[opendtv] Re: Two-way plug-&-play
- From: Bill Sheppard <Bill.Sheppard@xxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 18:17:15 -0700
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
>At 11:45 PM -0700 10/11/04, Bill Sheppard wrote:
>
>
>>Sorry, I should have qualified that as "most new sets" will be OCAP
>>compliant. Of course it'll take time before it's a meaningful chunk of
>>the installed base, but even a few million sets, coupled with OCAP boxes
>>deployed by the cable companies, will be enough to get the content flowing.
>>
>>
>Do you seriously believe that OCAP is going to emerge as the basis
>for interactive television?
>
>
Yes.
>I see no evidence of this ANYWHERE in the world (i.e. MHP is not
>creating much of a splash in Europe).
>
About 1.5 million MHP boxes have been deployed, most in the last six
months. 700K in S Korea, nearly that many in Italy, the remainder in
Germany, Scandinavia, and a few other spots. Few operators are going to
switch to MHP without a compelling market incentive. If someone's
already deployed OpenTV or MediaHighway there's not much reason to put
something else out there since either can support the types of
interactivity currently being produced reasonably as well as MHP can.
US volume rollout of OCAP is what will change the game. With OCAP (and
DirecTV's similar Java-based next-generation settops) as the only common
platform, the major US content producers will start to produce GEM-based
(the common denominator of MHP and OCAP) applications. This, coupled
with increased STB memory and processing power due both to DVR adoption
and Moore's law, will in turn provide market incentive for operators and
governments elsewhere to deploy or migrate to MHP-based platforms.
> And DASE is a total joke.
>
>
True. That's why ATSC and Cablelabs are jointly working on ACAP. With
less than 15% of the US public relying on OTA signals (and those are
the 15% least likely to care about advanced DTV services) there's no
reason DASE should have much market impact. But since GEM applications
can run across MHP, OCAP, and ACAP we will have the standards in place
to allow a critical mass of consumers whom content authors can target.
>It seems that the CE guys (and major content distributors like cable
>MSOs) continue to believe that they can overcome the inertia of the
>software tools that are emerging from the Internet and PC platforms.
>
>
Internet and PC's aren't TV! Aside from Microsoft's continued and
highly unsuccessful product attempts (WebTV, Media Center Edition), the
rest of the industry quit trying to shoehorn a browser into your
television years ago. HTML is fully incompatible with the expectations
of content producers.
>As consumers (continue) to migrate to progressive display
>technologies, the barriers to real convergence are crumbling. It's
>ludicrous to believe that an industry (even one as powerful as the TV
>industry) can control the evolutionary path of digital media
>technologies, especially when they continue to firmly grasp a failing
>(but still profitable) business model.
>
It's not a matter of controlling the path of digital media technologies,
it's a matter of enabling a common platform to deliver new services,
many of which are likely to further the goal of real convergence.
Bill
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Sheppard Industry Marketing Manager, Digital TV
bill.sheppard@xxxxxxx Software Systems Group
(408) 404-1254 (x68154) Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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