After Sony and six major cable MSOs recently came to an agreement on tru2way, other consumer electronics companies were invited to sign the same agreement. And now it seems others have, the signatories now include ADB, Digeo, Intel, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony. As more vendors sign on to the agreement we’ll start seeing more options in two-way cable devices.

Their press release:
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Details are sparse, but Time Warner Cable plans to provide access to Internet video content to their customers, to compete with the likes of TiVo and Apple TV. According to Reuters:

“Right now it’s pretty hard to get Internet stuff on your TV,” [Chief Executive Glenn Britt] said at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York.

“We’re actually going to have equipment we make available to subscribers,” he said. “It’s actually going to be a new wireless cable modem that will allow you to network everything in your house.”

Britt gave few specific details on how the service would work or when it would be available.

“Within a relatively short time … it’s going to be very easy to get Internet TV on your big screen TV,” he said, estimating it would take between one to two years to popularize such technology already sold by the likes of Apple Inc.

This is definitely a growing market with products like TiVo, Apple TV, Roku’s Netflix box, DivX Connected boxes, etc. Being able to provide access to online content will help cable MSOs compete with the consumer electronics vendors. It remains to be seen how Time Warner will handle the access, how open it will be, and which content formats it will handle.

Well, this could be the end of the push for DCR+. Sony had been the big name still pushing for DCR+, as opposed to OCAP/tru2way. Well, it seems that’s no longer the case. Sony has come to an agreement with the six largest cable MSOs in the US, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House Networks, which collectively server 82% of US cable subscribers, over 105 million US homes. The national two-way cable agreement will see Sony supporting tru2way under streamlined licensing agreements. Other consumer electronics companies have been invited to join the agreement as well.

So it looks like OCAP/tru2way will end up the industry standard, and the DCR+ push is likely to fade away now. The full terms of the Memorandum of Understanding that covers the agreement have not yet been released, giving other potential signatories time to review it. I’ll keep an eye out for those terms once they’ve been released.

I’m just glad to see an apparent end to the stalemate. If the CE industry in general embraces tru2way then it opens the floodgates for more advanced cable products for consumers, which is a good thing.

The press release announcing the agreement is below.
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A reader contacted me today to ask me about something odd he’s been experiencing with his TiVo Series3. He’s a Time Warner Cable user in Raleigh, NC, and lately they’ve been adding new HD channels using SDV in his area. The oddity is that he’s been able to tune in three of these channels - A&EHD, TBSHD, and GOLF/VSHD - on his Series3. This is odd because the S3 is physically incapable of tuning SDV channels, that’s what the Tuning Resolver that’s coming out in 2008 is for. He said that early on he got error messages that the channels were unavailable, as I’d expect, but that he’s been able to regularly tune them lately. This is very odd indeed, and I had three theories:

1. The channels aren’t actually SDV, but are standard linear channels and TWC just gave out bad info about them being SDV. The S3 would be able to tune these channels like any other cable channel. The earlier error messages could’ve been a coincidence - some unrelated problem. Or perhaps the guide was updated before the channels were live.

2. The channels did start out as SDV, but demand was high enough that they were always in use, so TWC just converted them to linear channels. That would explain the error and then the channels working regularly.

3. The channels are SDV, and someone else on his cable network segment has tuned the channels. When an SDV STB tunes an SDV channel the head end dynamically assigns the channel to a frequency and then tells the STB which frequency to tune for the channel. I suppose it is possible that this updated channel map is also being picked up by the CableCARDs in his S3, allowing him to tune in the SDV channel so long as someone else on his segment has previously requested it. He would lose access to the channel whenever no one else on his segment was viewing it. And it is just coincidence that his tests have fallen during times when the channels are in use.

Now, I did some poking around online, and from what I can tell those three channels are SDV in Raleigh, NC, and have been since they were added in October. That seems to indicate hypothesis number 3.

Has anyone else who lives in an area using SDV been able to tune SDV channels on their CableCARD TiVo? Can anyone else who lives in Raleigh confirm that these are SDV channels? Can you tune them, or any other SDV channels, with your TiVo?

I suppose the ultimate test would be someone who has SDV channels, a CableCARD TiVo, and a regular cable STB. Find an SDV channel that the TiVo cannot tune. Then tune that channel with your STB. That would cause the head-end to issue a frequency for the channel. Then try to tune it on your TiVo again. If it works on the TiVo, then we know the TiVo can tune SDV channels if they’re in use. Unfortunately, if it doesn’t work all it means is that it doesn’t work there. Different cable systems could handle the channel mapping data differently. So it not working in one location doesn’t mean the TiVo is incapable of doing it everywhere. (And it working in one location doesn’t mean it will work everywhere, but it does mean it could work.)