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Tag: tru2-way

  • First US Cities Get Tru2way Digital Cable Service


    Consumers in Chicago and Denver will be the first in the US to experience Comcast’s video-on-demand without a set-top box.

    Panasonic and Comcast today unveiled a tru2way digital cable service for the two cities with additional cities expected to go live in the coming months.

    To coincide with the platform launch, Panasonic’s new tru2way VIERA HDTVs will be available in certain retails stores in Chicago and Denver.

    The Panasonic HDTVs are built with tru2way technology inside, enabling consumers to access two-way digital cable programming, such as video-on-demand, without a cable operator-supplied set-top box.

    Mark Hess, Comcast’s senior vice president of Video Product Development, said tru2way technology was a gateway for customers to experience the next generation of interactive television.

    "This common platform also will let us develop an exciting array of interactive services and applications that we can deliver on our advanced fiber network to a variety of consumer electronics devices," he said.

    Panasonic had announced at the May 2008 Cable Show that the first tru2way HDTVs would be available for consumer purchase at retail by fall 2008.

    Dr Paul Liao, Chief Technology Officer, Panasonic Corporation of North America, said the arrival of the first tru2way HDTVs at retail, combined with Comcast’s activation of its first tru2way head ends, were among the most significant milestones in the cable industry.

  • Cable operators will continue to shoulder the cost of STBs unless testing is adopted to ensure all devices work in all cable systems.


    A retail market for tru2way compliant set-top boxes (STBs) in the US will never emerge unless they are portable across cable systems.
    That’s the conclusion of Steve Wilson, principal analyst with ABI Research, who expects the biggest challenge to tru2way to be interoperability.
    The 1996 Telecommunications Act required cable operators to open up their specifications to create a more competitive market in the United States.
    The result was OCAP, the Open Cable Applications Platform, recently rebranded “tru2way”.
    Any device with a tru2way compliant receiver can receive premium cable TV programming on any operator’s network with the appropriate CableCARD.
    This means any STB vendor can build a tru2way-compliant device and compete for cable operators’ business, and CE manufacturers can embed them in TV’s or other devices for retail.
    In his research brief, “The Outlook for tru2way”, Wilson describes it as a “double-edged sword” for operators.
    “On one hand, cable operators want to ‘own’ the customer’s entire user experience and they aren’t ready to allow others to start loading applications into the STB,” he said.
    “On the other, an open cable standard will reduce the tremendous cost burden custom systems and STBs place on the entire cable business.”
    Wilson says operators are finally starting to deploy tru2way STBs and estimates that in 2013 about half of all US cable subscribers will have a tru2way STB.
    But he goes on to warn that to achieve this many industry-political obstacles and interoperability challenges must be overcome along the way.
    “There’s no real interoperability testing, and no industry group focused on making sure that all the devices brought to market will work in all cable systems,” he said.
    “If applications and devices aren’t portable across cable systems, a retail market will never appear and operators will continue to carry the burden of STBs.”