, but he’s writing it for people who don’t even know THAT much.

It’s something the cable industry has been doing since day one basically. Trot out an ‘expert’ to a room full of mouth-breathers (Can we still insult elected officials in this country?) who gobble up his pablum like it was candy. His credentials are laughable at best, but since he knows more than they do (even if just barely…land of blind, one-eyed man and all that) they accept them.